ROACH AND DACE. 315 



very leisurely, and usually a roach will follow your bait to 

 the very top of the water, and gaze on it there, and run at 

 it and take it, lest the fly should fly away from him. 



I have seen this done at Windsor and Henley Bridge, 

 and great store of roach taken, and sometimes a dace or 

 chub ; and in August you may fish for them with a paste 

 made only of the crumbs of bread, which should be of pure 

 fine manchet ; 2 and that paste must be so tempered betwixt 

 your hands, till it be both soft and tough too : a very little 

 water, and time and labour, and clean hands, will make it 

 a most excellent paste ; but when you fish with it, you 

 must have a small hook, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, 

 or the bait is lost and the fish too ; if one may lose that 

 which he never had. With this paste you may, as I said, 

 take both the roach and dace or dare, for they be much of 

 a kind, in matter of feeding, cunning, goodness, and usually 

 in size. And therefore take this general direction for some 

 other baits which may concern you to take notice of. They 

 will bite almost at any fly, but especially at ant-flies ; con- 

 cerning which, take this direction, for it is very good : 



Take the blackish gnt-fly out of the mole-hill or ant-hill, 

 in which place you shall find them in the month of June, or 

 if that be too early in the year, then doubtless you may 

 find them in July, August, and most of September; gather 

 them alive with both their wings, and then put them into a 

 glass that will hold a quart or a pottle ; but first put into 

 the glass a handful or more of the moist earth out of which 

 you gather them, and as much of the roots of the grass of 

 the said hillock, and then put in the flies gently, that they 

 lose not their wings : lay a clod of earth over it, and then 

 so many as are put into the glass without bruising will live 



