>THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 311 



having said, I shall only add (and that out of my own experi- 

 ence), that I do believe a bull-head, with his gill-fins cut off 

 (at some times of the year especially), to be a much better 

 bait for a trout than a minnow, and a loach much better than 

 that : to prove which I shall only tell you, that I have much 

 oftener taken trouts with a bull-head or a loach in their 

 throats, for there a trout has questionless his first digestion, 

 than a minnow ; and that one day especially, having angled a 

 good part of the day with a minnow, and that in as hopeful 

 a day, and as fit a water, as could be wished for that purpose, 

 without raising any one fish ; I at last fell to 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 of it. 



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 

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

 fish's mouth, very unfit to take so great a bait : but it is 

 affirmed 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 over grown trout, and after- 

 wards recovering 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 snapt (though my line still continued fast 

 to the remaining 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 



