CHAP. XII. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 347 



raising any one fish, I at last fell to it with a worm, and 

 with that took fourteen in a very short space ; amongst 

 all which there was not, to my remembrance, so much as 

 one that had not a loach or two, and some of them three, 

 four, five, and six loaches in his throat and stomach ; 

 from whence I concluded, that had I angled with that 

 bait, I had made a notable day's work of it. 



But after all, there is a better way of angling with a 

 minnow than perhaps is fit either to teach or to practise; 

 to which I shall only add, that a Grayling will certainly 

 rise at, and sometimes take a minnow, though it will be 

 hard to be believed by any one who shall consider the 

 littleness of that fishes mouth, very unfit to take so great 

 a bait; but it is affirmed by many that he will sometimes 

 do it, and I myself know it to be true ; for though I never 

 took a Grayling so, yet a man of mine once did, and 

 within so few paces of me, that I am as certain of it as I can 

 be of any thing I did not see, and (which made it appear 

 the more strange) the Grayling was not above eleven 

 inches long. 



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 afterwards 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 continued 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 



