200 THE COMPLETE ANGLEE. [PAET I. 



taught by one day's going a-fishing with me, or any other 

 body that fishes for him ; for the baiting your hook with a 

 dead Gudgeon or a Roach, and moving it up and down the 



Dead Bait for a Pike. 



water, 1 is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you 

 to do it : and yet, because I cut you short in that, I will 

 commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a 

 secret. It is this : 



Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint 

 your dead-bait for a pike ; and then cast it into a likely 

 place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw 

 it towards the top of the water and so up the stream : and 

 it is more than likely that you have a pike follow with more- 

 than common eagerness. 



And some affirm, that any bait anointed with the marrow 

 of the thigh-bone of an heron, is a great temptation to any 

 fish. 2 



1 This is called snap -fishing. The best times are February and early in 

 March. Your line should be of whip-cord, tied to a long manageable 

 pole ; bait as directed ; let your fish-bait sink a very little under water, 

 dropping it down often, so as to make a splash or noise, among rushes or 

 a likely haunt, and raising it slowly up again. As soon as you feel or see a 

 pike touch, strike up, and with a strong jerk throw him on land. The 

 proper hooks are sold at the shops. BROWNE. 



2 If this be so, it must arise, I think, from the fishy smell of the Heron 

 giving token of a goodly morsel of food, the undoubted cause of salmon-roe 

 being so good a bait. RENNIE. Another editor says jocosely, that it is 

 perhaps by the influence of instinctive retaliation ; for no greater enemy 

 hath the 'habitants of the waters than the heron. It will strike at and 

 wound the largest fish, though unable to carry it off ; and it is esteemed 

 more destructive than the Otter. As many as seventeen carp have been 

 taken from the stomach of a single heron ; and it is estimated that 



