CHAP. VI. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 117 



Trout is, and after the same manner ; for he will bite both 

 at the minnow, or worm, or fly (though he bites not often 

 at the minnow,) and is very gamesome at the fly ; and 

 much simpler, and therefore bolder than a Trout ; for he 

 will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, arid yet 

 rise again. He has been taken with a fly, made of the 

 red feathers of aparakita, a strange outlandish bird; and 

 he will rise at a fly not unlike a gnat, or a small moth, 

 or, indeed, at most flies that are not too big. He is a 

 fish that lurks close all Winter, but is very pleasant and 

 jolly after mid- April, and in May, and in the hot months. 

 He is of a very fine shape, his flesh is white, his teeth, 

 those little ones that he has, are in his throat, yet he has 

 so tender a mouth, that he is oftener lost after an angler 

 has hooked him than any other fish. Though there be 

 many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove, and in 

 Trent, and some other smaller rivers, as that which runs 

 by Salisbury, yet he is not so general a fish as the Trout, 

 nor to me so good to eat or to angle for. 1 And so I 



k (1) The haunts of the Grayling aie so nearly the same with those of the 

 'Irout, tliat, in fishing for either, you may, in many rivers, catch both. 



They tpawn about the beginning of April, when they lie, mostly, in sharp 

 streams. 



Baits for the Grayling are chiefly the same as those for the Trout, except 

 the minnow, which he will not take so freely. He will also take gentles very 

 -eagerly. When you fish for him with a fly, you can hardly use one too small. 



The Grayling is much more apt to rise than descend ; therefore, when you 

 angle for him alone, and not for the Trout, rather use a float, with the bait from 

 six to nine inches fn.rn the bottom, than the running-line. 



The Grayling is fouud in great plenty in many rivers in the north, particu- 

 larly the Humber. And in the Wye, which runs through Herefordshire and 

 Monmouthshire into the Severn, I have taken, with an artificial fly, very large 

 ones; as also great numbers of a small, but excellent fish, of the Trout kind, 

 called a Last-spring; of which somewhat will be said in a subsequent note. 

 They are not easily to be got at without a boat, or wading ; for which reason, 

 those of that country use a thing they call a thorrocle, or truckle: in some 

 places it is called a coble, from the Latin corbula, a little l>asket : it is a bas- 

 ket shaped like the half of a walnuMhell, but shallower in proportion, and 

 covered on the outside with a borse's-hide ; it has a bench in the middle, and 

 will just hold one person, and is so light, that the countrymen will hang it on 

 their heads like a hood, and so travel with a small paddle which serves for a 

 stick, till tliey come to a river ; and then they launch it, and step in. There 

 is great difficulty in gelling into one of these truckles, for the instant you 



