CHAP. XIL] THE THIRD DAT. 445 



I shall only tell you, that I have much oftener taken trouts 

 with a bull-head or a loach in their throats (for there a trout 

 has questionless his first digestion) than a minnow ; and 

 that one day especially, having angled a good part of the 

 day with a minnow, and that in as hopeful a day, and as fit 

 a water, as could be wished for that purpose, without raising 

 any one fish ; I at last fell to it with the 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 oft. 



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 fish's mouth, very unfit to take so great a bait ; but 'tis 

 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, 1 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 snapped (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 camo home again. And I have often 



1 See Part I. Chap. V. page 166. 



