182 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



This fish is of a fine cast and handsome shape, with small 

 scales, which are placed after a most exact and curious 

 manner, and, as I told you, may be rather said not to be ill, 

 than to be good meat : the chub and he have, I think, both 

 lost part of their credit by ill cookery, they being reputed 

 the worst or coarsest of fresh-water fish. But the BARBEL 



affords an angler choice sport, being a lusty and a cunning 

 fish ; so lusty and cunning as to endanger the breaking of 

 the angler's line, by running his head forcibly towards any 

 covert or hole or bank, and then striking at the line, to break 

 it off, with his tail, as is observed by Plutarch in his book 

 " De Industria Animalium ;" and also so cunning, to nibble 

 and suck off your worm close to the hook, and yet avoid the 

 letting the hook come into his mouth. 



The barbel is also curious for his baits ; that is to say, that 

 they be clean and sweet ; that is to say, to have your worms 

 well scoured, and not kept in sour and musty moss, for he is 

 a curious feeder ; but at a well scoured lob- worm he will bite 

 as boldly as at any bait, and especially if, the night or two 

 before you fish for him, you shall bait the places where you 



wholesomeness of the flesh,' with some constitutions it produces the same effects 

 as the spawn. About the mouth of September, in the year 1754, a servant of 

 mine, who had eaten part of a barbel, though as I had cautioned him, he ab- 

 stained from the spawn, was seized with such violent purging and vomiting, as 

 had like to have cost him his life. H. 



[NOTE. I doubt very much the truth of the alleged noxious properties either 

 of the roe or the flesh of barbel when in condition, in the month of July, 

 August, September, and October. Their edible qualities are bad that is, 

 tasteless. Dr. Bloch says, " the barbel, when not overgrown, is a sufficiently 

 delicate fish ;" and adds, that " himself, together with his whole family, had 

 eaten the roe or spawn without any bad effect." I believe the latter part of 

 the doctor's assertion, but I cannot subscribe to the former part of it. All the 

 cooking in the world cannot render the flesh of barbel " sufficiently delicate." 

 The Thames puntmen tell me, the only way of rendering barbel a passable 

 relish is to fry slices of it with good rashers of fat bacon. I am inclined to 

 agree with them. ED.] 



