174 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



runs quietly ; and an easy angler, if he has found where they 

 lie, may catch forty or fifty, or sometimes twice so many, at a 

 standing. 



You must fish for him with a small red worm ; and if you 

 bait the ground with earth, it is excellent. 



BI.EAK Ct/printis Alburnus 



There is also a Bleak, or fresh water Sprat, a fish that is 

 ever in motion, and therefore called by some the River Swallow ; 

 for just as you shall observe the swallow to be, most evenings 

 in summer, ever in motion, making short and quick turns when 

 he flies to catch flies, in the air, by which he lives ; so does the 

 Bleak at the top of the water. Ausonius would have him 

 called Bleak, from his whitish colour ; his back is of a pleasant 

 sad or sea- water green ; his belly, white and shining as the 

 mountain snow. And doubtless, though he have the fortune, 

 which virtue has in poor people, to be neglected, yet the Bleak 

 ought to be much valued, though we want Allarnot salt, and 

 the skill that the Italians have, to turn them into anchovies. 

 This fish may be caught with a Pater-noster line ; * that is, six 

 or eight very small hooks tied along the line, one half a foot 

 above the other : I have seen five caught thus at one time, and 

 the bait has been gentles, than which none is better. 



Or this fish may be caught with a fine small artificial fly, 

 which is to be of a very sad brown colour, and very small, and 

 the hook answerable. There is no better sport than whipping 

 for Bleaks in a boat, or on a bank, in the swift water, in a 

 summer's evening, with a hazel top about five or six foot 

 long, and a line twice the length of the rod. I have heard 

 Sir Henry Wotton say, that there be many that in Italy will 

 catch swallows so, or especially martins ; t this bird-angler 

 standing on the top of a steeple to do it, and with a line twice 



* A rosary, or string of bead*, is used by the Roman Catholic devotpos, 

 to assist thorn in numbering their pnter-nosters, or prayers; a line with 

 many hooks, at small distances from each other, though it little resembles 

 a string- of beads, is thence called a pater-noster line. 



f This is a common practice iu England also. 



