PRACTICAL ESSAY. 231 



clear it. In small brooks and rivulets it is not so ; you may fish 

 there again within a week or less after the flood. If such incon 

 veniences put off your designed sport, you must desist until the 

 following spring, when the days will be longer, though the weather 

 colder. As to the time of day, the morning and evening is best in 

 summer, because towards noon the fish get to the top of the water, 

 and are more mindful of their play than their meat. If the day be 

 clear and calm, a snare is more proper than a bait ; for the least 

 motion you can make with your line will affright a fish that lies high ; 

 and if he is once moved and put to the flight, all the art you can 

 use will not entice him to your bait again. Beside, it will then be 

 too hot for sport ; for heat creates no appetite in anything, much 

 less in fish. It is the wind and the cooler clouds, when Zephyrus 

 curls the waves with a brisk gale, that invites a fish to repast : those 

 hot and sultry days are fittest for the float, when the fish are for 

 some light diet, and the angler has the best time with flies, bees, &c. 

 At such a time of the year, early or late is the best fishing, if it is 

 in the night. As to the winter or spring quarter, one part of the 

 day is as favourable as the other, for then the sun being not so hot, 

 it neither molests the fisher, nor takes away the fishes' stomachs. 

 The south and the south-west winds are the most pleasing to the 

 troller ; and it is granted that the fish are more brisk and quicker 

 at the bait, and perhaps they may then have more sport than when 

 the wind is contrary ; yet this is certain, that the colder the wind is, 

 the closer the fish lie to the bottom, and farther in their harbour, 

 which may hinder you from having so many bites as when they lie 

 out and more open in a warmer day ; yet the air being cold and 

 sharp, it makes them hungry, and if you are careful you may have 

 as many fish as bites. A pike, in general, takes so much pleasure 

 and delight in eating, that he never cares to stint himself, or 

 physically, for his health's sake, to be content with moderate diet ; 

 for I have often taken him so soon after his feeding that he has had 

 part of his meat in his mouth ; having newly swallowed so large a 

 fish, that his ventricle was neither capable to receive or digest it 

 quickly; sometimes I have taken him with two or three baits in 



