56 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



this manner you may fish for him with almost any kind of 

 live fly, but especially with a grasshopper. 



YEN. But before you go further, I pray, good master, what 

 mean you by a leather-mouthed fish ? 



Pise. By a leather-mouthed fish I mean such as have their 

 teeth in their throat, as the chub or cheven, and so the barbel, 

 the gudgeon, and carp, and divers others have; and the hook 

 being stuck into the leather or skin, or the mouth of such fish, 

 does very seldom or never lose its hold : but, on the contrary, 

 a pike, a perch, or trout, and so some other fish, which have 

 not their teeth in their throats, but in their mouths, which 

 you shall observe to be very full of bones, and the skin very 

 thin, and little of it; I say, of these fish the hook never takes 

 so sure hold, but you often lose your fish, unless he have 

 gorged it. 



YEN". I thank you, good master, for this observation; but 

 now, what shall be done with my chub or cheven that I have 

 caught 1 



Pise. Marry, sir, it shall be given away to some poor body, 

 for I'll warrant you I'll give you a trout for your supper : and 

 it is a good beginning of your art to offer your first-fruits to 

 the poor, who will both thank you and God for it, which I 

 see by your silence you seem to consent to. And for your 

 willingness to part with it so charitably, I will also teach 

 more concerning chub-fishing : you are to note that in March 

 and April he is usually taken with worms ; in May, June, and 

 July, he will bite at any fly, or at cherries, or at beetles with 

 their legs and wings cut off, or at any kind of snail, or at the 

 black bee that breeds in clay walls. And he never refuses a 

 grasshopper, on the top of a swift stream,'"' nor, at the bottom, 

 the young humble-bee that breeds in long grass, and is 

 ordinarily found by the mower of it. In August, and in the 

 cooler months, a yellow paste made of the strongest cheese, 

 and pounded in a mortar, with a little butter and saffron, so 

 much of it, as being beaten small, will turn it to a lemon 

 colour. And some make a paste, for the winter months, at 

 which time the chub is accounted best (for then it is observed 

 that the forked bones are lost, or turned into a kind of gristle, 



* In the Thames, above Richmond, the best way of using the grasshopper 

 for chub, is to fish with it as with an artificial fly ; the first joints of the legs 

 must be pinched off ; and in this way, when the weed is rotten, which is seldom 

 till September, the largest dace are taken. H. 



