TROUT FISHING 



serves, and to angle as near as you can to the bank of the same 

 side whereon you stand, though where you see a fish rise near 

 you you may guide your quick fly over him, whether in the 

 middle or on the contrary side ; and if you are pretty well out 

 of sight, either by kneeling or the interposition of a bank or 

 bush, you may almost be sure to raise, and take him too, if it 

 be presently done : the fish will, otherwise, peradventure be 

 removed to some other place, if it be in the still deeps, where 

 he is always in motion, and roving up and down to look for 

 prey, though, in a stream, you may always almost, especially 

 if there be a good stone near, find him in the same place. Your 

 line ought in this case to be three good hairs next the hook ; 

 both by reason you are, in this kind of angling, to expect the 

 biggest fish, and also that, wanting length to give him line 

 after he has struck, you must be forced to tug for it : to which 

 I will also add, that not an inch of your line being to be 

 suffered to touch the water in dibling, it may be allowed to 

 be the stronger.' 



Cotton declaimed against the destruction of angling by 

 ' the basest sort of people ' addicted to those ' unlawful ways 

 of fire and netting in the night, and of damming, groping, 

 spearing, hanging and hooking by day ' ; ^ but his own account 

 of the sport he enjoyed in the May-fly season which immedi- 

 ately precedes, shows that the poachers could not have done 

 much harm : 



' But with these two, the Greendrake and the Stone-fly, I 

 do verily believe I could some days in my life, had I not been 

 weary of slaughter, have loaden a lusty boy : and have some- 

 times, I do honestly assure you, given over upon the mere 

 account of satiety of sport : which will be no hard matter to 

 believe, when I likewise assure you, that with this very fly, I 



' Cotton's remark that to prevent such practices ' we have very good laws,' which had 

 fallen into abeyance, probably refers to the Statutes 1 Eliz. c. 7 and 1 Eliz. c. 17- The 

 former forbade the use of nets and specified the minimum size of pike, salmon, trout, 

 and barbel that might be taken ; the latter prohibited nets of mesh less than two and a 

 half inches. 



2 A 185 



