194 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [part I, 



Penk or Minnow can. For note, that the nimble turning of that, 

 or the Minnow, is the perfection of Minnow-fishing. To which 

 end, if you put your hook into his mouth, and out at his tail ; and 

 then, having first tied him with white thread a little above his tail, 

 and placed him after such a manner on your hook as be is like to 

 turn, then sew up his mouth to your line, and he is like to turn 

 quick, and tempt any Trout ; but if he does not turn quick, 

 then turn his tail, a little more or less, towards the inner 

 part, or towards the side of the hook; or put the Minnow or 

 Sticklebag a little more crooked or more straight on your hook, 

 until it will turn both true and fast ; and then doubt not but to 

 tempt any great Trout that lies in a swift stream.* And the 

 Loach that I told you of will do the like : no bait is more tempt- 

 ing, provided the Loach be not too big. 



And now, scholar, with the help of this fine morning, and your 

 patient attention, I have said all that my present memory will 

 afford me, concerning most of the several fish that are usually 

 fished for in fresh waters. 



Venator. But, master, you have by your former civility made 

 me hope that you will make good your promise, and say some- 

 thing of the several rivers that be of most note in this nation ; , 

 and also of fish-ponds, and the ordering of them : and do it I 

 pray, good master ; for I love any discourse of rivers, and fish, 

 and fishing ; the time spent in such discourse passes away very 

 pleasantly, 



PiSCATOR. Well, scholar, since the ways and weather do 

 both favour us, and that we yet see not Totten- 



Chap. XIX.t Of , „ 1. 11 iv 



Rivers, and some ham Cross, you shall see my wilhngness to 

 Obj^^rvations of satisfy your desire. And, first, for the rivers of 

 this nation : there be, as you may note out of Dr 

 Heylin's Geography,J and others, in number three hundred and 

 twenty-five, but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as 

 foUoweth. 



The chief is Thamisis, compounded of two rivers, Thame and 

 I^is ; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in 



* The Minnow, if used in tills manner, is so tempting a bait, that few fish are able to 



resist it. The present Earl of told rae, that in the month of June last, at Kimpton 



Hoo, near Wellwyn, in Hertfordshire, he caught (with a Minnow) a R-ud, a fish described 

 in page 182, which, insomuch as the Ritd is not reckoned, nor does the situation of his 

 teeth, which are in his throat, bespeak him to be a fish of prey, is a fact more extraordi- 

 nary than that related by Sir George Hastings, in Chap. IV., of a Fordidge Trmt (of 

 which kind of fish none had ever been known to be taken with an angle) which he 

 caught, and supposed it bit for wantonness. — H. 



t No porcion of this chapter occurs in I'a^ first, but was added in the second and subse- 

 quent editions. \ It should he Dr Heylin's Cosmography. 



