THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 107 



in a little glass, is very excellent against redness^ or swarthi- 

 ness, or anything that breeds in the eyes. Salvian takes him 

 to be called umber from his swift swimming, or gliding out 

 of sight more like a shadow or a ghost than a fish. Much 

 more might be said both of his smell and taste : but I shall 

 only tell yon, that St. Ambrose, the glorious bishop of Milan, 

 who lived when the church kept fasting days, calls him the 

 flower-fish, or flower of fishes : and that he was so far in love 

 with him that he would not let him pass without the honour 

 of a long discourse ; but I must, and pass on to tell you how 

 to take this dainty fish. 



First, note, that he grows not to the bigness of a trout; for 

 the biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches. 

 He lives in such rivers as the trout does, and is usually taken 

 with the same baits as the trout is, and after the same manner ; 

 for he will bite both at the minnow, or worm, or fly ; though 

 he bites not often at the minnow, and is very gamesome at 

 the fly, and much simpler, and therefore bolder than a trout ; 

 for he will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and 

 yet rise again. He has been taken with a fly made of the red 

 feathers of a parakita, a strange outlandish bird and he will 

 rise at a fly not unlike a gnat or a small moth, or indeed at 

 most flies that are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close 

 all winter, but is very pleasant and jolly after mid- April, and 

 in May, and in the hot months : he is of a very fine shape, 

 his flesh is white ; his teeth, those little ones that he has, are 

 in his throat, yet he has so tender a mouth, that he is oftener 

 lost after an angler has hooked him, than any other fish. 

 Though there be many of these fishes in the delicate river 

 Dove and Trent, and some other small rivers, as that which 

 runs by Salisbury,* yet he is not so general a fish as the trout, 

 nor to me so good to eat or to angle for. And so I shall 

 take my leave of him ; and now come to some observations of 

 the salmon, and how to catch him. 



* Not one of these rivers is small. The Trent is a large navigable one. It 

 now produces very few grayling. The Dove is the classic river of fly-fishers, 

 rendered so by its abounding in trout and grayling, and by the extraordinary 

 beauty of its scenery ; and by the fact, that Charles Cotton, author of the second 

 part of the " Complete Angler," resided on its banks, described it, and taught 

 how grayling and trout are to be caught in it. In truth, Cotton's fly-fishing 

 experience hardly went beyond the Dove and the neighbouring streams of 

 Derbyshire. Such experience was amply sufficient, for he who could success- 

 fully fly-fish in the limpid waters of those rivers, need not hesitate to wet a fly 

 anywhere. The Lathkil, a little brook of Derbyshire, is famous for its trout 

 and no less so for the difficulty of catching them with a fly. ED. 



