ANCIENT ANGLING AUTHORS 131 



rise ordinarily in the still deeps ; but not so well in 

 the Streams. And although the best and largest 

 Trouts bite in the Night (being afraid to stir, or 

 range about in the Daytime ; ) yet I account this 

 way of Angling both unwholsom, unpleasant and 

 very ungentiel, and to be used by none but Idle 

 pouching Fellows. Therefore I shall say nothing 

 of it, only describe how to lay Night Hooks ; which, 

 if you live close by a River side, or have a large Moat, 

 or Pond at your own House, will not be unpleasant, 

 sometimes to practice. But as for Damming, Grop- 

 ing, Spearing, Hanging, Twitcheling, Netting, or 

 Firing by Night, I purposely omit them, and them 

 esteem to be used only by disorderly and rascally 

 Fellows, for whom this little Treatise is not in the 

 least intended. 



To The Compleat Trailer ; or, The Art of Trolling, 

 by a Lover of the Sport, 1682, belongs the distinction 

 of being the first monograph written in connection 

 with the sport of trolling ; and a most excellent and 

 exhaustive monograph it is. The subject, in fact, is 

 so fully dealt with, that The Compleat Troller forms 

 the groundwork of all subsequent books on the pike, 

 and the author, Robert Nobbes, certainly deserves 

 the title of " Father of Trollers," which subsequent 

 writers on the pastime have bestowed upon him. 



Robert Nobbes was born at Bulwick in 

 Northamptonshire on 2ist July 1652, and took his 

 M.A. degree at Cambridge in 1675. He was Vicar 

 of Applethorpe and Wood Newton, Northampton- 

 shire, 1676 to 1690, and was subsequently appointed 

 Rector of Sausthorpe, Lincolnshire, in 1702. He 

 died about 1706. 



