then you are never to bait with above one of the lesser sort of brandlings; or, if they are very little ones indeed, you may then bait with two, after the manner before directed.

When you angle for a trout, you are to do it as deep, that is, as near the bottom as you can, provided your bait do not drag, or if it do, a trout will sometimes take it in at that posture: if for a grayling, you are then to fish further from the bottom, he being a fish that usually swims nearer the middle of the water, and lies always loose; or however, is more apt to rise than a trout, and more inclined to rise than to descend even to a ground-bait.

With a grub or cadis, you are to angle with the same length of line, or if it be all out as long as your rod 'tis not the worse, with never above one hair, for two or three lengths next the hook, and with the smallest cork, or float, and the least weight of plumb you can that will but sink, and that the swiftness of your stream will allow; which also you may help, and avoid the violence of the current, by angling in the returns of a stream, or the eddies betwixt two streams, which also are the most likely places wherein to kill a fish in a stream, either at the top or bottom.

Of grubs for a grayling, the ash-grub, which is plump, milk-white, bent round from head to tail, and exceeding tender, with a red head, or, the dock-worm, or grub of a pale yellow, longer, lanker, and tougher than the other, with rows of feet all down his belly, and a red head also, are the best; I say, for a grayling, because, although a trout will take both these (the ash-grub especially), yet he does not do it so freely as the other, and I have usually taken ten graylings for one trout with that bait; though if a trout come, I have observed that he is commonly a very good one.

These baits we usually keep in bran, in which an ashgrub commonly grows tougher, and will better endure baiting; though he is yet so tender, that it will be necessary to warp in a piece of a stiff hair with your arming, leaving it standing out about a straw-breadth at the head of your

hook, so as to keep the grub either from slipping totally off when baited, or at least down to the point of the hook; by which means your arming will be left wholly naked and bare, which is neither so sightly, nor so likely to be taken; though to help that (which will however very oft fall out), I always arm the hook I design for this bait with the whitest horse-hair I can chuse, which itself will resemble, and shine like that bait, and consequently will do more good, or less harm, than an arming of any other colour. These grubs are to be baited thus: the hook is to be put under the head or chaps of the bait, and guided down the middle of the belly (without suffering it to peep out by the way, for then the ash-grub especially will issue out water and milk, till nothing but the skin shall remain, and the bend of the hook will appear black, through it) till the point of your hook come so low that the head of your bait may rest, and stick upon the hair that stands out to hold it; by which means it can neither slip of itself, neither will the force of the stream, nor quick pulling out, upon any mistake, strip it off.

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.

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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 bullhead 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