154 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PARTI. 



- gaze on it there, and run at it and take it, lest the fly should 

 fly away from him. 



I have seen this done at Windsor and Henley-bridge, and 

 great store of roach taken, and sometimes a dace or chub; and 

 in August you may fish for them with a paste made only of the 

 crumbs of bread, which should be of pure fine manchet ; and 

 that paste must be so tempered betwixt your hands till it be 

 both soft and tough too ; a very little water, and time and 

 labour, and clean hands, will make it a most excellent paste : 

 but when you fish with it, you must have a small hook, a quick 

 eye. and a nimble hand, or the bait is lost, and the fish too ; if 

 one may lose that which he never had. With this paste you 

 may, as I said, take both the ROACH and DACE or DARE, for 

 they be much of a kind in matter of feeding, cunning, goodness, 

 and usually in size. And therefore, take this general direction 

 for some other baits which may concern you to take notice of. 

 They will bite almost at any fly, but especially at ant-flies ; con- 

 cerning which, take this direction, for it is very good : 



Take the blackish ant-fly out of the mole-hill or ant-hill, in 

 which place you shall find them in the month of June, or if that 

 be too early in the year, then doubtless you may find them in 

 July, August, and most of September; gather them alive with 

 both their wings, and then put them into a glass that will hold a 

 quart or a pottle; but first put into the glass a handful or more 

 of the moist earth out of which you gather them, and as much 

 of the roots of the grass of the said hillock, and then put in the 

 flies gently, that they lose not their wings : lay a clod of earth 

 over it, and then so many as are put into the glass without 

 bruising will live there a month or more, and be always in a 

 readiness for you to fish with ; but if you would have them keep 

 longer, then get any great earthen pot, or barrel of three or four 

 gallons, which is better, then wash your barrel with water and 

 honey, and having put into it a quantity of earth and grass roots, 

 then put in your flies, and cover it, and they will live a quarter 

 of a year : these in any stream and clear water are a deadly bait 

 for roach or dace, or for a chub ; and your rule is to fish not 

 less than a handful from the bottom, 



