CHAP. XII. ] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 303 



one fish ; I at last fell to it with the worm, and with that took 

 fourteen in a very short space ; amongst all which there was 

 not, to my remembrance, so much as one that had not a Loach 

 or two, and some of them three, four, five, and six Loaches, 

 in his throat and stomach ; from whence I concluded, that, 

 had I angled with that bait, I had made a notable day's work 

 oft. 



But, after all, there is a better way of angling with a Min- 

 now than perhaps is fit either to teach or to practise : to which 

 I shall only add, that a Grayling will certainly rise at, and 

 sometimes take a Minnow, though it will be hard to be be- 

 lieved by any one, who shall consider the littleness of that 

 fish's mouth, very unfit to take so great a bait ; but 't is af- 

 firmed by many, that he will sometimes do it, and I myself 

 know it to be true ; for though I never took a Grayling so, yet 

 a man of mine once did, and within so few paces of me, that 

 I am as certain of it as I can be of anything I did not see ; 

 and, which made it appear the more strange, the Grayling was 

 not above eleven inches long. 



I must here also beg leave of your Master, and mine, not to 

 controvert, but to tell him, that I cannot consent to his way of 

 throwing in his rod to an overgrown Trout, and afterwards re- 

 covering his fish with his tackle. For though I am satisfied he 

 has sometimes done it, because he says so, yet I have found it 

 quite otherwise ; and though I have taken with the Angle, I 

 may safely say, some thousands of Trouts in my life, my top 

 never snapped (though my line still continued fast to the re- 

 maining part of my rod, by some lengths of line curled round 

 about my top, and there fastened with waxed silk, against such 

 an accident) nor my hand never slacked, or slipped by any 

 other chance, but I almost always infallibly lost my fish, 

 whether great or little, though my hook came home again. 

 And I have often wondered how a Trout should so suddenly 

 disengage himself from so great a hook as that we bait with a 

 Minnow, and sp deep-bearded as those hooks commonly are ; 



