CHA*. VIII.J THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I$l 



should rain none but Water-frogs, for those, I think, are not 

 venomous, especially the right Water-frog, which, about Feb- 

 ruary or March, breeds in ditches by slime, and blackish eggs 

 in that slime : about which time of breeding, the he and she 

 frogs are observed to use divers summersaults, and to croak and 

 make a noise, which the Land-frog or Padock-frog never does. 

 Now of these Water-frogs, if you intend to fish with a frog for 

 a Pike, you are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for 

 that the Pike ever likes best. And thus use your frog, that he 

 may continue long alive. 



Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from 

 the middle of April till August ; and then the frog's mouth 

 grows up, and he continues so for at least, six months without 

 eating, but is sustained, none but He whose Name is Wonder- 

 ful knows how : I say, put your hook, I mean the arming- wire, 

 through his mouth, and out at his gills, and then with a fine 

 needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch 

 to the arming-wire of your hook, or tie the frog's leg above the 

 upper joint to the armed wire : and in so doing, use him as 

 though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may 

 possibly, that he may live the longer. 



And now, having given you this direction for the baiting 

 your Ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to 

 tell you how your hook thus baited must or may be used : and 

 it is thus. Having fastened your hook to a line, which, if it 

 be not fourteen yards long, should not be less than twelve, you 

 are to fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike 

 is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt ; and then wind your 

 line on any forked stick, all your line, except half a yard of it, 

 or rather more ; and split that forked stick with such a nick or 

 notch at one end of it as may keep the line from any more of it 

 ravelling from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. 

 And choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep 

 the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water 

 till the Pike bites, and then the Pike having pulled the line 



