54 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



I say very clean, and his body not washed after he is gutted, 

 as indeed no fish should be. 



Well, scholar, you see what pains I have taken to recover 

 the lost credit of the poor despised chub.* And now I will 

 give you some rules how to catch him ; and 1 am glad to 

 enter you into the art of fishing by catching a chub, for there 

 is no fish better to enter a young angler, he is so easily 

 caught, but then it must be this particular way. 



Go to the same hole in which I caught my chub, where in 

 most hot clays you will find a dozen or twenty chevens floating 

 near the top of the water : get two or three grasshoppers as 

 you go over the meadow, and get secretly behind the tree, 

 and stand as free from motion as is possible ; then put a 

 grasshopper on your hook, and let your hook hang a quarter 

 of a yard short of the water, to which end you must rest your 

 rod on some bough of the tree. But it is likely the chubs 

 will sink down towards the bottom of the water, at the first 

 shadow of your rod (for chub is the fearful est of fishes), and 

 will do so if but a bird flies over him and makes the least 

 shadow on the water. But they will presently rise up to the 

 top again, and there lie soaring till some shadow affrights 

 them again. I say, when they lie upon the top of the water, 

 look out the best chub (which you, setting yourself in a fit 

 place, may very easily see), and move your rod as softly as a 



* The edible properties of the chub are very lightly prized. That celebrated 

 cuisinier, Alexis Soyer, says, in his " Modern Housewife," p. 160 " Chub I do 

 not think much of, but it no doubt depends on the river where taken ; those 

 caught in the winter are best. They may be cooked like carp." M. Soyer 

 gives an excellent recipe for cooking the latter fish. " Baked Carp. Procure 

 a good-sized carp, stuff it like the pike (with veal stuffing, adding a few fillets of 

 anchovies and chopped lemon-peel), then put it into a baking-dish, with two 

 onions, one carrot, one turnip, one head of celery, and a good bouquet of parsley, 

 thyme, and bay-leaf ; moisten with two glasses of port wine, half a pint of 

 water, salt, pepper, and oil, and put it in a moderate oven about two hours to 

 bake ; try if done with a knife, which is the case if the flesh leave the bone 

 easily; dress upon a dish without a napkin; then have ready the following 

 sauce : mince a large Spanish onion with two common ones, and put them into 

 a stew-pan with three spoonfuls of salad oil, saute rather a yellow colour, add 

 two glasses of port wine and one spoonful of flour, mix all well together, add 

 a pint of broth (reserved from some soup), or water, with half an ounce of glaze, 

 or half a gill of brown gravy ; boil it up, drain the stock the carp was cooked 

 in from the vegetables, which also add to the sauce : boil well at the corner of 

 the stove, skim, and when rather thick, add a teaspoonful of Harvey sauce, one 

 of essence of anchovies, and a little Cayenne pepper, pour all the liquor drained 

 from the fish out of your dish, sauce over, and serve." The above is a capital 

 way of cooking coarse river-fish, chub, bream, tench, and barbel, and even very 

 large roach. ED. 



