258 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. 



he is an excellent fish, no fish that swims is of a pleasanter 

 taste, and he is also excellent to enter a young angler, for 

 he is a greedy biter, and they will usually lie, abundance of 

 them together, in one reserved place, where the water is 

 deep, and 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. 



There is also a Bleak, or Fresh-water Sprat, a fish that is 

 ever in motion, and therefore called by some the Hiver- 

 S wallow : 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. 1 Ausonius 

 would have him called BLEAK, from his whitish colour : his 



Bleak. 



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 Allamot-salt, and the skill that the Italians have to 

 turn them into Anchovies. This fish may be caught with a 

 Pater-noster line ; ' 2 that is, six or eight very small hooks 

 tied along the line, one half a foot above the other : I have 



hundreds caught at one standing. The small blood-worm, two on a hook, 

 is one of the most attractive, baits. ED. 



1 Of all the fish confined in a Vivarium I had at Bushy Park, the Bleak 

 were the most amusing and playful. Their activity could not be exceeded, 

 and in a still summer's evening they would dart at every little fly that 

 settled on the water ; appearing always restless yet always happy. En. 



2 A line with many hooks placed at small distances. Though it little 



