59 o LITERA TURE OF SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 



angler hath neither judgment nor experience, he may come home 

 light-laden at his leisure." 



To Barker must be given the credit, or rather discredit, 

 of discovering and counselling the use of salmon-roe as a 

 bait He says : 



"I have found an experience of late, which you may angle 

 with, and take great store of fish. . . . The bait is the roe of a 

 salmon, or trout, if it be a large trout, that the spawnes be any- 

 thing great. If I had but known it twenty years ago, I would 

 have gained a hundred pounds, onely with this bait. I am bound 

 in duty to divulge it to your Honour, and not to carry it to my 

 grave with me. The greedy angler will murmur at me, but for 

 that I care not." 



Following, too, in the wake of Dame Juliana Berners, 

 he recommends the " goose-trimmer " 



" The principal sport to take a pike is to take a goose or 

 gander, or duck : take one of the pike lines, tie the line unde r 

 the left wing, and over the right wing, about the body, as a man 

 weareth his belt; turn the goose off into the pond where the 

 pikes are; there is no doubt of sport, with great pleasure, betwixt 

 the goose and the pike ; it is the greatest sport and pleasure that 

 a noble gentleman in Shropshire doth give his friends entertain- 

 ment with." 



Barker brings us to what may be called the Waltonian 

 era, which will be dealt with in the next chapter ; and it 

 must be confessed that, from a purely critical point of 

 view, our fishing literature of the period just traversed 

 cannot be held in very high estimation. A good deal of 

 it is interesting enough for its originality and quaintness, 

 and also for the insight it gives us into the art of fishing 

 as practised by our forefathers, and the "engines" and 

 baits they used in prae-Waltonian times ; and, it may almost 

 be added, for its evidence of rank plagiarism among 



