244 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART n. 



it quite otherwise; and though I have taken with the angle, 

 I may safely say, some thousands of trouts in my life, my top 

 never snapt (though my line still continued fast to the remain- 

 ing part of my rod by some lengths of line curled round about 

 my top, and there fastened, with waxed silk, against such an 

 accident), nor my hand never slacked, or slipped by any other 

 chance, but I almost always infallibly lost my fish, whether 

 great or little, though my hook came home again. And I have 

 often wondered how a trout should so suddenly disengage him- 

 self from so great a hook as that we bait with a minnow, and so 

 deep bearded as those hooks commonly are, when I have seen 

 by the forenamed accidents or the slipping of a knot in the 

 upper part of the line, by sudden and hard striking, that though 

 the line has immediately been recovered, almost before it could 

 be all drawn into the water, the fish cleared and gone in a 

 moment. And yet, to justify what he says, I have sometimes 

 known a trout, having carried away a whole line, found dead 

 three or four days after with the hook fast sticking in him; and 

 then it is to be supposed he had gorged it, which a trout will do 

 if you be not too quick with him when he comes at a minnow, 

 as sure and much sooner than a pike : and I myself have also, 

 once or twice in my life, taken the same fish, with my own fly 

 sticking in his chaps, that he had taken from me the day before, 

 by the slipping of a hook in the arming. But I am very confi- 

 dent a trout will not be troubled two hours with any hook that 

 has so much as one handful of line left behind with it, or that is 

 not struck through a bone, if it be in any part of his mouth only: 

 nay, I do certainly know that a trout, so soon as ever he feels 

 himself pricked, if he carries away the hook, goes immediately 

 to the bottom, and will there root, like a hog upon the gravel, 

 till he either rub out or break the hook in the middle. And so 

 much for this sort of angling in the middle for a trout. 



The second way of angling in the middle is with a worm, 

 grub, cadis, or any other ground-bait for a grayling; and that 

 is with a cork, and a foot from the bottom, a grayling taking it 

 much better there than at the bottom, as has been said before ; 

 and this always in i clear water, and with the finest tackle. 



