458 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



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 overgrown 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 con- 

 tinued 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 suddenly disengage himself from so great 

 a hook as that we bait with a minnow, and so deep bearded 

 as those hooks commonly are, when I have seen by the 

 forenamed accidents, or the slipping of a knot in the upper 

 part of the line, by sudden and hard striking, that though 

 the line has immediately been recovered, almost before it 

 could be all drawn into the water, the fish cleared and gone 

 in a moment. And yet, to justify what he says, I have 

 sometimes known a trout, having carried away a whole line, 

 found dead three or four days after, with the hook fast stick- 

 ing in him ; and then it is to be supposed he had gorged it, 

 which a trout will do, if you be not too quick with him when 

 he comes at a minnow, as sure and much sooner than a 

 pike; and I myself have also, once or twice in my life, 

 taken the same fish, with my own fly sticking in his chaps, 

 that he had taken from me the day before, by the slipping 

 of a hook in the arming. But I am very confident a trout 



