Venator and Piscator
Venator. Good master, as we go now towards London, be still so courteous
as to give me more instructions; for I have several boxes in my memory,
in which I will keep them all very safe, there shall not one of them be
lost.
Piscator. Well, scholar, that I will: and I will hide nothing from you
that I can remember, and can think may help you forward towards a
perfection in this art. And because we have so much time, and I have
said so little of Roach and Dace, I will give you some directions
concerning them.
Some say the Roach is so called from rutilus, which they say signifies
red fins. He is a fish of no great reputation for his dainty taste; and
his spawn is accounted much better than any other part of him. And you
may take notice, that as the Carp is accounted the water-fox, for his
cunning; so the Roach is accounted the water-sheep, for his simplicity
or foolishness. It is noted, that the Roach and Dace recover strength,
and grow in season in a fortnight after spawning; the Barbel and Chub in
a month; the Trout in four months; and the Salmon in the like time, if
he gets into the sea, and after into fresh water.
Roaches be accounted much better in the river than in a pond, though
ponds usually breed the biggest. But there is a kind of bastard small
Roach, that breeds in ponds, with a very forked tail, and of a very
small size; which some say is bred by the Bream and right Roach; and
some ponds are stored with these beyond belief; and knowing-men, that
know their difference, call them Ruds: they differ from the true Roach,
as much as a Herring from a Pilchard. And these bastard breed of Roach
are now scattered in many rivers: but I think not in the Thames, which I
believe affords the largest and fattest in this nation, especially below
London Bridge. The Roach is a leather-mouthed fish, and has a kind of
saw-like teeth in his throat. And lastly, let me tell you, the Roach
makes an angler excellent sport, especially the great Roaches about
London, where I think there be the best Roach-anglers. And I think the
best Trout-anglers be in Derbyshire; for the waters there are clear to
an extremity.
Next, let me tell you, you shall fish for this Roach in Winter, with
paste or gentles; in April, with worms or cadis; in the very hot months,
with little white snails; or with flies under water, for he seldom takes
them at the top, though the Dace will. In many of the hot months,
Roaches may also be caught thus: take a May-fly, or ant-fly, sink him
with a little lead to the bottom, near to the piles or posts of a
bridge, or near to any posts of a weir, I mean any deep place where
Roaches lie quietly, and then pull your fly up very leisurely, and
usually a Roach will follow your bait up to the very top of the water,
and gaze on it there, and run at it, and take it, lest the fly should
fly away from him.
I have seen this done at Windsor and Henley Bridge, and great store of
Roach taken; and sometimes, a Dace or Chub. And in August you may fish
for them with a paste made only of the crumbs of bread, which should be
of pure fine manchet; and that paste must be so tempered betwixt your
hands till it be both soft and tough too: a very little water, and time,
and labour, and clean hands, will make it a most excellent paste. But
when you fish with it, you must have a small hook, a quick eye, and a
nimble hand, or the bait is lost, and the fish too; if one may lose that
which he never had. With this paste you may, as I said, take both the
Roach and the Dace or Dare; for they be much of a kind, in manner of
feeding, cunning, goodness, and usually in size. And therefore take this
general direction, for some other baits which may concern you to take
notice of: they will bite almost at any fly, but especially at
ant-flies; concerning which take this direction, for it is very good.
Take the blackish ant-fly out of the mole-hill or ant-hill, in which
place you shall find them in the month of June; or if that be too early
in the year, then, doubtless, you may find them in July, August, and
most of September. Gather them alive, with both their wings: and then
put them into a glass that will hold a quart or a pottle; but first put
into the glass a handful, or more, of the moist earth out of which you
gather them, and as much of the roots of the grass of the said hillock;
and then put in the flies gently, that they lose not their wings: lay a
clod of earth over it; and then so many as are put into the glass,
without bruising, will live there a month or more, and be always in
readiness for you to fish with: but if you would have them keep longer,
then get any great earthen pot, or barrel of three or four gallons,
which is better, then wash your barrel with water and honey; and having
put into it a quantity of earth and grass roots, then put in your flies,
and cover it, and they will live a quarter of a year. These, in any
stream and clear water, are a deadly bait for Roach or Dace, or for a
Chub: and your rule is to fish not less than a handful from the bottom.
I shall next tell you a winter-bait for a Roach, a Dace, or Chub; and it
is choicely good. About All-hallantide, and so till frost comes, when
you see men ploughing up heath ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards,
then follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm, as big as two
maggots, and it hath a red head: you may observe in what ground most
are, for there the crows will be very watchful and follow the plough
very close: it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is, in
Norfolk and some other counties, called a grub; and is bred of the spawn
or eggs of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the
ground under cow or horse dung, and there rests all winter, and in March
or April comes to be first a red and then a black beetle. Gather a
thousand or two of these, and put them, with a peck or two of their own
earth, into some tub or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm that the
frost or cold air, or winds, kill them not: these you may keep all
winter, and kill fish with them at any time; and if you put some of them
into a little earth and honey, a day before you use them, you will find
them an excellent bait for Bream, Carp, or indeed for almost any fish.
And after this manner you may also keep gentles all winter; which are a
good bait then, and much the better for being lively and tough. Or you
may breed and keep gentles thus: take a piece of beast's liver, and,
with a cross stick, hang it in some corner, over a pot or barrel half
full of dry clay; and as the gentles grow big, they will fall into the
barrel and scour themselves, and be always ready for use whensoever you
incline to fish; and these gentles may be thus created till after
Michaelmas. But if you desire to keep gentles to fish with all the year,
then get a dead cat, or a kite, and let it be flyblown; and when the
gentles begin to be alive and to stir, then bury it and them in soft
moist earth, but as free from frost as you can; and these you may dig up
at any time when you intend to use them: these will last till March, and
about that time turn to be flies.
But if you be nice to foul your fingers, which good anglers seldom are,
then take this bait: get a handful of well-made malt, and put it into a
dish of water; and then wash and rub it betwixt your hands till you
make it clean, and as free from husks as you can; then put that water
from it, and put a small quantity of fresh water to it, and set it in
something that is fit for that purpose, over the fire, where it is not
to boil apace, but leisurely and very softly, until it become somewhat
soft, which you may try by feeling it betwixt your finger and thumb; and
when it is soft, then put your water from it: and then take a sharp
knife, and turning the sprout end of the corn upward with the point of
your knife, take the back part of the husk off from it, and yet leaving
a kind of inward husk on the corn, or else it is marr'd and then cut off
that sprouted end, I mean a little of it, that the white may appear; and
so pull off the husk on the cloven side, as I directed you; and then
cutting off a very little of the other end, that so your hook may enter;
and if your hook be small and good, you will find this to be a very
choice bait, either for winter or summer, you sometimes casting a little
of it into the place where your float swims.
And to take the Roach and Dace, a good bait is the young brood of wasps
or bees, if you dip their heads in blood; especially good for Bream, if
they be baked, or hardened in their husks in an oven, after the bread is
taken out of it; or hardened on a fire-shovel: and so also is the thick
blood of sheep, being half dried on a trencher, that so you may cut into
such pieces as may best fit the size of your hook; and a little salt
keeps it from growing black, and makes it not the worse, but better:
this is taken to be a choice bait, if rightly ordered.
There be several oils of a strong smell that I have been told of, and to
be excellent to tempt fish to bite, of which I could say much. But I
remember I once carried a small bottle from Sir George Hastings to Sir
Henry Wotton, they were both chemical men, as a great present: it was
sent, and receiv'd, and us'd, with great confidence; and yet, upon
inquiry, I found it did not answer the expectation of Sir Henry; which,
with the help of this and other circumstances, makes me have little
belief in such things as many men talk of. Not but that I think that
fishes both smell and hear, as I have express in my former discourse:
but there is a mysterious knack, which though it be much easier than the
philosopher's stone, yet is not attainable by common capacities, or else
lies locked up in the brain or breast of some chemical man, that, like
the Rosicrucians, will not yet reveal it. But let me nevertheless tell
you, that camphire, put with moss into your worm-bag with your worms,
makes them, if many anglers be not very much mistaken, a tempting bait,
and the angler more fortunate. But I stepped by chance into this
discourse of oils, and fishes smelling; and though there might be more
said, both of it and of baits for Roach and Dace and other float-fish,
yet I will forbear it at this time, and tell you, in the next place,
how you are to prepare your tackling: concerning which, I will, for
sport sake, give you an old rhyme out of an old fish book; which will
prove a part, and but a part, of what you are to provide.
My rod and my line, my float and my lead,
My hook and my plummet, my whetstone and knife,
My basket, my baits, both living and dead,
My net, and my meat, for that is the chief:
Then I must have thread, and hairs green and small,
With mine angling purse: and so you have all.
But you must have all these tackling, and twice so many more, with
which, if you mean to be a fisher, you must store yourself; and to that
purpose I will go with you, either to Mr. Margrave, who dwells amongst
the book-sellers in St. Paul's Church-yard, or to Mr. John Stubs, near
to the Swan in Goldinglane: they be both honest men, and will fit an
angler with what tackling he lacks.
Venator. Then, good master, let it be at--for he is nearest to my
dwelling. And I pray let's meet there the ninth of May next, about two
of the clock; and I'll want nothing that a fisher should be furnished
with.
Piscator. Well, and I'll not fail you, God willing, at the time and
place appointed.
Venator. I thank you, good master, and I will not fail you. And, good
master, tell me what BAITS more you remember; for it will not now be
long ere we shall be at Tottenham-High-Cross; and when we come thither I
will make you some requital of your pains, by repeating as choice a copy
of Verses as any we have heard since we met together; and that is a
proud word, for we have heard very good ones.
Piscator Well, scholar, and I shall be then right glad to hear them. And
I will, as we walk, tell you whatsoever comes in my mind, that I think
may be worth your hearing. You may make another choice bait thus: take a
handful or two of the best and biggest wheat you can get; boil it in a
little milk, like as frumity is boiled; boil it so till it be soft; and
then fry it, very leisurely, with honey, and a little beaten saffron
dissolved in milk; and you will find this a choice bait, and good, I
think, for any fish, especially for Roach, Dace, Chub, or Grayling: I
know not but that it may be as good for a river Carp, and especially if
the ground be a little baited with it.
And you may also note, that the SPAWN of most fish is a very tempting
bait, being a little hardened on a warm tile and cut into fit pieces.
Nay, mulberries, and those black-berries which grow upon briars, be good
baits for Chubs or Carps: with these many have been taken in ponds, and
in some rivers where such trees have grown near the water, and the fruit
customarily drops into it. And there be a hundred other baits, more than
can be well named, which, by constant baiting the water, will become a
tempting bait for any fish in it.
You are also to know, that there be divers kinds of CADIS, or
Case-worms, that are to be found in this nation, in several distinct
counties, in several little brooks that relate to bigger rivers; as
namely, one cadis called a piper, whose husk, or case, is a piece of
reed about an inch long, or longer, and as big about as the compass of a
two-pence. These worms being kept three or four days in a woollen bag,
with sand at the bottom of it, and the bag wet once a day, will in three
or four days turn to be yellow; and these be a choice bait for the Chub
or Chavender, or indeed for any great fish, for it is a large bait.
There is also a lesser cadis-worm, called a Cockspur, being in fashion
like the spur of a cock, sharp at one end: and the case, or house, in
which this dwells, is made of small husks, and gravel, and slime, most
curiously made of these, even so as to be wondered at, but not to be
made by man, no more than a king-fisher's nest can, which is made of
little fishes' bones, and have such a geometrical interweaving and
connection as the like is not to be done by the art of man. This kind of
cadis is a choice bait for any float-fish; it is much less than the
piper-cadis, and to be so ordered: and these may be so preserved, ten,
fifteen, or twenty days, or it may be longer.
There is also another cadis, called by some a Straw-worm, and by some a
Ruff-coat, whose house, or case, is made of little pieces of bents, and
rushes, and straws, and water-weeds, and I know not what; which are so
knit together with condensed slime, that they stick about her husk or
case, not unlike the bristles of a hedge-hog. These three cadises are
commonly taken in the beginning of summer; and are good, indeed, to take
any kind of fish, with float or otherwise. I might tell you of many
more, which as they do early, so those have their time also of turning
to be flies in later summer; but I might lose myself, and tire you, by
such a discourse: I shall therefore but remember you, that to know
these, and their several kinds, and to what flies every particular cadis
turns, and then how to use them, first as they be cadis, and after as
they be flies, is an art, and an art that every one that professes to be
an angler has not leisure to search after, and, if he had, is not
capable of learning.
I'll tell you, scholar; several countries have several kinds of cadises,
that indeed differ as much as dogs do; that is to say, as much as a very
cur and a greyhound do. These be usually bred in the very little rills,
or ditches, that run into bigger rivers; and I think a more proper bait
for those very rivers than any other. I know not how, or of what, this
cadis receives life, or what coloured fly it turns to; but doubtless
they are the death of many Trouts: and this is one killing way:
Take one, or more if need be, of these large yellow cadis: pull off his
head, and with it pull out his black gut; put the body, as little
bruised as is possible, on a very little hook, armed on with a red hair,
which will shew like the cadis-head; and a very little thin lead, so put
upon the shank of the hook that it may sink presently. Throw this bait,
thus ordered, which will look very yellow, into any great still hole
where a Trout is, and he will presently venture his life for it, it is
not to be doubted, if you be not espied; and that the bait first touch
the water before the line. And this will do best in the deepest stillest
water.
Next, let me tell you, I have been much pleased to walk quietly by a
brook, with a little stick in my hand, with which I might easily take
these, and consider the curiosity of their composure: and if you should
ever like to do so, then note, that your stick must be a little hazel,
or willow, cleft, or have a nick at one end of it, by which means you
may, with ease, take many of them in that nick out of the water, before
you have any occasion to use them. These, my honest scholar, are some
observations, told to you as they now come suddenly into my memory, of
which you may make some use: but for the practical part, it is that that
makes an angler: it is diligence, and observation, and practice, and an
ambition to be the best in the art, that must do it. I will tell you,
scholar, I once heard one say, "I envy not him that eats better meat
than I do; nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I
do: I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I
do". And such a man is like to prove an angler; and this noble
emulation I wish to you, and all young anglers.
The FIFTH day-continued
Of the Minnow, or Penk; Loach, Bull-Head, or Miller's-Thumb: and the
Stickle-bag