CHAP. HI. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 51 



CHAP. III. 



How to fish for, and to dress, the CH A VENDER or CHUB. 



THE Chub though he eat well, thus dressed, yet as he 

 is usually dressed, he does not. He is objected against, 

 not only for being full of small forked bones, dispersed 

 through all his body, but that he eats waterish, and that 

 the flesh of him is not firm, but short and tasteless. 

 The French esteem him so mean, as to call him Un 

 Villain; nevertheless he may be so dressed as to make 

 him very good meat; as, namely, if he be a large Chub, 

 then dress him thus : 



First, scale him, and then wash him clean, and then 

 take out his guts; and to that end make the hole as 

 little, and near to his gills, as you may conveniently, 

 and especially make clean his throat from the grass and 

 weeds that are usually in it; for if that be not very 

 clean, it will make him to taste very sour. Having so 

 done, put some sweet herbs into his belly; and then 

 tie him with two or three splinters to a spit, and roast 

 him, basted often with vinegar, or rather verjuice and 

 butter, with good store of salt mixed with it. Being thus 

 dressed, you will find him a much better dish of meat 

 than you, or most folk, even than anglers themselves, do 

 imagine : for this dries up the fluid watery humour with 

 which all Chubs do abound. 



But take this rule with you, that a Chub newly taken 

 and newly dressed, is so much better than a Chub of a 

 day's keeping after he is dead, that I can compare him 

 to nothing so fitly as to cherries newly gathered from 

 a tree, and others that have been bruised and lain a day 

 or two in water. But the Chub being thus used, and 

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