156 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PARTI. 



betwixt your hands till you make it clean, and as free from 

 husks as you can ; then put that water from it, and put a small 

 quantity of fresh water to it, and set it in something that is fit 

 for that purpose, over the fire, where it is not to boil apace, but 

 leisurely and very softly, until it become somewhat soft, which 

 you may try by feeling it betwixt your finger and thumb ; and 

 when it is soft, then put your water from it, and then take a 

 sharp knife, and turning the sprout end of the corn upward, with 

 the point of your knife take the back part of the husk off from it, 

 and yet leaving a kind of inward husk on the corn, or else it is 

 marred ; and then cut off that sprouted end, I mean a little of 

 it, that the white may appear, and so pull off the husk on the 

 cloven side, as I directed you, and then cutting off a very little 

 of the other end, that so your hook may enter ; and if your hook 

 be small and good, you will find this to be a very choice bait 

 either for winter or summer, you sometimes casting a little of it 

 into the place where your float swims. 



And to take the roach and dace, a good bait is the young 

 brood of wasps or bees, if you dip their heads in blood; 

 especially good for bream, if they be baked or hardened in 

 their husks in an oven, after the bread is taken out of it, or 

 hardened on a fire shovel; and so also is the thick blood of 

 sheep, being half dried on a trencher, that so you may cut it 

 into such pieces as may best fit the size of your hook, and a 

 little salt keeps it from growing black, and makes it not the 

 worse but better : this is taken to be a choice bait if rightly 

 ordered. 



There be several oils of a strong smell that I have been told 

 of, and to be excellent to tempt fish to bite, of which I could 

 say much ; but I remember I once carried a small bottle from 

 Sir George Hastings to Sir Henry Wotton, they were both 

 chymical men, as a great present ; it was sent and received, 

 and used with great confidence ; and yet upon inquiry, I found 

 it did not answer the expectation of Sir Henry, which, with the 

 help of this and other circumstances, makes me have little 

 belief in such things as many men talk of : not but that I think 

 fishes both smell and hear, as I have expressed in my former 



