162 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PARTI. 



than suitable to his body; a mouth very wide, and usually 

 gaping ; he is without teeth, but his lips are very rough, much 

 like to a file. He hath two fins near to his gills, which be 

 roundish or crested; two fins also under the belly; two on the 

 back; one below the vent; and the fin of his tail is round 

 Nature hath painted the body of this fish with whitish, blackish, 

 and brownish spots. They be usually full of eggs or spawn all 

 the summer, I mean the females ; and those eggs swell their 

 vents almost into the form of a dug. They begin to spawn 

 about April, and, as I told you, spawn several months in the 

 summer. And in the winter, the minnow, and loach, and bull- 

 head dwell in the mud, as the eel doth ; or we know not where, 

 no more than we know where the cuckoo and swallow, and 

 other half-year birds, which first appear to us in April, spend 

 their six cold, winter, melancholy months. This fish does 

 usually dwell, and hide himself, in holes, or amongst stones in 

 clear water; and in very hot days will lie a long time very still, 

 and sun himself, and will be easy to be seen upon any flat 

 stone, or any gravel ; at which time he will suffer an angler to 

 put a hook, baited with a small worm, very near unto his 

 mouth ; and he never refuses to bite, nor indeed to be caught 

 with the worst of anglers. Matthiolus commends him much 

 more for his taste and nourishment, than for his shape or 

 beauty. 



There is also a fish called a Sticklebag, a fish without scales, 

 but hath his body fenced with several prickles. I know not 

 where he dwells in winter, nor what he is good for in summer, 

 but only to make sport for boys and women-anglers, and to 

 feed other fish that be fish of prey, as trout in particular, who 

 will bite at him as at a penk, and better, if your hook be rightly 

 baited with him ; for he may be so baited as, his tail turning 

 like the sail of a windmill, will make him turn more quick than 

 any penk or minnow can. For note, that the nimble turning of 

 that, or the minnow, is the perfection of minnow fishing. To 

 which end, if you put your hook into his mouth, and out at his 

 tail, and then, having first tied him with white thread a little 

 above his tail, and placed him after such a manner on your 



