202 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART t 



water, and gaze on it there, and run at it and take it lest the 

 fly should fly away from him. 



I have seen this done at Windsor and Henley Bridge, and 

 great store of Roach taken ; and sometimes a Dace or Chub. 

 And in August you may fish for them with a paste made only 

 of the crumbs of bread, which should be of pure fine man- 

 chet ; and that paste must be so tempered betwixt your hands 

 till it be both soft and tough too : a very little water, and time 

 and labor, and clean hands, will make it a most excellent 

 paste. But when you fish with it, you must have a small hook, 

 a quick eye, and a nimble hand, or the bait is lost and the 

 fish too ; if one may lose that which he never had. With this 

 paste you may, as I said, take both the Roach and the DACE 

 or DARE, for they be much of a kind, in matter of feeding, 



cunning, goodness, and usually in size. And therefore take 

 this general direction for some other baits which may concern 

 you to take notice of. They will bite almost at any fly, but 

 especially at Ant-flies ; concerning which take this direction, 

 for it is very good. 



Take the blackish Ant-fly out of the mole-hill or ant-hill, in 

 which place you shall find them in the montji of June ; or, if 

 that be too early in the year, then doubtless you may find them 

 in July, August, and most of September. Gather them alive, 

 with both their wings, and then put them into a glass that will 

 hold a quart or a pottle : but first put into the glass a handful, or 

 more, of the moist earth out of which you gather them, and as 

 much of the roots of the grass of the said hillock ; and then put 

 in the flies gently, that they lose not their wings : lay a clod of 



