HOW TO FISH FOR THE TROUT 



close in the day, as the timorous Hare does in her form : for the 

 chief feeding of either is seldom in the day, but usually in the 

 night, and then the great Trouts feed very boldly. 



And you must fish for him with a strong line, and not a little 

 hook, and let him have time to gorge your hook, for he does not 

 usually forsake it, as he oft will in the day-fishing: and if the 

 night be not dark, then fish so with an artificial fly of a light 

 colour, and at the snap ; nay, he will sometimes rise at a dead 

 mouse, or a piece of cloth, or any thing that seems to swim cross 

 the water, or to be in motion : this is a choice way, but I have 

 not oft used it, because it is void of the pleasures that such days 

 as these, that we two now enjoy, afford an Angler. 



And you are to know, that in Hampshire, which I think exceeds 

 all England for swift, shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, and store 

 of Trouts, they use to catch Trouts in the night, by the light of 

 a torch or straw, which when they have discovered, they strike 

 with a Trout-spear or other ways. This kind of way they catch 

 very many, but I would not believe it till I was an eye-witness of 

 it, nor do I like it now I have seen it. 



VEN. But, Master, do not Trouts see us in the night? 



Pise. Yes, and hear, and smell too, both then and in the day 

 time ; for Gesner observes, the Otter smells a fish forty furlongs 

 off him in the water: and that it may be true, seems to be 

 affirmed by Sir Francis Bacon, in the Eighth Century of his 

 * Natural History,' who there proves that waters may be the 

 medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus : ' That if you knock 

 two stones together very deep under the water, those that stand 

 on a bank near to that place, may hear the noise without any 

 diminution of it by the water.' He also offers the like experiment 

 concerning the letting an anchor fall by a very long cable or rope 

 on a rock, or the sand within the sea: and this being so well 

 observed and demonstrated, as it is by that learned man, has 

 made me to believe that Eels unbed themselves, and stir at the 

 noise of thunder, and not only, as some think, by the motion or 

 stirring of the earth which is occasioned by that thunder. 



And this reason of Sir Francis Bacon, Exper. 792, has made 

 me crave pardon of one that I laughed at for affirming, that he 

 knew Carps come to a certain place in a pond, to be fed, at the 

 ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum : and however, it shall 



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