316 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



there a month or more, and be always in a readiness for 

 you to fish with ; but if you would have them keep longer, 

 then get any great earthen pot, or barrel of three or four 

 gallons, which is better, then wash your barrel with water 

 and honey, and having put into it a quantity of earth and 

 grass-roots, then put in your flies, and cover it, and they 

 will live a quarter of a year : these, in any stream and clear 

 water, are a deadly bait for roach or dace, or for a chub ; 

 and your rule is, to fish not less than a handful from the 

 bottom. 



I shall next tell you a winter bait for a roach, a dace, or 

 chub, and it is choicely good. About All-hallontide and so 

 till frost comes, when you see men ploughing up heath 

 ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards, then follow the 

 plough, and you shall find a white worm as big as two 

 maggots, and it hath a red head : you may observe in what 

 ground most are, for there the crows will be very watchful 

 and follow the plough very close : it is all soft, and full of 

 whitish guts ; a worm that is, in Norfolk and some other 

 counties, called a grub, and is bred of the spawn or eggs 

 of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the 

 ground under cow or horse-dung, and there rests all winter, 

 and in March or April comes to be first a red, and then a 

 black beetle. Gather a thousand or two of these, and put 

 them with a peck or two of their own earth into some tub 

 or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm that the frost 

 or cold air or winds kill them not : these you may keep all 

 winter, and kill fish with them at any time ; and if you put 

 some of them into a little earth and honey, a day before 

 you use them, you will find them an excellent bait for breai 

 carp, or indeed for almost any fish. 



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