88 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I 



you are further to know, that there be certain waters that breed 

 Trouts remarkable both for their number and smallness. I 

 know a little brook in Kent that breeds them to a number in- 

 credible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, 

 but none greater than about the size of a gudgeon. There are 

 also in divers rivers, especially that relate to, or be near to the 

 sea, as Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor, a little Trout 

 called a Samlet or Skegger-Trout, in both which places I have 



caught twenty or forty at a standing, that will bite as fast and 

 as freely as minnows ; these be by some taken to be young 

 Salmons, but in those waters they never grow to be bigger than 

 a herring. 



There is also in Kent near to Canterbury a Trout called 

 there a Fordidge Trout, a Trout that bears the name of the 

 town where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest 

 of fish;' many of them near the bigness of a Salmon, but 

 known by their different color, and in their best season they 

 cut very white, and none of these have been known to be 

 caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught by 

 Sir George Hastings, an excellent Angler, and now with God ; 

 and he hath told me, he thought that Trout bit not for hunger 

 but wantonness ; and is the rather to be believed, because both 

 he then, and many others before him, have been curious to 

 search into their bellies, what the food was by which they 

 lived : and have found out nothing by which they might satisfy 

 their curiosity. 



