52 THE COMPLETE ANGLER PART i. 



newly dressed is so much better than a chub of a day's 

 keeping after he is dead, that I can compare him to nothing so 

 fitly as to cherries newly gathered from a tree, and other sthat 

 have been bruised and lain a day or two in water. But the 

 chub being thus used, and dressed presently, and not washed 

 after he is gutted (for note, that lying long in water, and 

 washing the blood out of any fish after they be gutted, abates 

 much of their sweetness), you will find the chub (being dressed 

 in the blood, and quickly) to be such meat as will recompense 

 your labour, and disabuse your opinion. 



Or you may dress the chavender or chub thus : 

 When you have scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, and 

 washed him very clean, then chine or slit .him through the 



middle, aS a Salt fish is ncnnllp Anf . fFT^n g\vaJixxL-Lhr<*P> Qrjfnnr 



cuts or scotches on the back /with your knife, and broil him on 

 charcoal, or wood-coal that is free from smoke, and all the time 

 he is a-broiling baste him with the best sweet butter, and good 

 store of salt mixed with it ; and to this add a little thyme cut 

 exceeding small, or bruised into the butter. The cheven thus 

 dressed hath the watery taste taken away, for which so many 

 excep against him. Thus was the cheven dressed that you 

 now liked so well, and commended so much. But note again, 

 that if this chub that you ate of had been kept till to-morrow, 

 he had not been worth a rush. And remember that his throat 

 be washed very clean, I say very clean, and his body not 

 washed after he is gutted, as indeed no fish should be. 



Well, scholar, you see what pains I have taken to recover the 

 lost credit of the poor despised chub. And now I will give you 

 some rules how to catch him ; and I am glad to enter you into 

 the art of fishing by catching a chub, for there is no fish better 

 to enter a young angler, he is so easily caught, but then it must 

 be this particular way. 



Go to the same hole in which I caught my chub, where in 

 most hot days you will find a dozen or twenty chevens floating- 

 near the top of the water : get two or three grasshoppers as you 

 go over the meadow, and get secretly behind the tree, and stand 

 as free from motion as is possible; then put a grasshopper on 



