60 BKST'S ART OF ANGLING. 



particularly fond of it when made into a dish 

 called water-sonchy. The perch is a fish very 

 tenacious of life: they are often carried near 

 sixty miles in dry straw, and survive the jour- 

 ney. One was once taken in the Serpentine- 

 river, Hyde-park, that weighed nine pounds ; 

 but that is very uncommon. The colours are 

 beautiful ; the back and part of the sides being 

 of a deep green, marked with five broad black 

 bars pointed downwards ; the belly is white, 

 tinged with red, the ventral fins of a rich scar- 

 let; the anal fins and tail of the same colour, 

 but rather paler. 



His haunts are chiefly in the streams not very 

 deep, under hollow banks, a gravelly bottom, 

 and at the turning of an eddy. If the weather is 

 cool and cloudy, and the water a little ruffled, he 

 will bite all day long, especially from eight to ten 

 in the morning, and from three till six in the 

 evening. If there are thirty or forty of them 

 in a hole they may be all caught at one standing : 

 they are not like the solitary pike, but love to 

 accompany one another, and swim in sholes, as 

 all fishes which have scales are observed to do. 

 His baits are minnows, little/rogs or brandlings, 

 if well scoured ; when he bites give him time 

 enough, and you can hardly give him too much ; 

 for as he is not a leather-mouthed fish, without 

 you do, he will often break his hold. Angle for 

 him, if you bait with brandling, with an indiffe- 

 rent strong line, and gut at bottom, your hook 

 No 4, 5, or 6, and about five or six inches from 

 the ground. But if you rove for him with a min- 

 now or frog (which is a very pleasant way) then 

 your line should be strong, and the hook armed 

 with gimp, and the bait swimming at mid-water 

 suspended by a cork float. I for my own pat al- 



