Chub, which you, setting yourself in a fit place, may very easily see, and move your rod as softly as a snail moves, to that Chub you intend to catch; let your bait fall gently upon the water three or four inches before him, and he will infallibly take the bait, and you will be as sure to catch him; for he is one of the leather-mouthed fishes, of which a hook does scarcely ever lose it's hold; and therefore give him play enough before you offer to take him out of the water. Go your way presently, take my rod, and do as I bid you, and I will sit down and mend my tackling till you return back. VEN. Truly, my loving Master, you have offered me as fair as I could wish. I'll go and observe your directions. Look you, Master, what I have done! that which joys my heart, caught just such another Chub as your's was. Pisc. Marry, and I am glad of it: I am like to have a towardly Scholar of you. I now see, that with advice and practice, you will make an Angler in a short time. Have but a love to it, and I'll warrant you. VEN. But Master, what if I could not have found a grashopper? Pisc. Then I may tell you, that a black snail, with his belly slit, to shew his white; or a piece of soft cheese, will usually do as well: nay, sometimes a worm, or any kind of fly, as the Ant-fly, the Flesh-fly, or Wall-fly, or the Dor or Beetle, which you may find under cow-dung, or a Bob, which you will find in the same place, and in time will be a Beetle; it is a short white worm, like to and bigger than a Gentle, or a Cod-worm, or a Case-worm, any of these will do very well to fish in such a manner. And after this manner you may catch a Trout in a hot evening: when as you walk by a brook, and shall see or hear him leap at flies, then if you get a grashopper, put it on your hook, with your line about two yards long, standing behind a bush or tree where his hole is, and make your bait stir up and down on the top of the water: you may if you stand close, be sure of a bite, but not sure to catch him, for he is not a leather-mouthed fish: and after this manner you may fish for him with almost any kind of live fly, but especially with a Grashopper. VEN. But before you go further, I pray good Master, what mean you by a leather-mouthed fish? Pisc. By a leather-mouthed fish, I mean such as have their teeth in their throat, as the Chub or Cheven, and so the Barbel, the Gudgeon, and Carp, and divers others have; and the hook being stuck into the leather or skin of the mouth of such fish, does very seldom or never lose it's hold: but on the contrary, a Pike, a Perch, or Trout, and so some other fish, which have not their teeth in their throats, but in their mouths, which you shall ob serve to be very full of bones, and the skin very thin, and little of it:-I say, of these fish the hook never takes so sure hold, but you often lose your fish, unless he have gorged it. VEN. I thank you, good Master, for this observation; but now what shall be done with my Chub or Cheven, that I have caught? Pisc. Marry Sir, it shall be given away to some poor body, for I'll warrant you I'll give you a Trout for your supper and it is a good beginning of your art to offer your first-fruits to the poor, who will both thank God and you for it, which I see by your silence you seem to consent to. And for your willingness to part with it so charitably, I will also teach you more concerning Chub-fishing: you are to note that in March and April he is usually taken with worms; in May, June, and July he will bite at any fly, or at cherries, or at beetles with their legs and wings cut off, or at any kind of snail, or at the black bee that breeds in clay walls; and he never refuses a grashopper on the top of a swift stream, nor at the bottom the young humble-bee that breeds in long grass, and is ordinarily found by the mower of it. In August, and in the cooler months, a yellow paste, made of the strongest cheese, and pounded in a mortar with a little butter and saffron, so much of it as being beaten small will turn it to a lemoncolour. And some make a paste for the Wintermonths,―at which time the Chub is accounted best, for then it is observed, that the forked bones are lost or turned into a kind of gristle, especially if he be baked,—of cheese and turpentine; he will bite also at a Minnow or Penk, as a Trout will; of which I shall tell you more hereafter, and of divers other baits. But take this for a rule, that in hot weather he is to be fished for towards the mid-water, or near the top: and in colder weather nearer the bottom. And if you fish for him on the top, with a beetle or any fly, then be sure to let your line be very long, and to keep out of sight. And having told you that his spawn is excellent meat, and that the head of a large Cheven, the throat being well washed, is the best part of him, I will say no more of this fish at the present, but wish you may catch the next you fish for. But lest you may judge me too nice in urging to have the Chub dressed so presently after he is taken, I will commend to your consideration how curious former times have been in the like kind. You shall read in Seneca his Natural Questions, Lib. 3. Cap. 17, that the ancients were so curious in the newness of their fish, that that seemed not new enough that was not put alive into the guest's hand; and he says that to that end they did usually keep them living in glass bottles in their dining-rooms; and they did glory much in their entertaining of friends, to have that fish taken from under their table alive, that was instantly to be fed upon. And |