"Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling."
Shakespeare, then, knew that fact so well known to poachers, and
known also to many an American schoolboy, namely, that a trout
likes to be tickled, or behaves as if he did, and that by gently
tickling his sides and belly you can so mesmerize him, as it were,
that he will allow you to get your hands in position to clasp him
firmly. The British poacher takes the jack by the same tactics: he
tickles the jack on the belly; the fish slowly rises in the water
till it comes near the surface, when, the poacher having insinuated
both hands under him, he is suddenly scooped out and thrown upon
the land.
Indeed, Shakespeare seems to have known intimately the ways and
habits of most of the wild creatures of Britain. He had the kind of
knowledge of them that only the countryman has. In "As You Like
It," JAQUES tells AMIENS:--
"I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs."
Every gamekeeper, and every farmer for that matter, knows how
destructive the weasel and its kind are to birds' eggs, and to the
eggs of game-birds and of domestic fowls.