THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 137 



that the Pike ever likes best. And thus use your frog, that he 

 may continue long alive : 



Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from 

 the middle of April till August ; and then the frog's mouth grows 



up, and he continues so for at least six months without eating, 



but is sustained none but He whose name is Wonderful knows 

 how : I say, put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through 

 his mouth, and out at his gills ; and then with a fine needle and 

 silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the 

 arming wire of your hook ; or tie the frog's leg above the upper 

 joint to the armed wire ; and, in so doing, use him as though 

 you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possible 

 that he may live the longer.* 



And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your 

 ledger hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell 

 you how your hook, thus baited, must or may be used ; and it is 

 thus : having fastened your hook to a line, which, if it be not 

 fourteen yards long, should not be less than twelve, you are to 

 fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or 

 is likely to lie, or to have a haunt : and then wind your line on 

 any forked stick, all your line except half a yard of it or rather 

 more ; and split that forked stick, with such a nick, or notch, at 

 one end of it as may keep the Hue from any more of it ravelling 

 from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. And 

 choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the 

 fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water till 

 the Pike bites ; and then the Pike having pulled the line forth 

 of the cleft or nick of that stick in which it was gently fastened, 

 he will have line enough to go to his hold and pouch the bait. 

 And if you would have this ledger bait to keep at a fixed place, 

 undisturbed by wind or other accidents which may drive it to 

 the shore side (Tor you are to note, that it is likeliest to catch a 

 Pike in the miust of the water,) then hang a small plummet of 

 lead, a stone, or piece of tile, or a turf, in a string, and cast into 

 the water with the forked stick to hang upon the ground, to be 

 a kind of anchor to keep the forked stick from moving out of 

 your intended place till the Pike come : this I take to be a very 

 good way to use so many ledger baits, as you intend to make 

 trial of. 



Or if you bait your hooks thus with live fish or frogs, and in 

 a windy day, fasten them thus to a bough or bundle of straw, 

 and by the help of that wind can get them to move across a pond 

 or mere, you are b'ke to stand still on the shore and see sport 

 presently, if there be any store of Pikes. Or these live baits 



* It is upon this that Lord Byron founds his charge o" rruelty against 

 Waltcn, not altogether, I mast confess, without plausible reason. J. R. 



