Now the cadis, or cod-bait (which is a sure killing bait, and, for the most part, by much surer than either of the other) may be put upon the hook, two or three together, and is sometimes (to very great effect) joined to a worm, and sometimes to an artificial fly, to cover the joint of your hook; but is always to be angled with at the bottom (when by itself especially) with the finest tackle; and is, for all times of the year, the most holding bait of all other whatever, both for trout and grayling.

There are several other baits besides these few I have named you, which also do very great execution at the bottom, and some that are peculiar to certain countries and rivers, of which every angler may in his own place make his own observation; and some others that I do not think fit to put you in mind of, because I would not corrupt you, and would have you, as in all things else I observe you to be a very honest gentleman, a fair angler. And so much for the second sort of angling for a trout at the bottom.

VIAT. But, sir, I beseech you give me leave to ask you one question is there no art to be used to worms, to make them allure the fish, and in a manner compel them to bite at the bait?

PISC. Not that I know of; or did I know any such secret, I would not use it myself, and therefore would not teach it you. Though I will not deny to you, that in my younger days, I have made trial of oil of osprey, oil of ivy, camphire, asafoetida, juice of nettles, and several other devices that I was taught by several anglers I met with; but could never find any advantage by them; and can scarce believe there is anything to be done that way; though I must tell you, I have seen some men who I thought went to work no more artificially than I, and have yet, with the same kind of worms I had, in my own sight taken five, and sometimes ten to one. But we'll let that business alone, if you please; and because we have time enough, and that I would deliver you from the trouble of any more lectures, I will, if you please, proceed to the last way of angling for a trout or grayling, which is in the middle; after which I shall have no more to trouble you with.

VIAT. 'Tis no trouble, sir, but the greatest satisfaction that can be: and I attend you.

CHAPTER XII

ISC. Angling in the middle, then, for a trout or grayling, is of two sorts: with a penk or minnow for a trout; or with a worm, grub, or cadis, for a grayling.

For the first. It is with a minnow, half a foot or a foot within the superficies of the water. And as to the rest that concerns this sort of angling, I shall wholly refer you to Mr. Walton's directions, who is undoubtedly the best angler with a minnow in England; only, in plain truth, I do not approve of those baits he keeps in salt, unless where the living ones are not possibly to be had (though I know he frequently kills with them, and peradventure, more than with any other; nay, I have seen him refuse a living one for one of them); and much less of his artificial one; for though we do it with a counterfeit fly, me thinks it should hardly be expected that a man should

deceive a fish with a counterfeit fish. Which having said, I shall only add, and that out of my own experience, that I do believe a bullhead, with his gill-fins cut off (at some times of the year especially), to be a much better bait for a trout than a minnow, and a loach much better than that; to prove which 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 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 of it.

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 it is 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 anything 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 over-grown trout, 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 trout in my life, my top never snapt (though my line still continued fast to the remaining part of my rod by some lengths of my 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 came home again. And I have often wondered how a trout should so suddenly disengage himself from so great a hook, as that we bait with a minnow, and so deep bearded as those hooks commonly are, when I have seen by the forenamed accidents, or the slipping of a knot in the upper part of the line, by sudden and hard striking, that though the line has immediately been recovered, almost before it could be all drawn into the water, the fish cleared and gone in a moment. And yet, to justify what he says, I have sometimes known a trout, having carried away a whole line, found dead three or four days after with the hook fast sticking in him; but then it is to be supposed he had gorged it, which a trout will do, if you be not too quick with him when he comes at a minnow, as sure and much sooner than a pike and I myself have also, once or twice in my life, taken the same fish, with my own fly sticking in his chaps, that he had taken from me the day before, by the slipping of a hook in the arming: but I am very confident a trout will not be troubled two hours with any hook that has so much as one handful of line left behind with it, or that is not struck through a bone, if it be in any part of his mouth only; nay, I do certainly know that a trout, so soon as ever he feels himself pricked, if he carries away the hook, goes immediately to the bottom, and will there root, like a hog upon the gravel, till he either rub out or break the hook in the middle. And so much for this sort of angling in the middle for a trout.

:

The second way of angling in the middle is with a worm, grub, cadis, or any other ground-bait for a grayling; and that is with a cork, and a foot from the bottom, a grayling taking it much better there, than at the bottom, as has been said before; and this always in a clear water, and with the finest tackle.

To which we may also, and with very good reason, add the third way of angling by hand with a ground-bait, as a third way of fishing in the middle, which is common to both trout and grayling, and (as I said before) the best way of angling with a worm, of all other I ever tried whatever.