112 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



the butter. The cheven thus dressed hath the watery taste 

 taken away, for which so many except against him. Thus 

 was the cheven dressed that you now liked so well and com- 

 mended so much. But note again, that if this chub that 

 you ate of had been kept till to-morrow, he had not been 

 worth a rush. And remember that his throat be washed 

 very clean, 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 I 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 days you will find a dozen or twenty chevens float- 

 ing 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 fearfullest 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 your- 

 self in a fit place, may very easily see), and move your rod 

 as softly as a snail moves, to that chub you intend to catch; 



