See other formats

Full text of "The complete angler, or, Contemplative man's recreation : being a discourse on rivers, fish-ponds, fish, and fishing"

WSXtzarsfOi^ 



THE 

COMPLETE ANGLER; 

OR, 

CONTEMPLATIVE MAN'S RECREATION 

BEING 

A DISCOURSE ON RIVERS, FISH-PONDS, 
FISH, AND FISHING. 

BY 

IZAAK WALTON AND CHARLES COTTON. 

WITH LIVES, AND NOTES, 

BY SIR JOHN HAWKINS, KNIGHT. 

EDITED BY 

JAMES RENNIE, A.M. 

PROFESSOa OF ZOOLOGY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, 



A NEW EDITION, 



LONDON: 

THOMAS TEGG & SON, CHEAPSIDE; R. GRIFFIN & CO. 

GLASGOW; TEGG, WISE & CO. DUBLIN. 

1835. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

TO THE 

EDITION PUBLISHED BY SIR JOHN HAWKINS, 1760. 



The Complete Angler having been written so long ago as 
1653, although the last publication thereof in the lifetime 
of the Author was in 1676, contains many particulars of 
persons now but little known, and frequent allusions to 
facts, and even modes of living, the memory whereof is 
in a great measure obliterated : a new edition, therefore, 
seemed to require a retrospect to the time when the Authors 
lived, an explanation of such passages as an interval of more 
than a hundred years had necessarily rendered obscure, 
together with such improvements in the art itself as the 
accumulated experience of succeeding times has enabled us 
to furnish. 

An Edition, undertaken with this view, is now attempted, 
and in a way, it is to be hoped, that may once again intro- 
duce the Authors to the acquaintance of persons of learning 
and judgment. 

All that the Editor requests, in return for the pains he 
has taken, is, that the reader will do him the justice to 
believe that his only motives for the republication of this 
work were, a desire to perpetuate the memory of a meek, 
benevolent, pious man, and to contribute something to the 
improvement of an art of which he professes himself a 
lover. 

Twickenham, April \0, 1760. 



[The Notes to this edition by Professor Rennie, con- 
sisting chiefly of the correction of the errors of the original 
in Natural History, are marked by his initials, J. R.] 



ffsi ^^mMmm m^mm. 



SetbvHiawes. 




XV 7/ fcA' n,> ran , H'fun the wea thir p. 




_ (//<• rt/?<^ <7rt <7/«" a Qaui 



rsJ.11,1^ snJr' 



LIFE 



IZAAK WALTON. 



The excellent Lord Verulam has noted it as one of the 
great deficiencies of biographical history, that it is, for the 
most part, confined to the actions of kings, princes, and great 
personages, who are necessarily few ; while the memory of less 
conspicuous, though good men, has been no better preserved 
than by vague reports and barren elogies. 

It is not, therefoie, to be wondered at, if little care has been 
taken to perpetuate the remembrance of the person who is the 
subject of the present inquiry ; and, indeed, there are many 
circumstances that seem to account for such an omission ; for 
neither was he distinguished by his rank, or eminent for his 
learning, or remarkable for the performance of any public 
service ; but as he ever affected a retired life, so was he noted 
only for an ingenious, humble, good man. 

However, to so eminent a degree did he possess the qualities 
above ascribed to him, as to afford a very justifiable reason 
for endeavouring to impress upon the minds of mankind, by a 
collection of many scattered passages concerning him, a due 
sense of their value and importance. 

Isaac, or, as he used to write it, Izaak Walton, was born 
at Stafford, in the month of August, 1593. The Oxford 
Antiquary, who has thus fixed the place and year of his nativity, 
has left us no memorials of his family, nor even hinted where 
or how he was educated ; but has only told us, that before 
the year 1643, Walton was settled, and followed the trade of 
a sempster, in London.* 

• Athen. Oxon. vol. i. £C5. 
a 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

n writings, then, it must be 
stances attending- his life must, in a great measure, come ; and, 
as occasions offer, a proper use will be made of them : never- 
theless, a due regard will be paid to some traditional memoirs, 
which (besides that they contain nothing improbable) the 
authority of those to whom we stand indebted for them, will 
not allow us to question. 

His first settlement in London, as a shopkeeper, was in the 
Royal Burse in Cornhill, built by Sir Thomas Gresham, and 
finished in 1567.* In this situation he could scarcely be said 
to have elbow-room ; for the shops over the Burse were but 
seven feet and a half long, and five wide ; f yet here did he 
carry on his trade, till some time before the year 1624 ; when 
" he dwelt on the north side of Fleet Street, in a house two 
doors west of the end of Chancery Lane, and abutting on a 
messuage known by the sign of the Harrow.":}: Now, the old 
timber house at the south-west corner of Chancery Lane in 
Fleet Street, till within these few years, was known by that 
sign : it is therefore beyond doubt that Walton lived at the 
very next door. And in this house he is, in the deed above 
referred to, which bears date 1624, said to have followed the 
trade of a linen-draper. It farther appears by that deed, 
that the house was in the joint occupation of Isaac Walton, 
and John Mason, hosier ; whence we may conclude, that half 
a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton. 

A citizen of this age would almost as much disdain to admit 
of a tenant for half his shop, as a knight would to ride double; 
though the brethren of one of the most ancient orders in the 
world were so little above this practice, that their common , 
seal was the device of two riding on one horse. § A more 
than gradual deviation from that parsimonious character, of 
which this is a ludicrous instance, hastened the grandeur and 
declension of that fraternity ; and it is rather to be wished 
than hoped, that the vast increase of trade of this country, 
and an aversion from the frugal manners of our forefathers, 
may not be productive of similar consequences to this nation 
in general. 

I conjecture, that about 1632 he married; for in that year 
I find him living in a house in Chancery Lane, a few doors 

* Ward's Life of Sir Thomas Gresham, p. 12. f Ibid. 

\ Ex vet. charta penes me. 

§ The Knights Templars. A^hraol^^s Inst.of the Order of the Garter, 
p. 65. See the seal at the end of Matt. Paris Hist. Anglicana, ^dit. * 
1640. 




~^-^^^^^^ /^' ^^ '^<^'»rs 



WALTON'S HOUSE, FLEET STREET. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 3 

higher up, on the left hand, than the former, and described by 
the occupation of a sempster, or milliner. The former of these 
might be his own proper trade ; and the latter, as being a 
feminine occupation, might probably be carried on by his wife : 
she, it appears, was Anne, the daughter of Thomas Ken, of 
Furnival's Inn, and sister of Thomas, afterwards Dr Ken, 
Bishop of Bath and Wells, one of the seven that were sent to 
the Tower, and who, at the Revolution, was deprived, and 
died in retirement. Walton seems to have been as happy in 
the married state, as the society and friendship of a prudent 
and pious woman of great endowments could make him ; and 
that Mrs Walton was such a one, we may conclude from what 
will be said of her hereafter. 

About 1643 he left London, and, with a fortune very far 
short of what would now be called a competency, * seems to 
have retired altogether from business ; at which time, (to use 
the words of Wood,) " finding it dangerous for honest men to 
be there, he left that city, and lived sometimes at Stafford,f 
and elsewhere ; but mostly in the families of the eminent 
clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved.;}: 

While he continued in London, his favourite recreation v.-as 
angling, in which he was the greatest proficient of his time ; 
and indeed, so great were his skill and experience in that art, 
that there is scarce any writer on the subject since his time, 
who has not made the rules and practice of Walton his very 
foundation. It is, therefore, with the greatest propriety that 
Langbaine calls him " the common father of all anglers." ^ 

The river that he seems mostly to have frequented for this 
purpose was the Lea, which has its source above Ware, in 
Hertfordshire, and falls into the Thames a little below Black 
Wall ; II unless v,e will suppose that the vicinity of the New 
River 1[ to the place of his habitation, might sometimes tempt 
him out with his friends, honest Nat. and R. Roe, whose loss 
he so pathetically mentions, ** to spend an afternoon there. 

• See tis Will, at the end of the Life. 

f He lived upon a small estate near the town of Stafford, where, 
according to his own account, he suffered during the time of the Civil 
Wars ; having by his loyalty rendered himself obnoxious to the persons in 
power. 

I Atken. Oxon. vol. i. G05. 

§ Lives of the English Dramatic Poets, art. Cha. Cotton, Esq. 

II See chap xix. 

^ That great work, the bringing water from Chadwell and Amwell, in 
Hertfordshire, to London, by means of the trench called the New River, was 
completed on Alichaelmas day, 1613. Stow's Survey, fol. 1638, p. 12. 

** P*reface to Compkie Angltr. 



4 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

In this year, 1662. he was, by death, deprived of the solace 
and comfort of a good wife, as appears by the following- 
monumental inscription in the chapel of Our Lady, in the 
cathedral church of Worcester : 

EXTERRIS 

D. 

M. S. 

HERE LYETH buried 

SO much as could Hye of 
ANNE, THE WIFE OF JZAAK WALTON; 

who was a Woman of remarkable Prudence, 

and of the Primitive Piety ; 

her great and general knowledge 

being adorned with such true Hirniility, 

and blessed with so much Christian INieekness, 

as made her worthy of a more memorable Monument. 

She dyed (alas that she is dead !) 

the 17th of April, 1662, Aged 52. 

Study to be like her. 

Living, while in London, in the parish of St Dunstan in the 
West, whereof Dr John Donne, dean of St Paul's, was vicar, he 
became, of course, a frequent hearer of that excellent preacher, 
and, at length, (as he himself expresses it,*) his convert. 
Upon his decease in 1631, Sir Henry Wotton (of whom men- 
tion will be made hereafter) requested Walton to collect 
materials for a Life of the Doctor, which it seems Sir Henry 
had undertaken to write :f but Sir Henry dying before he had 
completed the life, Walton undertook it himself ; and, in the year 
1640, finished and published it, with a Collection of the Doctors 
Sermonsy in folio. As soon as the book came out, a complete 
copy was sent as a present to Walton, by Mr John Donne, 
the Doctor's son, afterwards Doctor of Laws ; and one of the 
blank leaves contained his letter to Mr Walton : the letter 
is yet extant, and in print,:}: and is a handsome and grateful 
acknowledgment of the honour done to the memory of his 
father. 

Doctor King, afterward Bishop of Chichester, in a letter to 
the author, thus expresses himself concerning this Life " I am 
glad that the general demonstration of his [Doctor Donne's] 
worth was so f-iirly preserved, and lepresented to the world by 

* Verses of Walton at the end of Dr Donne's Life. 

f See ReliquicE Wottoniana, octavo, 1685, p. liQO. 

\ In Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. i. lib. vi. p. 24. In the year 
1714, the very bock, with the original manuscript letter, was in the^hantis 
of the Rev. Mr Borradale, rector of Market-Deeping, in the covuity of 
Lincoln. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 5 

your pen, in the history of his life ; indeed, so well, that, beside 
others, the best critic of our later time, Mr John Hales, of 
Eaton, affirmed to me, he had not seen a life written with more 
advantag-e to the subject, or reputation to the writer, than that 
of Doctor Donne." * 

Sir Henry VVotton dying in 1639, Walton was importuned 
by Bishop King to undertake the writing his life also ; and, as 
it should seem by a circumstance mentioned in the margin, it 
was finished about 1644. f Notwithstanding which, the ear- 
liest copy I have yet been able to meet with is that prefixed 
to a collection of Sir Henry's Remains, undoubtedly made by 
Walton himself, entitled Reliqid^B Wottoniancs, and by him, in 
1651, dedicated to Lady Mary Wotton and her three daughters ; 
though in a subsequent edition, in 1685, he has recommended 
them to the patronage of a more remote relation of the author, 
namely, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield. 

The precepts of angling, — meaning thereby the rules and 
directions for taking fish with a hook and line, — till Walton's 
time, having hardly ever been reduced to writing, were propa- 
gated from age to age chiefly by tradition : but Walton, whose 
benevolent and communicative temper appears in almost every 
line of his writings, unwilling to conceal from the world those 
assistances which his long practice and experience enabled him, 
perhaps the best of any man of his time, to give, in the year 
1653 published, in a very elegant manner, his Complete Angler^ 
or Contemplative Alan's. Recreation, in small duodecimo, 
adorned with exquisite cuts of most of the fish mentioned in 
it. The artist who engraved them has been so modest as to 
conceal his name : but there is great reason to suppose they 
are the work of Lombart, who is mentioned in the Sculpiura 
of Mr Evelyn ; and also that the plates were of steel. 

And let no man imagine, that a work on such a subject must 
necessarily be unentertaining, or trifling, or even uninstructive ; 
for the contrary will most evidently appear, from a perusal of 
this excellent piece, which, whether we consider the elegant 
simplicity of the style, the ease and unaffected humour of the 
dialogue, the lovely scenes which it delineates, the enchanting 
pastoral poetry which it contains, or the fine morality it so 

• Bishop King's Letter to Walton before the Collection of the Lives, in 
1670. 

\ It is certain that Hooker's Life was wTitten about 1664 ; and Walton 
says, in liis Epistle before the Lives, that " there was an interval of twenty 
years between the writing of Hooker's Life and Wotton's," which fixes the 
date of the latter to 1644. 



6 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

sweetly inculcates, has hardly its fellow in any of the modern 
languages. 

The truth is, that there are few subjects so barren as not to 
afford matter of delight, and even of instruction, if ingeniously 
treated : Montaigne has written an essay on Coaches, and 
another on Thumbs ; and our own nation has produced many 
men, who, from a peculiar felicity in their turn of thinking, and 
manner of writing, have adorned, and even dignified, themes 
the most dry and unpromising. Many would think that time 
ill employed which was spent in composing a treatise on the 
aft of shooting in the long bow : and how few lovers of horti- 
culture would expect entertainment from a discourse of Salads ! 
and yet the Toxophilus of Roger Ascham, and the Acetaria of 
Mr Evelyn, have been admired and commended by the best 
judges of literature. 

But that the reader may determine for himself, how much 
our author has contributed to the improvement of piscatory 
science, and how far his work may be said to be an original, it 
will be necessary for him to take a view of the state of angling 
at the time when he wrote ; and that he may be the better able 
to do this, he will consider, that, till the time of the Reforma- 
tion, although the clergy,' as well regular as secular, on 
account of their leisure, and because the canon law forbade them 
the use of the sanguinary recreations of hunting, hawking, and 
fowling, were the great proficients in angling, yet none of its 
precepts were committed to writing ; and that, from the time 
of the introduction of printing into this kingdom, to that of the 
first publication of Walton's book, in 1653, an interval of more 
than one hundred and fifty years, only five books on this sub- 
ject had been given to the world ; of the four latest, some 
mention is made in the margin ;* but the first of that number, 

* A Booke of fishing with hooke and line, and of all other instruments 
thereunto belonging. Another ofsundrie engines and traps to take pole- 
cats, buzzards, rats, mice, and all other kinds of vermine and beasts 
whatsoever, most profitable for all warrijiers, and such as delight in this 
kind of sport and pastime, made by X. 31. 4to. London, 1590, 1596, 
1600. 

It appears by a variety of evidence, that tlie person meant by these 
initials was one Leonard Mascall, an author who wrote on planting and 
grafting, and also on cattle. Vide infra, chap. ix. 

Approved ^Experiments touching Fish and Fruit, to be regarded by 
the Lovers of Angling, by Mr John Taverner, in quarto, 1600. 

The Secrets of Angling, a poem, in three books, by J. D. [Davors,] 
Esq. octavo, 1613. Mention is made of this book, in a note on a passage . 
in the ensuing dialogues : and there is reason to think that it is the founda- 
tion of a treatise, entitled The whole Art of Angling, pubhshed in quarto, 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 7 

as well on account of its quaintness as antiquity, and because 
it is not a little characteristic of the age when it was written, 
deserves to be particularly distinguished. This tract, entitled 
The Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, makes part of a 
book, like many others of that early time, without a title ; but 
which, by the colophon, appears to have been printed at 
Westminster, by Wynkyn de Worde, 1496, in a small folio, 
containing a treatise On Haivking ; another, On Hunting, in 
verse, — the latter taken, as it seems, from a tract, on that 
subject, written by old Sir Tristram, an ancient forester, cited 
in the Forest Laws of Manwood, chap. iv. in sundry places ; a 
book wherein is determined the Lygnage of Cote Armures ; the 
above mentioned treatise Ofjishing ; and the method of Blasi/nge 
of Armes. 

The book printed by Wynkyn de Worde is, in truth, a 
republication of one known to the curious by the name of the 
Book of St Albans, it appearing by the colophon to have been 
printed there, in 1486, and, as it seems, with Caxton's letter.* 
Wynkyn de Worde's impression has the addition of the treatise 
Of Fishing ; of which only it concerns us to speak. 

The several tracts contained in the above mentioned two 
impressions of the same book, were compiled by Dame Julyans 
(or Juliana) Berners, Bernes, or Barnes, prioress of the 
nunnery of Sopwell, near St Alban's ; a lady of a noble family, 
and celebrated for her learning and accomplishments, by 
Leland, Bale, Pits, Bishop Tanner, and others. And the 
reason for her publishing it, in the manner it appears in, she 
gives us in the following words : — " And for by cause that 
this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche 
ydle persone whyche wolde desire it, yf it were enprjnted 
allone by itself and put in a lytyll plaunflet ; therefore I have 
compylyd it in a greter uolume, of dyuerse bokys concernynge 
to gentyll and noble men, to the entent that the forsayd ydle 
persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd 

1656, by tlie well knowTi Gervase INIarkham, as part of his Country Con- 
tentments, or Husbandman's Recreations, since he confesses, that the 
substance of his book was originally in rhyme. Of Markham's book, a 
specimen is given in chap. i. 

Barker's Art of Angling, printed in 12mo. in 1651, and again in 4to. in 
1653. A third edition was published in 1659, unrler the title of Barker's 
Delight, or the Art of Angling. For an account of this book and its author, 
vide infra. — J. S. H. 

* Vide Biographica Britarinica, art. Caxton, note L. wherein the 
author, Mr Oldys, has given a copious accoxmt of the book, and a character 
of the lady who compiled it. 



8 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTOK. 

dysporte of fysshynge, sholde not by this meane utterly dys* 
troye it." 

And as to the treatise itself, it must be deemed a great 
typographical curiosity, as well for the wooden sculpture 
which in the original immediately follows the title, as for the 
orthography and the character in which it is printed. And, 
with respect to the subject matter thereof, it begins, — With a 
comparison of fishing with the diversions of hunting, hawking, 
and fowling, — which, the authoress shews, are attended with 
great inconveniences and disappointments ; whereas in fishing, 
if his sport fail him, " the angler," says she, *' atte the leest, 
hath his holsom walke, and mery at his ease, a swete ayre of 
the swete sauoure of the mede floures, that makyth him 
hungry ; he hereth the melodyous armony of fowles ; he seeth 
the yonge swannes, heerons, duckes, cotes, and many other 
fowles, wyth theyr brodes ; whyche me semyth better than 
alle the noyse of houndys, the blastes of hornys, and the 
scrye of foulis, that hunters, fawkeners, and fowlers can make. 
And if the angler take fysshe ; surely, thenne, is there noo 
man merier than he is in his spyryte." 

At the beginning of the directions, " How the angler is to 
make his harnays, or tackle," he is thus instructed to provide 
a rod : " And how ye shall make your rodde craftly, here I 
shall teche you. Ye shall kytte betweene Myghelmas and 
Candylmas, a fayr staffe, of a fadom and an halfe longe, and 
arme-grete, of hasyll, wyllowe, or aspe ; and bethe hym in an 
hote ouyn, and sette him euyn ; thenne, lete hym cole and 
drye a moneth. Take thenne and frette* hym faste with a 
coekeshote corde ; and bynde hym to a fourme, or an euyn 
square grete tree. Take, thenne, a plummer's wire, that is 
euen and streyte, and sharpe at the one ende ; and hete the 
sharpe ende in a charcole fyre till it be whyte, and brenne the 
staffe therwyth thorugh, euer streyte in the pythe at bothe 
endes, till they mete : and after that brenne him in the nether 
end wyth a byrde brochef and with other broches, eche 
gretter than other, and euer the grettest the laste ; so that ye 
make your hole, aye, tapre were. Thenne lete hym lye styll, 
and kele two dayes; unfrettej hym thenne, and lete hyra 
drye in an hous roof, in the smoke, till he be thrugh drye. In 
the same season, take a fayr yerde of green hasyll, and bethe 



* i. e. Tie it about : the substantive plural, frets of a lute, is formed 
of tliia verb. 

f A bird spit. \ Untie it. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. ^ 

him euen and streyghte, and lete it drye with the staffe ; and 
whan they ben drye, make the yerde mete unto the hole in 
the staffe, unto halfe the length of the staffe ; and to perfourme 
that other half of the croppe, — take a fayr shote of blacke 
thornn, crabbe tree, medeler, or of jenypre, kytte in the same 
season, and well bethyd and streyghte, and frette theyra 
togyder fetely, soo that the croppe maye justly entre all into 
the sayd hole ; thenne shaue your staft'e, and make him tapre 
were ; then vyrell the staffe at bothe endes with long hopis 
of yren, or laton, in the clennest wise, wyth a pyke at the 
nether ende, fastynd with a rennynge vyce, to take in and out 
your croppe ; thenne set your croppe an handfull within the 
oner ende of your staffe, in suche wise that it be as bigge 
there as in ony other place about : thenne arrae your croppe 
at the ouer ende, downe to the frette, wyth a lyne of vj heeres, 
and dubbe the lyne, and frette it faste in the toppe wyth a 
bowe to fasten on your lyne ; and thus shall ye make you a 
rodde so prevy, that you may walke therwyth ; and there shall 
uoo man wyte where abowte ye goo." 

Speaking of the Barbel, she says : " The Barbyll is a 
swete fyssTie; but it is a quasy mete, and a peryllous for 
mannys body. For, comynly, he yeuyth an introduxion to the 
febres : and yf he be eten rawe, he may be cause of mannys 
dethe, whyche hath oft be seen." And of the Carp, " that it 
is a deyntous fysshe, but there ben but fewe in Englonde. 
And therefore I wryte the lasse of hym. He is an euyll 
fysshe to take. For he is so stronge enarmyd in the mouthe, 
that there maye noo weke harnays hold hym. 

" And as touchynge his baytes, I have but ly tyll knowledge 
of it. And me wereloth to \\ryte more than I knowe and have 
prouyd. But well I wote, that the redde worme and the 
menow ben good baytes for hym at all tymes, as I have herde 
saye of persones credyble, and also founde wryten in bokes of 
credence." 

For taking the Pike, this lady directs her readers in the 
following terms, viz. : — 

" Take a codlynge hoke; and take a Roche, or a fresshe 
Heeryng ; and a wyre with an hole in the ende, and put it in 
at the mouth, and out at the taylle, downe by the ridge of 
the fresshe Heeryng ; and thenne put the lyne of your hoke 
in after, and drawe the hoke into the cheke of the fresshe 
Herrying ; then put a plumbe of lede upon your lyne a yerde 
longe from your hoke, and aflote in myd waye betwene ; 
and caste it in a pytte where the Pyke usyth : and this is the 



10 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

beste and moost surest crafte of takyng-e the Pyke. Another 
manere takynge of hym there is ; take a frosshe,* and put it 
on your hoke, at the necke, betwene the skynne and the body, 
on the backe half, and put on a flote a yerde therefro, and 
caste it where the Pyke hauntyth, and ye shall haue him. 
Another manere : Take the same bayte, and put it in asafetida, 
and caste it in the water wyth a corde and a corke, and ye 
shall not fa^'l of hym. And yf ye lyst to haue a good sporte, 
thenne tye the corde to a gose fote ; and ye shall se gode 
halynge, whether the gose or the Pyke shall haue the better." 

The directions for making flies, contained in this book, are, 
as one would expect, very inartificial : we shall therefore only 
add, that the authoress advises the angler to be provided with 
twelve dijferent sorts ; between which and Walton's twelve.f 
the difference is so very small, as well in the order as the 
manner of describing them, that there cannot remain the least 
doubt but he had seen, and attentively perused this ancient 
treatise. 

The book concludes with some general cautions, among 
which are these that follow ; which at least serve to shew how 
long angling has been looked on as an auxiliary to contem- 
plation. 

*' Also ye shall not use this forsayd crafty dysporte, for no 
couetysenes, to the encreasynge and sparynge of your money 
oonly ; but pryncypally for your solace, and to cause the 
helthe of your body, and specyally of your soule : for whanne 
ye purpoos to goo on your dysportes in fysshynge, ye woll not 
desyre gretly many persons wyth you, whyche myghte lette 
j'-ou of your game. And thenne ye may serue God, deuowtly, 
in sayenge affectuously youre custumable prayer ; and, thus 
doynge, ye shall eschewe and voyde many vices." 

But to return to the last mentioned work of our author, 
The Complete Angler : it came into the world attended with 
Encomiastic Verses by several writers of that day ;:{: and had 
in the title-page, though Walton thought proper to omit it in 
the future editions, this apposite motto : 

" Simon Peter said, I go a fishing; and they said, We also 
will go with thee." John, xxi. 3. 

And here occasion is given to remark, that the circumstance 
of time, and the distracted state of the kingdom at the period 



• Or frog. Minshew's Dictionary. f See chap. v. 

\ This is a mistake : the Commendatory Verses appeared for the fcist 
time in the second edition. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 11 

when the book was written, reaching, indeed, to the publication 
of the third edition thereof, are evidences of the author's 
inward temper and disposition ; for who, but a man whose 
mind was the habitation of piety, prudence, humility, peace, 
and cheerfulness, could delineate such a character as that of 
the principal interlocutor in this dialogue ; and make him 
reason, contemplate, instruct, converse, jest, sing, and recite 
verses, with that sober pleasantry, that unlicentious hilarity, 
that Piscator does ; and this, too, at a time when the whole 
kingdom was in arms ; and confusion and desolation were 
carried to an extreme sufficient to have excited such a resent- 
ment against the authors of them, as might have soured the 
best temper, and rendered it, in no small degree, unfit for 
social intercourse ? 

If it should be objected, that what is here said may be 
equally true of an indolent man, or of a mind insensible to 
all outward accidents, and devoted to its own ease and gratifi- 
cation, — to this it m&y be answered, that the person here 
spoken of was not such a man : on the contrary, in sundry 
views of his character, he appears to have been endowed both 
with activity and industry ; an industrious tradesman ; indus- 
trious in collecting biographical memoirs and historical facts, 
and in rescuing from oblivion the memory and writings of 
many of his learned friends : and surely, against the suspicion 
of insensibility he must stand acquitted, who appears to 
have had the strongest attachments that could consist with 
Christian charity, both to opinions and men ; to episcopacy, 
to the doctrines, discipline, and the liturgy of the established 
church ; and to those divines and others that favoured the 
civil and ecclesiastical constitution of this country, — the sub- 
version whereof it was his misfortune both to see and feel. 
Seeing, therefore, that amidst the public calamities, and in a 
state of exile from that city where the earliest and dearest of 
his connections had been formed, he was thus capable of 
enjoying himself in the manner he appears to have done ; 
patiently submitting to those evils which he could not prevent, 
— we must pronounce him to have been an illustrious 
exemplar of the private and social virtues, and, upon the whole, 
a wise and good man. 

To these remarks, respecting the moral qualities of Walton, 
I add, that his mental endowments were so considerable as to 
merit notice. It is true, that his stock of learning, properly so 
called, was not great ; yet were his attainments in literature 
far beyond what could be expected from a man bred to trade. 



12 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

and not to a learned profession; for let it be remembered, 
that, besides being well versed in the study of the Holy 
Scriptures, and the writings of the most eminent divines of 
his time, he appears to have been well acquainted with history, 
ecclesiastical, civil, and natural ; to have acquired a very 
correct judgment in poetry ; and by phrases of his own com* 
bination and invention, to have formed a style so natural, 
intelligible, and elegant, as to have had more admirers than 
successful imitators. 

And although in the prosecution of his design to teach the 
contemplative man the art of angling, there is a plainness and 
simplicity of discourse, that indicates little more than bare 
instruction, yet is there intermingled with it wit and gentle 
reprehension ; and we may in some instances discover, that 
though he professes himself no friend to scoffing, he knew 
very wxll how to deal with scoffers, and to defend his art, as 
we see he does, against such as attempted to degrade it ; 
and particularly against those two persons in the dialogue, 
Auceps and Venator, who affected to fear a long and watery 
discourse in defence of his art, — the former of whom he puts 
to silence, and the other he converts and takes for his pupil. 

What reception in general the book met with may be 
naturally inferred from the dates of the subsequent editions 
thereof; the second came abroad in 1655, the third in 1664, 
the fourth in 1668, and the fifth and last in 1676. It is 
pleasing to trace the several variations which the author from 
time to time made in these subsequent editions, as well by 
adding new facts and discoveries, as by enlarging on the 
more entertaining parts of the dialogue ; and so far did he 
indulge himself in this method of improvement, that, besides 
that in the second edition he has introduced a new interlocutor, 
to wit, Auceps, a falconer, and by that addition gives a new 
form to the dialogue ; he from thence takes occasion to urge 
a variety of reasons in favour of his art, and to assert its 
preference as well to hawking as hunting. The third and 
fourth editions of his book have several entire new chapters ; 
and the fifth, the last of the editions published in his lifetime, 
contains no less than eight chapters more than the first, and 
twenty pages more than the fourth. 

Not having the advantage of a learned education, it may 
seem unaccountable that Walton so frequently cites authors 
that have written only in Latin, as Gesner, Cardan, Aldro- 
vandus, Rondeletius, and even Albertus Magnus ; but here it 
may be observed, that the voluminous history of animals, of 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 13 

which the first of these was author, is in effect translated into 
English by Mr Edward Topsel, a learned divine, chaplain, as 
it seems, in the church of St Botolph, Aldersgate, to Dr Neile, 
dean of Westminster. The translation was published in 1658, 
and, containing- in it numberless particulars concerning frogs, 
serpents, caterpillars, and other animals, though not of fish, 
extracted from the other writers above named, and others with 
their names to the respective facts, it furnished Walton with a 
great variety of intelligence, of which, in the later editions of 
his book, he has carefully availed himself : it was therefore 
through the medium of this translation alone that he was 
enabled to cite the other authors mentioned above ; vouching 
the authority of the original writers, in like manner as he else- 
where does Sir Francis Bacon, whenever occasion occurs to 
mention his Natural History, or any other of his works. 
Pliny was translated to his hand by Dr Philemon Holland, as 
were also Janus Dubravius De Piscinis et Pischnn Natura^ 
and Lebault's Alaison Rustique, so often referred to by him in 
the course of his work. 

Nor did the reputation of the Complete Angler subsist only 
in the opinions of those for whose use it was more peculiarly 
calculated ; but even the learned, either from the known cha- 
racter of the author, or those internal evidences of judgment 
and veracity contained in it, considered it as a work of merit ; 
and for various purposes referred to its authority. Doctor 
Thomas Fuller, in his Worthies, whenever he has occasion to 
speak of fish, uses his very words. Dr Plot, in his History of 
Staffordshire, has, on the authority of our author, related two 
of the instances of the voracity of the pike, mentioned part i. 
chap viii. ; and confirmed them by two other signal ones, that 
had then lately fallen out in that county. 

These are testimonies in favour of Walton's authority in 
matters respecting fish and fishing ; and it will hardly be 
thought a diminution of that of Fuller, to say, that he was 
acquainted with, and a friend of, the person whom he thus 
implicitly commends, — a fact which the following relation of a 
conference between them sufficiently proves : 

Fuller, as we all know, wrote a Church History, which, soon 
after its publication, Walton having read, applied to the 
author for some information touching Hooker, whose life 
he was then about to write. Upon this occasion Fuller 
knowing how intimate Walton was with several of the bishops 
and ancient clergy, asked his opinion of it, and what reception 
it met with among his friends ? Walton answered, that " he 



14 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

thought it would be acceptable to all tempers, because there 
were shades in it for the warm, and sunshine for those of a 
cold constitution : that with youthful readers, the facetious 
parts would be proper to make the serious more palatable, 
while some reverend old readers might fancy themselves, in 
his History of the Church, as in a flower garden, or one full of 
evergreens." — " And why not," said Fuller, " the Church History 
so decked, as well as the Church itself at a most holy season, 
or the Tabernacle of old at the feast of boughs ?"• — " That was 
but for a season," said Walton ; ** in your feast of boughs, they 
may conceive, we are so overshadowed throughout, that the 
parson is more seen than his congregation, — and this, some- 
times, invisible to its own acquaintance, who may wander in 
the search till ihey are lost in the labyrinth," — " Oh i" said 
Fuller, "the very children of our Israel may find their way out 
of this wilderness." — " True," replied Walton, " as, indeed, they 
have here such a Moses to conduct them."* 

To pursue the subject of the biographical writings : About 
two years after the Restoration, Walton wrote the Life of Mr 
Richard Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical Polity. He was 
enjoined to undertake this work by his friend Dr Gilbert 
Sheldon, f afterward archbishop of Canterbury, who, by the 
way, was an angler. Bishop King, in a letter to the author,:}: 
says of this life, " 1 have often seen Mr Hooker with my father, 
who was after bishop of London ; from whom, and others at 
that time, I have heard most of the material passages which 
you relate in the history of his life." Sir William Dugdale, 
speaking of the three posthumous books of the Ecclesiastical 
Polity, refers the reader " to that seasonable historical discourse, 
lately compiled and published, with great judgment and 
integrity, by that much deserving person, Mr Isaac Walton." § 

The Life of Mr George Herbert, as it sta'nds the fourth and 
last in the volume, wherein that, and the three former are 
collected, seems to have been written the next after Hooker's : 



* From a manuscript collection of diverting sayings, stories, characters, 
&c. in verse and prose, made about the year 1686, by Charles Cotton, 
Esq. some time in the library of the Earl of Halifax. Vide Biographia 
Sritannica, 2061, note p. in margin. 

The editors of the above work have styled this colloquy a witty confa- 
bulation, but it seems remarkable for nothing but its singularity, which 
consists in the starting of a metaphor and hunting it down. 

f Walton's Epistle to the Reader of the Lives, in 8vo. 1670. 

i Before the Lives. 

§ Short View of the late Troubles in England, folio, 1681, p. 39.' 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 15 

it was first published in duodecimo, 1670. Walton professes 
himself to have been a stranger as to the person of Herbert ;* 
and though he assures us his life of him was a freewill offer- 
ing,f it abounds with curious information, and is no way- 
inferior to any of the former. 

Two of these Lives, viz. those o( Hooker, and Herbert, we 
are told, Avere written under the roof of Walton's good friend 
and patron, Dr George Morley, bishop of Winchester; J 
which particular seems to agree with Wood's account, that, 
" after his quitting London, he lived mostly in the families of 
the eminent clergy at that time." Zouch says, that apartments 
for Walton and his daughters were reserved both in the house 
of the Bishop of Winchester, and in that of the bishop of 
Salisbury. And who that considers the inoffensiveness of his 
manners, and the pains he took in celebrating the lives and 
actions of good men, can doubt his being much beloved by 
them ? 

In the year 1670, these Lives were collected and published in 
octavo, with a Dedication to the above bishop of Winchester, 
and a Preface, containing the motives for writing them : 
this preface is followed by a Copy of Verses, by his intimate 
friend and adopted son, Charles Cotton, of Beresford, in 
Staffordshire, esq. the author of the Second Part of the 
Complete Angler, of whom farther mention will hereafter be 
made ; and by the Letter from Bishop King, so often referred 
to in the course of his life. 

The Complete Angler having, in the space of twenty-three 
years, gone through four editions, Walton, in the year 1676, 
and in the eighty-third of his age, was preparing a fifth, with 
additions, for the press ; when Mr Cotton WTote a second part 
of that work. It seems IMr Cotton submitted the manuscript 
to Walton's perusal, who returned it with his approbation, $ 
and a few marginal strictures ; and in that year they came 
abroad together. Mr Cotton's book had the title of the 
Complete Angler, being Instructions how to angle for a Trout 
or Grayling in a clear sti'eam. Part II. ; and it has ever 
since been received as a Second Part of Walton's book. In 
the title-page is a cipher composed of the initial letters of 
both their names ; which cipher, Mr Cotton tells us, he had 
caused to be cut in stone, and set up over a fishing house, 

• I)itroduction to Herherfs Life. 

t Epistle to the Reader of the Collection of Lives. 

\ Dedication of the Lives. 

§ See Walton's Letter to Cotton, before the Second Part, 



16 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

that he had erected near his dwelling, on the bank of the 
little river Dove, which divides the counties of Stafford and 
Derby. 

Mr Cotton's book is a judicious supplement to Walton's; 
for it must not be concealed, that Walton, though he was so 
expert an angler, knew but little of fly-fishing ; and indeed he 
is so ingenuous as to confess, that the greater part of ^^ hat 
he has said on that subject was communicated to him by Mr 
Thomas Barker, and not the result of his own experience. 
This Mr Barker was a good-humoured, gossiping old man, 
and seems to have been a cook ; for he says, "he had been 
admitted into most of the ambassadors' kitchens, that had come 
to England for forty years, and dressed fish for them ; for 
which," he says, " he was duly paid by the Lord Protector." * 
He spent a great deal of time, and, it seems, money too, in 
fishing ; and in the latter part of his life, dwelt in an alms- 
house, near the Gatehouse, Westminster. In 1651, two years 
before the first publication of Walton's work, he published a 
work in duodecimo, called the Artof Angling, to which he affixed 
his name : f he published, in 1653, a second edition, in quarto, 
under the same title, but without his name : and in 1659, he 
published the third edition of it, under the enlarged title of 
Barker's Delight, or the Art of Angling : and for that singula! 
vein of humour that runs through it, a most diverting book 
it is. The Dedication of this performance to Edward Lord 
Montague, general of the navy, is given in the margin : J and 

* Barker's Deliglit, p. 20. 

f Walton, in the first edition, page 108, says> " I will tell you freely, 
I find Mr Thomas Barker, a gentleman that has spent much time and' 
money in angling, deal so judicious and freely in a little book of his of 
angling, and especially of making and angling with a fly for a trout, that 
I will give you his very directions without much variation, which shall 
follow." In his fifth edition, he again mentions the use which he had 
made of Barker's book, but in different words : " I shall give some other 
directions for fly-fishing, such as are given by IMi* Thomas Barker, a 
gentleman that hath spent much time in fishing ; but I shall do it with 
a little variation." 

I " Noble Lord ! I do present this my book as I have named it, 
Barker's Delight, to your honour. I pray God send you safe home to 
your good lady and sweet babes. Amen, Amen. If you shall find any 
thing delightful in the reading of it, I shall heartily rejoice; for I know 
you are one who takes delight in that pleasure, and have good judgment and 
experience, as many noble persons and gentlemen of true piety and honour 
do and have. The favour that I have found from you, and a great many 
more, that did and do love that pleasure, shall never be buried in oblivioQ 
by me. I am now grown old, and am willing to enlarge my little book. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON.- 17 

the reader will meet with some farther specimens of the 
author's style and manner of writing-, in the notes on the pre- 
sent edition. 

And of Cotton it must be said, that living- in a country 
where fly-fishing was and is almost the only practice, he had 
not only the means of acquiring, but actually possessed more 
skill in the art, as also in the method of making flies, than 
most men of his time. 

• His book is, in fact, a continuation of Walton's, not only as 
it teaches at large that branch of the art of anding which 
Walton had but slightly treated on, but as it takes^up Venator, 
Walton's piscatory disciple, just where his master had left 
him ; and this connection between the two parts will be 
clearly seen, when it is remarked, that the traveller whom 
Cotton invites to his house, and so hospitably entertains, and 
also instructs in the art of fly-fishing,— I say this traveller, 
and Venator, the pupil of Walton, come out to' be one and the 
same person. 

Not farther to anticipate what will be found in the Second 
Part, it shall here suffice to say, that there is great spirit in 
the dialogue ; ■ and that the same conversable, communicative 

I have written no more but my own experience and practice: and have 
set torth the true ground of angling, wliich I have been gathering these 
threescore years, having spent many pounds in the gaining of it, as is 
well known in the place where I wa^ born and educated, which is Brace- 
meale, m the hberty of Salop ; being a freeman and burgess of the same 
city, li any noble or gentle angler, of what degree soever he be, have a 
nimd to discourse of any of these wavs and experiments, I live in Henry 
the beventh s Gifts, the next door to the Gatehouse in Westminster, — mv 
name is Barker, — where I shall be ready, as long as please God, to satisfy 
them and maintain my art during life, which is not like to be Ion? ; that 
the younger fry may have my experiments at a smaller charge than I had 
them : for it would be too heavy for every one that loveth that exercise, 
to be at the charge as I was at first in my youth, the loss of my time 
with great expenses. Therefore, I took itm consideration, and thou-ht 
fit to let It be understood, and to take pains to set forth the true erounds 
and ways, that I have found by experience both for fitting of the rods and 
tackles, both for ground baits and flies ; with the directions for the making 
thereof ;^.-lthobser^•atlons for times and seasons for the ground baits and 
Hies, both tor day and mght, with the dressing ; wherein I take as much 
delight as in the taking of them ; and, to shew how I can perform it, to 
furnish my lord s table only with trouts, as it is furnished with fle>^h, for 
sixteen or twenty dishes. And I have a desire to preserve their hedth, 
(with the help ot God,) to go dry in their boots and shoes in angling • • 
for age taketh the pleasure from me." ^ ^ ' 

* See his recipe for this purpose, in the notes on Ch. XVII, 



18 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

temper appears in it, that so eminently distinguishes the piece 
it accompanies. 

The description of Flies, with the materials for, and dif- 
ferent methods of, making them, though they may admit of 
some improvement — and accordingly the reader will meet with 
several valuable ones in the notes on the chapter of artificial 
flies — are indisputably the most exact and copious of all that 
have ever yet been published. 

At the end of the Second Part, though in this edition it has 
been thought proper to transpose them, are [were] some verses 
of Cotton's writing, which he calls The Retirement, or Stanzes 
Irreguliers. Of them, and also of the book, take this charac- 
ter from Langbaine : " This book is not unworthy of the 
perusal of the gravest men that are lovers of this innocent 
recreation ; and those who are not anglers, but have a taste 
for poetry, may find Mr Cotton's character better described by 
himself, in a copy of verses printed at the end of that book, 
called The Retirement, than any I might present the reader 
from Colonel Lovelace, Sir Aston Cockaine, Robert Herrick, 
Esq. or Mr Alexander Brome ; all which have writ verses in 
our author's praise ; but, in my poor judgment, far short of 
these Stanzes Irreguliers.'''' * In short, these books contain a 
great number of excellent rules and valuable discoveries ; and 
it may, with truth, be said, that few have ever perused them, 
but have, unless it was their own fault, found themselves not 
only better anglers, but better men. 

A book which had been published by Col. Robert Venables, 
some years before,-)- called the Experienced Angler, or Angling 
Improved, which has its merit, was also now reprinted ; and 
the booksellers prefixed to it a title of the Universal Angler : 
under which they sometimes sold the three bound together ; 
but the book being written in a manner very different from 
that of the Complete Angler, it was not thought proper to let 
it accompany the present edition ; however, some use has 
been made of it in the notes. It has a preface signed I. W. 
undoubtedly of Walton's writing. 

And here it may not be amiss to remark, that between the 
two parts of the Complete Angler there is an obvious difference ; 
the latter [Part,] though it abounds in descriptions of a wild 
and romantic country, and exemplifies the intercourse of 
hospitable urbanity, is of a didactic form, and contains in it 
more of instruction in the art it professes to teach, than of 

• Lives of the English Dramatic Poets, art. Chaiies Cotton, Esq» 
t In 1662. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 19 

moral reflection : whereas the former, besides the pastoral 
simplicity that distinguishes it, is replete with sentiments that 
edify, and precepts that recommend, in the most persuasive 
manner, the practice of religion, and the exercise of patience, 
humility, contentedness, and other moral virtues. In this 
view of it, the book might be said to be the only one of the 
kind, but that I find somewhat like an imitation of it extant in 
a tract entitled Angling improved to Spiritual Uses, part of an 
octavo volume written by that eminent person the Honourable 
Robert Boyle, an angler, as himself confesses, and published 
in 1665, with this title : " Occasional Reflections upon several 
Subjects ; whereto is premised a Discourse about such Kind 
of Thoughts." 

Great names are entitled to great respect. The character 
of Mr Boyle, as a devout Christian and deep philosopher, is 
deservedly in high estimation ; and a comparison between his 
Reflections and those of Walton might seem an invidious 
labour. But see the irresistible impulse of wit ! the book 
here referred to was written in the very younger years of the 
author ; and Swift, who had but little learning himself, and 
was better skilled in party politics than in mathematics or 
physics, respected no man for his proficiency in either, and 
accordingly has not spared to turn the whole of it into 
ridicule.* 

Walton was now in his eighty-third year, — an age which, to 
use his own words, " might have procured him a writ of ease,f 
and secured him from all farther trouble in that kind ;" when 
he undertook to write the Life of Doctor Robert Sanderson, 
Bishop of Lincoln : ^ which was published, together with 
several of the bishop's pieces, and a sermon of Hooker's, in 
octavo, 1677. 

Such v.ere the persons whose virtues Walton was so laudably 
employed in celebrating ; and surely he has done but justice 
in saying that " These were honourable men in their genera- 
tions." — Ecclus. xliv. 7.^ And yet, so far was he from 
arrogating to himself any merit in this his labour, tnat in the 
instance of Dr Donne's Life, he compares himself to Pompey's 

* See his Meditation on a Broomstick. 

f A discharge from the office of a judge, or the state and degree of a 
sergeant-at-law. Dugdales Origines Juridiciales, 139. That good 
man and learned judge. Sir George Croke, had obtained it some time 

before the writing of Sanderson's J^ife X(/e of Sir George Croke^ in 

the Preface to his Reports, voh iii. 

\ See the letter from Bishop Barlow to Walton, at the end of Sanderson's 
Life. 

§ Motto to the Collection of Lives. 



20 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

bondman, who being found on the sea-shore, gathering up the 
scattered fragments of an old 'broken boat, in order to burn 
the body of his dead master, was asked, *' Who art thou that 
preparest the funerals of Pompey the Great '?" hoping, as he 
says, that if a like question should be put to him, it would be 
thought to have in it more of wonder than disdain. 

The above passage in Scripture, assumed by Walton as a 
motto to the Col'ection of Lives, may, with equal propriety, be 
applied to most of his friends and intimates ; who were men 
of such distinguished characters for learning and piety, and so 
many in number,* that it is matter of wonder by what means 
a man in his station could obtain admittance among so illus- 
trious a society ; unless we will suppose, as doubtless was the 
case, that his integrity and amiable disposition attracted the 
notice, and conciliated the affections of all with whom he had 
any concern. 

It is observable, that not only these, but the rest of Walton's 
friends, were eminent royalists ; and that he himself was in 
great repute for his attachment to the royal cause, will appear 
by the relation taken from Ashmole's History of the Order of 
the Garter, p. 228 ; where the author, speaking of the ensigns 
of the order, says, " Nor will it be unfitly here remembered, by 
what good fortune the present sovereign's Lesser George, set 
with fair diamonds, was preserved after the defeat given to the 
Scotch forces at Worcester, ann. 4 Car. II. Among the rest 
of his attendants then dispersed. Colonel Blague was one ; 
who taking shelter at Blore-pipe-house in Staffordshire, where 
one Mr George Barlow then dwelt, delivered his wife this 
George to secure. Within a week after, Mr Barlow himself 
carried it to Robert Milward, Esq. ; he being then a prisoner 
to the Parliament, in the garrison of Stafford ; and by his means 
was it happily preserved and restored ; for, not long after, he 
delivered it to Mr Isaac Walton (a man well known, and as 
well beloved of all good men ; and will be better known to 
posterity, by his ingenious pen, in the Lives of Dr Donne, Sir 
Henry JVofton, Mr Richard Hooker, and Mr George Herbert,') 
to be given to Colonel Blague, then a prisoner in the Tower; 
who, considering it had already passed so many dangers, was 
persuaded it could yet secure one hazardous attempt of his 

* la the number of his intimate friends, we find Archbishop Usher, 
Archbishop Sheldon, Bishop Morton, Bishop King, Bishop Bariow, Dr 
Fuller, Dr Price, Dr Woodford, Dr Featly, Dr Holdsworth, Dr Hammond, 
Sir Edward Sandys, Sir Edward Bysh, Mr Cranmer, Mr Chillingworth, 
Michael Drayton, and that celebrated scholar and critic, Mr John HaJes 
of Eton. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 21 

own ; and thereupon, leaving- the Tower without leave-taking, 
hasted the presentation of it to the present sovereign's hand,"* 

The relij>ious opinions of good men are of little importance 
to others, any farther than thev necessarily conduce to virtuous 
practice ; since we see, that as well the different persuasions 
of Papist and Protestant, as the several no less differing 
parties into which the Reformed Religion is unhappily sub- 
divided, have produced men equally remarkable for their 
endowments, sincere in their professions, and exemplary in 
their lives : f but were it necessary, after what has been 
above remarked of him, to be particular on this head, with 
respect to our author we should say, that he was a very dutiful 
son of the Church of England ; nay, farther, that he was a 
friend to a hierarchy, or, as we should now call such a one, a 
high churchman ; for which propensity of his, if it needs an 
apology, it may be said, that he had lived to see hypocrisy 
and fanaticism triumph in the subversion of both our eccle- 
siastical and civil constitution ; the important question of 
toleration had not been discussed ; the extent of regal pre- 
rogative, and the bounds of civil and religious liberty, had 
never been ascertained ; and he, like many other good men, 
might look on the interests of the church, and those of religion, 
as inseparable. 

Besides the works of Walton above-mentioned, there are 
extant of his writing, Verses on the Death of Dr Donne, 
beginning, ' Our Donne is dead ;' Verses to his reverend friend 
the Author of the Synagogue, printed together with Herbert's 
Temple ,-J Verses before Alexander Brome's Poems, octavo, 
1646 ; and before Shirley's Poems, octavo, 1646, — and before 
Cart Wright's Plays and Poems, 1651. He wrote also the 
following Lines under an engraving of Dr Donne, before his 
Poems, published in 1635. 

Tliis was — for youth, strength, mirth, and wit — that time 
Most count their golden age ; § but was not thine : 
Thine was thy later years, so much refined 
From youth's dross, mirth, and wit, as thy pure mind 



* See also Dr Plott's Staffordshire, 311. 

f If the intelligent reader doubts the truth of this position, let him 
reflect on, and compare with each other, the chai'acters of Hooker, Father 
Paul, and Mr Richard Baxter. 

\ Vide infra, the signature to the second copy of Commendatory Verses, 
and chap. v. note. 

§ Alluding to his age, viz. eighteen, when the picture was painted from 
which the print was taken. 



SZ LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

Thouglit (like the angels) nothing but the praise 

Of thy Creator, in those last, best days. 

Witness this book (thy emblem) which begins 
With love ; but ends with sighs and tears for sins. 

Dr Henry King, bishop of Chichester, in a letter to Walton, 
dated in November, 1664, and in which is contained the judg- 
ment (herein before inserted) of Hales of Eaton, on the Likfe 
of Dr Donne, says, that Walton had, in the Life of Hooker, 
given a more short and significant account of the character 
of this time, and also of Archbishop Whitgift, than he had 
received from any other pen, and that he had also done much 
for Sir Henry Savile, his contemporary and familiar friend ; 
which fact does yery well connect with what the late Mr Des 
Maizeaux some years since related to a gentleman now 
deceased,* from whom myself had it, viz. that there were 
then several letters of Walton extant, in the Ashmolean 
Museum, relating to a Lfe of Sir Henry Savile, which Walton 
had entertained thoughts of writing. 

I also find that he undertook to collect materials for a Life 
of Hales. It seems that Mr Anthony Farringdon, minister of 
St Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, London, had begun to write 
the Life of this memorable person ; but dying before he had 
completed it, his papers were sent to Walton, with a request 
from Mr Fulman, f who had proposed to himself to continue 
and finish it, that Walton would furnish him with such infor- 
mation as was to his purpose. Mr Fulman did not live to 
complete his design ; but a Life of Mr Hales, from other 
materials, was compiled by the late Mr Des Maizeaux, and 
published by him in 1719, as a specimen of a new Biographical 
Dictionary. 

A Letter of Walton, to Marriot, his bookseller, upon this 
occasion, was sent me by the late Rev. Dr Birch, soon after 
the publication of my first edition of the Complete Angler, 
containing the above facts ; to which the doctor added, that 

* William Oldys, Esq. Norroy king-at-arms, author of the Life of Mr 
Cotton, prefixed to the Second Part, in the former editions of this work. 

f Mr William Fulman, amanuensis to Dr Henry Hammond. See him 
in Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. 823. Some specious arguments have been urged 
to prove that this person was the author of The Whole Duty of Man, and 
I once thought they had finally settled that long agitated question, — " To 
whom is the world obliged for that excellent work ? " but 1 find a full and 
ample refutation of them, in a book entitled Memoirs of several Ladies 
of Great Britain, by George Ballard, quarto, 1752, p. 318, and that the 
weight of evidence is greatly in favour of a lady deservedly celebrated by 
him, viz. Dorothy, the wife of Sir John Packington, Bart, and daughter 
of Thomas Lord Coventry, lord-keeper of the Great Seal, temp. Car. I. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 23 

after the year 1719, Mr Fulraan's papers came to the hands of 
Mr Des Maizeaux, who intended in some way or other to 
avail himseh" of them ; but he never published a second edition 
of his Life of Hales ; nor, for aught that I can hear, have they 
ever yet found their way into the world. 

In 1683, when he was ninety years old, Walton published 
" Thealma and Clearchus ; a pastoral history, in smooth and 
easy verse, written long" since by John Chalkhill, Esq. an 
acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser." To this poem 
he wrote a preface, containing a very amiable character of the 
author. 

He lived but a very little time after the publi'cation of this 
poem ; for, as Wood says, he ended his days on the fifteenth 
day of December, 1683, in the great frost, at Winchester, in 
the house of Dr William Hawkins, a prebendary of the church 
there, where he lies buried.* 

In the cathedral of Winchester, viz. in a chapel in the south 
aisle, called Prior Silksteed's Chapel, on a large black flat 
marble stone, is this inscription to his memory ; the poetry 
whereof has very little to recommend it : 

HERE RESTETH THE BODY OF 

MR ISAAC WALTON, 

WHO nVED THE FIFTEENTH OF DECEMBER, 
1683. 

Alas ! he 's gone before, 
Gone to return no more. 
Our panting breasts aspire 
After their aged sire, 
Whose well ?pent life did last 
Full ninety years and past : 
But now he hath begun 
That which will ne'er be done. 
Crown'd with eternal bliss, 
We wish our souls with his. 
Votis modestis sic fierutU Uheri. 

The issue of Walton's marriage were, — a son, named Isaac, 
and a daughter, named, after her mother, Anne. This son 
was placed in Christ Church College, Oxford ; f and, having 
taken his degree of bachelor of arts, travelled, together with 
his uncle, Mr (afterward bishop) Ken, in the year 1674, being 
the year of the jubilee, into France and Italy ; and, as Cotton 
says, visited Rome and Venice. Of this son, mention is made 

* Athen. Oxon. vol. i. col. 805. 

t Vide part ii. chap. vi. Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. 9S9 ; Biopr. Brit. 
art. Ken. 



24 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

in the remarkable will of Dr Donne the younger, (printed on a 
half-sheet,) in 1662 ; whereby he bequeathed to the elder 
Walton all his father's writings, as also his commonplace 
book, which, he says, may be of use to him if he makes him a 
scholar. Upon the return of the younger Walton, he prose- 
cuted his studies ; and having finished the same, entered into 
holy orders ; and became chaplain to Dr Seth Ward, bishop 
of Sarum ; by whose favour he attained to the dignity of a 
canon-residentiary of that cathedral. Upon the decease of 
Bishop Ward, and the promotion of Dr Gilbert Burnet to the 
vacant see, Mr Walton was taken into the friendship and con- 
fidence of that prelate ; and being a man of great temper and 
discretion, and for his candour and sincerity much respected 
by all the clergy of the diocess, he became very useful to him 
in conducting the affairs of the chapter. 

Old Isaac Walton having by his will bequeathed a farm 
and land near Stafford, of about the yearly value of twenty 
pounds, to this his son and his heirs for ever, upon condition, 
that if his said son should not marry before he should be of 
the age of forty-one, or, being married, should die before the 
said age, and leave no son that should live to the age of 
twenty-one, then the same should go to the corporation of 
Stafford, for certain charitable purposes ; this son, upon his 
attainment of that age, without having married, sent to the 
mayor of Stafford, acquainting him, that the estate was 
improved to almost double its former value, and that upon his 
decease the corporation would become entitled thereto. 

This worthy person died, at the age of sixty-nine, on the 
29th day of December, 1719 ; and lies interred in the cathe- 
dral church of Salisbury. 

Anne, the daughter of old Isaac Walton, and sister of the 
above person, was married to Dr William Hawkins, a divine 
and a prebendary of Winchester, mentioned above ; for whom 
Walton, in his will, expresses great affection, declaring that he 
loved him as his own son : he died the 17th day of July, 
1691, aged fifty-eight, leaving issue, by his said wife, a daughter 
named Anne, and a son named William. The daughter was 
never married, but lived with her uncle, the canon, as his 
housekeeper, and had the management of his domestic con- 
cerns : she remained settled at Salisbury, after his decease, 
until the 27th of November, 1728, when she died, and lies 
buried in the cathedral. 

William, the son of Dr Hawkins, and brother of the last 
mentioned Anne, was bred to the study of the law ; and, from 
the Middle Temple, called to the bar : but attained to no 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. '2^ 

degree of eminence in his profession. He wrote and published 
in octavo, anno 1713, A short Account of the Life of Bishop 
Ken, with a small specimen, in order to a publication of his 
Works at large; and, accordingly, in the year 1721, they 
were published in four volumes, octavo. From this Account, 
some of the above particulars respecting the family connections 
of Walton are taken. 

I am informed that this gentleman for several years laboured 
under the affliction of incurable blindness, and that he died on 
the 29th day of November, 1 748. 

A few months before his death, our Author made his will, 
which appears, by the peculiarity of many expressions con- 
tained in it, as well as by the hand, to be of his own writing. 
As there is something characteristic in this last solemn act of 
his life, it has been thought proper to insert an authentic copy 
thereof in this account of him ; postponing it only to the 
following reflections on his life and character. 

Upon a retrospect of the foregoing particulars, and a view 
of some others mentioned in a subsequent letter,* and in his 
will, it will appear that Walton possessed that essential 
ingredient in human felicity, " mens sana in corpore sano :" 
for, in his eighty-third year, he professes a resolution to begin 
a pilgrimage of more than a hundred miles, into a country the 
most difficult and hazardous that can be conceived for an aged 
man to travel in, to visit his friend Cotton,-}- and, doubtless, 



* See his Letter to Charles Cotton, Esq. prefixed to the Second Part. 

f To this journey he seems to have been invited by Mr Cotton, in the 
following beautiful stanzas, printed with other of his Poems, in 1689, 8vo. 
and addressed to his dear and most worthy friend, Mr Isaac Walton : — 

Whilst in this cold and blustering- clime, 
Where bleak w inds howl and tempests roar, 

We pass away the roughest time 
Has been of many years before. 

Whilst from the most tempestuous nook* 

The chillest blasts our peace invade, 
And by great rains our smallest brooks 

Are almost navigablemade ; 

Whilst all the ills are so improved. 

Of this dead quarter of the year. 
That even you, so much beloved, 

We would not now wish with us here : 

In this estate, I say, it is 

Some comfort to us to suppose, 
That, in a better clime than this. 

You, our dear friend, have more repose ; 

And some delight to me the while. 

Though nature now does weep in rain, 
To think that I have seen her smile, 

And baply may I do again. 



26 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. , 

to enjoy his favourite diversion of angling- in the delightful 
streams of the Dove, — and on the ninetieth anniversary of 
his birth-day, he, by his vv'ill, declares himself to be of perfect 
memory.* 

As to his worldly circumstances, notwithstanding the 
adverse accident of his being obliged, by the troubles of the 
times, to quit London, and his occupation, they appear to 
nave been commensurate, as well to the wishes as the wants 
of any but a covetous and intemperate man ; and, in his rela- 
tions and connections, such a concurrence of circumstances is 
visible, as it would be almost presumption to pray for. For, 
not to mention the patronage of those many prelates and 
dignitaries of the church, men of piety and learning, with 
whom he lived in a close intimacy and friendship ; or the 
many ingenious and worthy persons with whom he corresponded 
and conversed ; or the esteem and respect, testified by printed 
letters and eulogiums, which his writings had procured him — 
to be matched with a woman of an exalted understanding and 
a mild and humble temper, to have children of good incli- 
nations and sweet and amiable dispositions, and to see them 
well settled, — is not the lot of every man that, preferring a 
social to a solitary life, chooses to become the head of a family. 

But blessings like these are comparatively light, when 

If the all-rulin? Po-ncr please 

We live to see another May, 
We '11 recompense an age of these 

Foul days in one fine fishing day. 

We then shall have a day or two, 

Perhaps a week, wherein to try 
What the best master's hand can do 

With the most deadly killing fly : ' 

A day with not too bright a beam, 

A warm, but not a scorching sun, 
A southern gale to curl the stream. 

And, master, half our work is done. 

There, whilst behind some bush we wait 

The scaly people to betray. 
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait 

To make the preying trout our prey. 

And think ourselves, in such an hour, 

Happier than those, though not so high, 
Who, like leviathans, devour 

Of meaner men the smaller fry. 

This, my best friend, at my poor home. 

Shall be our pastime and our theme ; 
But then — should you not deign to come, 

You make all this a flattering dream. 

* These, it must be owned, are words of course in a will ; but had the 
fact been otherwise, he would have been unable to make such a judicious 
disposition of his worldly estate as he had done, or with his own hand to 
write so long an instrument as his will. 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 27 

weig-hed against those of a mind stored, like his, with a great 
variety of useful knowledge, and a temper that could harbour 
no malevolent thought or insidious design, nor stoop to the 
arts of fraud or flattery,* but dispose him to love and virtuous 
friendship, to the enjoyments of innocent delights and recrea- 
tions, to the contemplation of the works of Nature and the 
ways of Providence, and to the still sublimer pleasures of 
rational piety. 

If, possessing all these benefits and advantages, external 
and internal, (together with a mental constitution so happily 
attempered, as to have been to him a '• perpetual fountain of 
cheerfulness," j-) we can entertain a doubt that Walton was 
one of the happiest of men, we estimate them at a rate too 
low ; and shew ourselves ignorant of the nature of that felicity 
to which it is possible, even in this life, for virtuous and good 
men, with the blessing of God, to arrive. 



COPY OF WALTON'S WILL. 

August the ninth, one thousand six 
hundred eighty-three. 

Lv the Name of God, Amen : I, Izaak Walton the elder, of 
Winchester, being this present day in the ninetyeth year of my 
age, and in perfect memory, for which praised be God ; but 
considering how suddenly I may be deprived of both, do there- 
fore make this my last Will and Testament as followeth : And 
first, 1 do declare my belief to be, that there is only one God, 
who hath made the whole world, and me, and all mankind ; to 
whom I shall give an account of all my actions, which are not 
to be justified, but I hope pardoned, for the merits of my 
Saviour Jesus : And because the profession of Christianity 
does, at this time, seem to be subdivided into Papist and 
Protestante, I take it at least to be convenient, to declare my 
belief to be, in all points of faith, as the Church of England 
now professeth : and this I do the rather, because of a very 
long and very true friendship with some of the Roman Church. 
And for my worldly estate, (which I have neither got by false- 
hood or flattery, or the extreme cruelty of the law of this 
nation,:]:) 1 do hereby give and bequeath it as followeth : First, 

♦ Vide infra, in his Will. 

f See his Preface, wherein he declares that though he can be serious at 
seasonable times, he is a lover of innocent, harmless mirth, and that hia 
book is a " picture of his own disposition." 

I Alluding, perhaps, to that fundamental maxim of our law, •' Suramum 
jus est summa injuria." 



28 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

I give my son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, and to his wife ; to them 
I give all my title and right of or in a part of a house and 
shop, in Paternoster Row, in London, which I hold by lease 
from the Lord Bishop of London for about fifty years to come. 
And I do also give to them all my right and title of or to a 
house in Chancery Lane, London, wherein Mrs Greinwood 
now dwelleth, in which is now about sixteen years to come : 
I give these two leases to them, they saving my executor from 
all damage concerning the same. And I give to my son Izaak 
all my right and title to a lease of Norington farme, which I 
hold from the Lord Bishop of Winton : And I do also give 
him all my right and title to a farme or land near to Stafford, 
which I bought of Mr Walter Noell ; I say, I give it to him 
and his heirs for ever ; but upon the condition following, 
namely, if my son shall not marry before he shall be of age of 
forty and one years, or, being married, shall dye before the 
said age, and leave no son to inherit the said farme or land, 
or if his son or sons shall not live to attain the age of twenty 
and one years, to dispose otherways of it, — then I give the 
said farme or land to the towne or corporation of Stafford, in 
which I was borne, for the good and benefit of some of the 
said towne, as I shall direct, and as followeth, (but first note, 
that it is at this present time rented for twenty-one pound ten 
shillings a year, and is like to hold the said rent, if care be 
taken to keep the barn and housing in repair ;) and I would 
have, and do give ten pounds of the said rent, to bind out 
yearly, two boys, the sons of honest and poor parents, to be 
apprentices to some tradesman or some handy-craft men, to 
the intent the same boys may the better afterward get their 
own living. And I do also give five pound yearly, out of the 
said rent, to be given to some maid-servant, that hath attained 
the age of twenty and one years, not less, and dwelt long in 
one service, or to some honest poor man's daughter, that hath 
attained to that age, to be paid her at or on the day of her 
marriage ; and this being done, my will is, that what rent shall 
remain of the said farme or land, shall be disposed of as fol- 
loweth : first, I do give twenty shillings yearly, to be spent by 
the major of Stafford, and those that shall collect the said rent 
and dispose of it as I have and shall hereafter direct ; and that 
what money or rent shall remain undisposed of, shall be 
employed to buy coals for some poor people, that shall most 
need them, in the said towne ; the said coals to be delivered 
the first weeke in January, or in every first week in February ; 
I say then, because I take that time to be the hardest and -most 
pinching times with poor people j and God reward those that 



LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 29 

shall do this without partiality, and with honesty, and a g-ood 
conscience. And if the said major and others of the said tovva 
of Stafford shall prove so negligent, or dishonest, as not to 
imploy the rent by me given as intended and exprest in this 
my will, which God forbid, — then I give the said rents and 
profits of the said farme, or land, to the towne, and chief 
magistrates or governors, of Ecleshall, to be disposed of by 
them in such manner as I have ordered the disposal of it by 
the towne of Staftbrd, the said farme or land being near the 
towne of Ecleshall. And I give to my son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, 
whom 1 love as my own son ; and to my daughter, his wife ; 
and my son Izaak ; to each of them a ring, with these words 
or motto ; " Love my raemor}', I. W, obiit ; " to 

the Lord Bishop of Winton a ring, with this motto : " A mite 
for a million, L W. obiit ;" and to the friends 

hereafter named, I give to each of them a ring with this 
motto : " A friend's farewell, L W. obiit :" 

And my will is, the said rings be delivered within forty days 
after my death ; and that the price or value of all the said 
rings shall be thirteen shillings and fourpence a-piece. 1 give 
to Dr Hawkins, Doctor Donne's Sermons, which I have 
heard preacht, and read with much content. To my son 
Izaak, 1 give Dr Sibbs his " Soul's Conflict ;" and to my 
daughter his " Bruised Reed,"* desiring them to read them 
so as to be well acquainted \\'ith them. And I also give 
unto her all my books at Winchester and Droxford, and 
whatever in those two places are, or I can call mine, except 
a trunk of linen, which I give to my son Izaak : but if he do 
not live to marry, or make use of it, then I give the same to 
my grandaughter, Anne Hawkins. And I give my daughter 
Doctor Hall's Works, which be now at Farnham. To my 
son Izaak I give all my books, not yet given, at Farnham 
Castell ; and a deske of prints and pictures ; also a cabinett 
near my bed's head, in which are some little things that he 
will value, though of no great worth. And my will and 
desire is, that he shall be kind to his aunt Beachame, and his 
aunt Rose Ken ; by allowing the first about fifty shillings 
a-year, in or for bacon and cheese, not more, and paying four 
pounds a year towards the boarding of her son's dyet to Mr 
John Whitehead : for his aunt Ken, I desire him to be kind 
to her according to her necessitie and his own abilitie ; and I 
commend one of her children, to breed up as I have said I 

* This book was an instrument in the conversion of Mr Richard 
Baxttr. Sl'C Dr Calan^.y's Life of him, page 7. 



30 LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 

intend to do, if he shall be able to do it, as I know he will ; 
for they be good folke. I give to Mr John Darbyshire the 
Sermons of Mr Anthony Farringdon, or of Dr Sanderson, 
which my executor thinks fit. To my servant, Thomas 
Edgill, I give five pound in money, and all my cloths, linen 
and woollen, except one suit of cloths, which I give to Mr 
Holinshed, and forty shillings, if the said Thomas be my 
servant at my death ; if not, my cloths only. And I give my 
old friend, Mr Richard Marriot,* ten pounds in money, to be 
paid him within three months after my death ; and I desire 
my son to shew kindness to him if he shall neede, and 
my son can spare it. And I do hereby will and declare my 
son Izaak to be my sole executor of this my last will and 
testament ; and Dr Hawkins, to see that he performs it ; 
which I doubt not but he will. I desire my burial may be 
near the place of my death, and free from any ostentation or 
charge, but privately. This I make to be my last will, (to 
which I shall only add the codicil for rings,) this sixteenth 
day of August, one thousand six hundred eighty-three, 
Izaak Walton. Witness to this will. 

The rings I give are as on the other side. To my brother, 
John Ken ; to my sister, his wife ; to my brother. Doctor 
Ken ; to my sister Pye ; to Mr Francis Morley ; to Mr 
George Vernon ; to his wife ; to his three daughters ; to Mistris 
Nelson ; to Mr Richard Walton ; to Mr Palmer ; to Mr 
Taylor ; to Mr Thomas Garrard ; to the Lord Bishop of 
Sarum ; to Mr Rede, his servant ; to my cousin, Dorothy 
Kenrick ; to my cousin Lewin ; to Mr Walter Higgs ; to Mr 
Charles Cotton ; to Mr Richard Marry ot — twenty-two. To 
my brother Beacham ; to my sister, his wife ; to the Lady Anne 
How ; to Mrs King, Dr Phillips's wife ; to Mr Valentine 
Harecourt ; to Mrs Eliza Johnson ; to Mrs Mary Rogers ; 
to Mrs Eliza Milward ; to Mrs Dorothy Wollop ; to Mr 
Will. Milward, of Christchurch, Oxford ; to Mr John Darby- 
shire ; to Mr tFndevill ; to Mrs Rock ; to Mr Peter White ; 
to Mr John Lloyde ; to my cousin, Creinsell's widow ; Mrs 
Dalbin must not be forgotten — sixteen. Izaak Walton. 
Note, that several lines are blotted out of this Mill, for they 
were twice repeated, — and that this will is now signed and 
sealed this twenty and fourth day of October, one thousand 
six hundred eighty-three, in the presence of us : Witness, 
Abraham Markland, Jos. Taylor, Thobias Crawley. 

• Bookseller, and his Publisher. 



THE 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 



TO THE RIGHT WOKSHIPFUL 

JOHN OFFLEY, ESQ. 

OF M\DELY MANOR, IK THE COUNTY OF STAFFORD. 



MY MOST HONOURED FRIEND, 

Sir, — I have made so ill use of your former favours, as by them to be 
encouraged to entreat, that they may be enlarged to the patronage and 
protection of this book : and I have put on a modest confidence that 
shall not be denied, because it is a discourse of fish and fishing, which 
you know so well, and both love and practise so much. 

You are assured, though there be ignorant men of another belief, that 
angling is an art, and you know that art better than others ; and that 
this truth is demonstrated by the fruits of that pleasant labour which you 
enjoy, when you purpose to give rest to your mind, and divest yourself 
of your more serious business, and (which is often) dedicate a day or two 
to this recreation. 

At which time, if common anglers should attend you, and be eye- 
witnesses of the success, not of your fortune, but your skill, it would 
doubtless beget in them an emulation to be like you, and that emulation 
might beget an industrious diligence to be so ; but I know it is not 
attainable by common capacities. And there be now many men of great 
wisdom, learning, and experience, which love and practise this art, that 
know I speak the truth. 

Sir, this pleasant curiosity of fish and fishing, of which you are so 
great a master, has been thought worthy the pens and practices of divers 
m other nations, that have been reputed men of great learning and wisdom. 
And amongst those of this nation, I remember Sir Henry Wotton( a dear 
lover of this art) has told me, that his intentions were to write a discourse 



32 



EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 



of the art, and in praise of angling ; and doubtless he had done so if death 
had not prevented him ; the remembrance of which hath often made me 
sorry ; for if he had lived to do it, then the unlearned angler had seen 
some better treatise of this art, a treatise that might have proved worthy 
his perusal, which, though some have undertaken, I could never yet see 
in English. 

But mine may be thought as weak and as unworthy of common view ; 
and I do here freely confess, that I should rather excuse myself than 
censure others, my own discourse being liable to so many exceptions ; 
against which you, sir, might make one, that it can contribute nothing 
to your knowledge. And, lest a longer epistle may diminish your pleasure, 
I shall make this no longer than to add this following truth, that I am, 
really, sir, your most affectionate friend, and most humble servant, 

IzAAK Walton. 



TO 

ALL READERS OF THIS DISCOURSE, 

BUT ESPECIALLY 

TO THE HONEST ANGLER. 



I THINK fit to tell thee these following truths, that I did neither 
undertake, nor write, nor publish, and much less own, this discourse to 
please myself: and having been too easily drawn to do all to please 
others, as I propose not the gaining of credit by this undertaking, so I 
would not willingly lose any part of that to which I had a just title befqre 
I begun it, and do therefore desire and hope, if I deserve not commenda- 
tions, yet I may obtain pardon. 

And though this discourse may be liable to some exceptions, yet I 
cannot doubt but that most readers may receive so much pleasure or 
profit by it, as may make it worthy the time of their perusal, if they l»e 
not too grave or too busy men. And this is all the confidence that I can 
put on, concerning the merit of what is here offered to their considera- 
tion and censure ; and if the last prove too severe, as I have a liberty, so 
I am resolved to use it, and neglect all sour censures. 

And I wish the reader also to take notice, that in writing of it, I have 
made myself a recreation of a recreation ; and that it might prove so to 
him, and not read dull and tediously, I have in several places mixed, not 
any scurrility, but some innocent, harmless mirth, of which, if thr)u be a 



EPISTLE TO THE READER. 33 

severe, sour complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a compe- 
tent judge ; for divines say, there are oflFences given, and offences not 
given, but taken. 

And I am the vvlllinger to justify the pleasant part of it, because though 
it is known I can be serious at all seasonable times, yet the whole 
discourse is, or rather was, a picture of my own disposition, especially in 
such days and times as I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing with 
honest Nat. and R. Roe ; * but they are gone, and with them most of 
my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away, and returns not. 

And next let me add this, that he that likes not the book, should like 
the excellent picture of the Trout, and some of the other hsh ; which I 
may take a liberty to commend, because they concern not myself. 

Next let me tell the reader, that in that which is the more useful part 
of this discourse, that is to say, the observations of the nature and breed- 
ing, and seasons, an<i catching of fish, I am not so simple as not to know, 
that a captious reader may find exceptions against something said of some 
of these ; and therefore I must entreat him to consider, that experience 
teaches us to know that- several countries alter the time, and I think, 
almost the manner, of fishes' breedlnar, but doubtless of their being in 
season ; as may appear bv three rivers in JNIonmouthshlre, namely, 
Severn, Wye, and Usk, where Camden, Brit. f. 633, observes, that in the 
river Wye salmon are in season from September to April ; and we are 
certain, that in Thames and Trent, and in most other rivers, they be in 
season the six hotter months. 

Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man 
that was none, to be an angler by a book ; he that undertakes it, shall 
undertake a harder task than Mr Hales, a most valiant and excellent 
fencer, who, in a printed book called " A Private School of Defence," 
undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labour. 
Not but that many useful things might be learned by that book; but he 
was laughed at because that art was not to be taught bywords, but 
practice : and so must angling. And note also, that in this discourse I 
do not undertake to say all that is known, or may be said of it, but I 
undertake to acquaint the reader with many things that are not usually 
kuown to every angler; and I shall leave gleanings and observations 
enough to be made out of the experience of all that love and practise this 
recreation, to which I shall encourage them. For angling may be said 
to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt; at least 
not so fully, but that there will still be more new experiments left for the 
trial of other men that succeed us. 



* These persons are supposed to have been related to Walton, from the circumstance of a 
eopy, handed down, of his Lives of Donne, Sir H. Wotton, Hooker, and Herbert, wherein ii 
written by the author on the frontispiece. For my Cousin Roe, 
C 



84 EPISTLE TO THE READER. 

But I think all that love this game may here learn something that may 
be worth their money, if they be not poor and needy men : and in case 
they be, I then wish them to forbear to buy it ; for I write not to get 
money, but for pleasure, and this discourse boasts of no more j for I hate 
to promise much, and deceive the reader. 

And however it proves to him, yet I am sure I have found a high con- 
tent in the search and conference of what is here offered to the reader's 
view and censure ; I wish him as much in the perusal of it, and so I 
might here take my leave ; but will stay a little and tell him, that whereas 
it is said by many, that in fly-fishing for a trout, the angler must observe 
his twelve several flies for the twelve months of the year, — I say, he that 
follows that rule shall be as sure to catch fish, and be as wise as he that 
makes hay by the fair days in an almanack, and no surer ; for those very 
flies that used to appear about and on the water in one month of the year, 
may, the following year, come almost a month sooner or later, as the same 
year proves colder or hotter : and yet, in the fol'owing Discourse, I have 
set down the twelve flies that are in reputation with many anglers ; and 
they may serve to give him some observations concerning them. And he 
may note, that there are in Wales, and other countries, peculiar flies, 
proper to the particular place or country ; and, doubtless, unless a maa 
makes a fly to counterfeit that very fly in that place, he is like to lose his 
labour, or much of it ; but for the generality, three or four flies, neat and 
rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers all the 
summer ; and for winter fly-fishing, is as useful as an almanack out of 
date. And of these, because as no man is born an artist, so no man is 
born an angler, I thought fit to give thee this notice. 

When I have told the reader, that in this fifth* impression there are 
many enlargements, gathered both by my own observation, and the com- 
munication with friends, I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a 
rainy evening to read this following discourse ; and that, if he be an honest 
*tngler, the^east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing. 

I. W. 

* Tlie fifth, as it is the last of the editions published in the author's lifetime, has been care- 
fully followed in the present publication, ♦- See the Author's Life. 



COMMENDATORY VERSES. 



TO MY DEAR BROTHER, IZAAK WALTON, 
UPON HIS COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Erasmus, in his learned Colloquies, 
Has mix'd some toys, tnat, by varieties, 
He might entice all readers : for in him 
Each child may wade, or tallest giant swim. 
And such is this discourse : there 's none so low, 
Or highly learn'd, to whom hence may not flow 
Pleasure and information ; both which are 
Taught us with so much art, that I might swear 
Safely, the choicest critic cannot tell 
Whether your matchless judgment most excel 
In angling or its praise ; where commendation 
First charms, then makes an art a recreation. 

'Twas so to me ; who saw the cheerful spring 
Pictured in every meadow ; heard birds sing 
Sonnets in every grove ; saw fishes play 
In the cool crystal streams, like lambs in May : 
And they may play, till anglers read this book j 
But after, 'tis a wise fish 'scapes a hook. 

Jo. Floud, Master of Arts. 

TO THE READER OF THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

First, mark the title well : my friend that gave it 
Has made it good ; this book deserves to have it ; 
For he that views it with judicious looks, 
Shall find it full of art, baits, lines, and hooks. 

The world the river is ; both you and I, 
And all mankind, are either fish or fry. 
If we pretend to reason, first or last. 
His baits will tempt us, and his hooks holdfast. 
Pleasure or profit, either prose or rhyme, 
If not at first, will doubtless take in time. 

Here sits, in secret, bless'd Theology, 
Waited upon by grave Philosophy — 
Both natural and moral ; History, 
Deck'd and adorn'd with flowers of Poetry, 
The matter and expnssion striving which 
Shall most excel in worth, yet not seem rich. 
There is no danger in his baits ; that hook 
Will prove the safest that is surest took. 



36 COMMENDATORY VERSES. 

For are we caught alone, but, which is best. 
We shall be wholesome, and be toothsome dress'^ ; 
Dress'd to be fed, not to be fed upon ; 
And danger of a surfeit here is none. 
The solid food of serious contemplation 
Is sauced here, with such harmless recreation, 
That an ingenuous and religious mind 
Cannot inquire for more than it may find 
Ready at once prepared, either t' excite 
Or satisfy a curious appetite. 

More praise is due : for 'tis both positive 
And truth, which once was interrogative, 
And utter'd by the poet, then, in jest, — 
£!t piscatorem piscis amare potest. 

Ch. Harvie,* Master of Arts, 



10 MY DEAR FRIEND, MR IZAAK WALTON, 

IN FRillSE OF ANGLING, WHICH WE BOTH LOVB. 

Down by this smooth stream's wandering side, 

Adorn'd and perfumed with the pride 

Of Flora's wardrobe, where the shrill 

Aerial choir express their skill, 

First, in alternate melody. 

And then in chorus all agree. 

Whilst the charm'd fish, as ecstasied 

With sounds, to his own throat denied,2 

Scorns his dull element, and springs 

I' th' air, as if his fins were wings. 

' Tis here that pleasures sweet and high 
Prostrate to our embraces lie : 
Such as to body, soul, or fame, 
Create no sickness, sin, or shame : 
Roses, not fenced with pricks, grow here ; 
Ho sting to th' honey bag is near : 
But, what 's perhaps their prejudice. 
They difficulty want and price. 

An obvious rod, a twist of hair. 
With hook hid in an insect, are 
Engines of sport would fit the wish 
O' th' epicure, and fill his dish. 

In this clear stream let fall a grub, 
And straight take up a dace or chub. 
I' th' mud, your worm provokes a sniff, 
Which being fa>t, if it prove big. 
The Gotham folly will be found 
Discreet, ere ta'en she must be drown'd. 
The tench, physician of the brook. 
In yon dead hole expects your hook ; 

* Snpposed to be Christopher Harvie, for whom see Alhcn. Oxen. toI. I 
et vide infra, chap. v. 



COMMENDATORY VERSES. 37 

Whict, Kaving first your pastime been, 
Serves then for meat or medicine. 
Ambush'd behind that root doth stay 
A pike ; to catch, and be a prey. 
The treacherous quill in this slow stream 
Betrays the hunger of a bream. 
And at that nimble ford, no doubt, 
Your false fly cheats a speckled trout. 

When you these creatures wisely choose 
To practise on, which to your use 
Owe their creation, and when 
Fish from your arts do rescue men, 
To plot, delude, and circumvent, 
Ensnare, and spoil, is innocent. 
Here by these crystal streams you may 
Preserve a conscience clear as they ; 
And when by sullen thoughts you find 
Your harassed, not busied, mind 
In sable melancholy clad, 
Distemper'd, serious, turning sad ; 
Hence fetch your cure, cast in your bait, 
All anxious thoughts and cares will straight 
Fly with such speed, they '11 seem to be 
Possess'd with the hydrophobie : 
The water's calmness in your breast, 
And smoothness on your brow, shall rest. 

Away with sports of charge and noise, 
And give me cheap and silent joys ; 
Such as Actseon's gam.* pursue. 
Their fate oft makes the tale seem true. 
The sick or sullen hawk, to-day. 
Flies not ; to-morrow, quite away. 
Patience and purse to cards and dice 
Too oft are made a sacrifice : 
The daughter's dower, th' inheritance 
O' th' son, depend on one mad chance. 
The harms and mischiefs which th' abuse 
Of wine doth every day produce, 
Make good the doctrine of the Turks, 
That in each grape a devil lurks. 
And by yon fading sapless tree, 
'Bout which the ivy twined you see, 
His f ite 's foretold, who fondly places 
His bliss in woman's soft embraces : 
All pleasures, but the angler's, bring 
r the tail repentance, like a sting. 

Then on these banks let me sit down, 
Free from the toilsome sword and gown ; 
And pity those that do affect 
To conquer nations and protect. 
My reed affords such true content, 
Delights so sweet and innocent, 
As seldom fall unto the lot 
Of sceptres, though they 're justly got. 

1349. Tho. Weaver, Master of Arts. 



38 COMMENDATORY VERSES. 

TO THE READERS 

OF MY MOST INGENUOUS FRIEND'S BOOK, "THE COMPLETE ANGLBR." 

Hk that both knew and writ the Lives of men, 
Such as were once, but must not be again ; 
Witness his matchJess Donne and Wotton, by 
Whose aid he could their speculations try : 
He that conversed with angels, such as were 
Ouldsvvorth * and Featly,f each a shining star 
Shewing the way to Bethlem ; each a saint, 
Compared to whom our zealots, now, but paint : 
He that our pious and learn'd Morley | knew, 
And from him suck'd wit and devotion too : 
He that from these such excellencies fetch'd. 
That He could tell how high and f .r they reach'd ; 
What learning this, what graces th' other had ; 
And in what several dress each soul wus clad : 
Reader, this He, this fisherman, comes forth, 
And in these fisher's weeds would shroud his worth. 
Now his mute harp is on a willow hung, 
With which, when finely touch'd and fitly strung. 
He could friends' passions for these times allay, 
Or chain his fellow anglers from their prey. 
But now the music of his pen is still, 
And he sits by a brook watching a quill, 
Where with a fix'd eye and a ready hand. 
He studies first to hook, and then to land 
Some Trout, or Perch, or Pike ; and having done, 
Sits on a bank, and tells how this was won, 
And that escaped his hook, which with a wile 
Did eat the bait, and fisherman beguile. 
Thus whilst some vex'd they from their lands are thrown, 
He joys to think the waters are his own ; 
And like the Dutch, he gladly can agree 
To live at peace now, and have fishing free. 
Aprils, I6b0. Edv. PowEhh, Master of Arts. 

TO MY DEAR BROTHER, MR IZAAK WALTON, 

ON HIS COMPLETE ANGLER. 

This book is so like you, and you like it, 
For harmless mirth, expression, art, and wit, 
'J'hat I protest, ingenuously 'tis true, 
I love this mirth, art, wit, the book, and you. 

Rob. Floud, C 

LAUDATORUM CARMINA. 

CLARISSIMO AMICISSIMOQUE FRATRI, DOMINO ISAACO WALTON, 

ARTIS PISCXTORI^ PERITISSIMO. , 

LTnicus est medicus reliquorum piscis, et istis, 
Fas quibus est medicum taugere, certa salus, 

« Dr Richard Holdsworth. See an account of him in the Fatti Oxon. 2W ; 
uid in Ward'sLit'fj of the Gresham Pro/essort. 
t Dr Daniel Featly, for whom see At/ten. Oxen. 603. 
X Dr George Morley, bishop of Winchester. 



COMMENDATORY VERSES. 39 

Hie t\^us est salvatoiis miiandus Jesu, 

* Litera mysterium quaelibet hiijus habet. 
Hunc cupio, hunc capias (bone frater arundinis,) 

f Solveret hie pro me debita, teque Deo. [;;^^!/v : 
Piscis is est, et piscator, mihi credito, qualem 

Vel piscatorem piscis amare velit. 

Henry Bailey, Artium Magister. 

AD VIRUM OPTIMUM ET PISCATOREM PERITISSIMUM, 

ISAACUM WALTONUM. 

Magister artis docte piscatoriae, 
Waltone, salve ! magne dux arundinis, 
Sen tu reducta valle solus ambulas, 
Prseterfliientes interim observans aquas. 
Seu forte puri stans in amnis margine, 
Sive in tenacl gramine et ripi sedens, 
Fallis pel ita squameum pecus manu ; 
O te beatum ! qui procul negotiis, 
Forique ct ufbis pulvere et strepitu carens, 
Extraque turbani, ad len^ nianantes aquas 
Vagos lionesta traude pisces decipis. 
Dum csetera ergo pen^ gens inortalium 
Aut retia invicem sibi et technas struunt, 
Donis, ut hamn, aut Divites captant senes; 
Gregi natantum tu interim nectis dolos, 
Voracem inescas advenam hamo lucium, 
Avidamve percam parvulo alburno capis, 
Aut verme rufFo, muscul • aut truttam levi, 
Cautumv^ cyprinum, et fere indocil«>m capi 
Calamoque linoque, ars et hunc superat tua ; 
Medicamv^ tincam, gobium aut esca trahis, 
Gratum palato gobium, parvum licet ; 
Praedamve, non aeque salubrem barbulum, 
Etsi ampliorem, et mystace insignem gravi. 
Hae sunt tibi aites, dum annus et terapus sinunt, 
Et nulla transit absque linea dies. 
Nee sola praxis, se.l theoria et tibi 
!Nota artis hujus ; unde tu simul bonus 
Piscator, idem et sciiptor ; et calami potens 
Utriusque necdum et ictus, et tamen sapis. 
Ut hamiotam nempe tironem instruas ! 



IXeY2 


PISCIS, 


I ^IriO-oZ; 


Jesus. 


X X^iirros 


Christus. 


© €)iou, 


Dei. 


T 'r]o;. 


FUius. 


2 laiT'/ip 


Salvator. 



t Malt. XV ii. 27. the last ^vords of the chapter. 



40 LAUDATORUM CARMlJlA. 

Stylo eleganti scribis en Halieutica 

Oppianus alter, artis et methodum tuae, et 

Praecepta prom is rit6 piscatoria, 

Varias et escas pisciura, indolem, et genus. 

Nee tradere artem sat putiis piscariam 

(Virtutis est hsec et taraen qusedam schola 

Patientiamque et temperantiam docet;) 

Dooumenta quin majora das, et regulas 

Sublimioris artis, et perennia 

Monimenta morum, vitse et exempla optima ; 

Dum tu profundum scribis Hookerum, et pium 

Donnum ac disertum ; sanctum et Herbertum, sacrum 

Vatem ; hos videmus nam penicillo tuo 

Graphic^, et perita, Isaace, depictos manu. 

Post fata fuctos hosce per te Virbios ! * 

O quae voluptas est legere in scriptis tuis ! 

Sic tu libris nos, lineis pisces capis, 

Musisque litterisque dum incumbis, licet 

Intentus hamo, interque piscandum studes. 



ALIUD 

AD ISAACUM WALTONUM, 

VIRUM ET PISCATOREM OPTIMUM. 

IsAACE, Macte hac arte piscatoria ; 
Hac arte Petrus principi censum dedit; 
Hac arte princej)s nee Petro nnilto prior, 
Tranquillus ille, teste Tranquillo,f pater 
Patriae, solebat recreare se lubens 
Augustus, hamo instructus ac arundine. 
Tu nunc, Amice, proximum clari es decus 
Post Caesarem hami, gentis ac Halieuticae ; 
Euge, O professor, artis baud ingloriae, 
Doctor cathedrae, perlegens piscariam ! 
!Nae tu magister, et ego discipulus tuus, 
Nam candidatum et me ferunt arundinis, 
Socium hac in arte nobilem nacti sumus. 
Quid amplius, "Waltone, nam dici potest? 
Ipse hamiota Dominus en orbis fuit ! 

Jaco. Dup. I D. D. 

* " Virbius, quasi bis vir," is an epithet applied to Hippolytus, becaixse he was by Diana 
restored to life after his death. Vide Ovidii Met. lib. xv. v. 636, et seq. Hoffmanni " Lexicon 
Universale," art. Virbius. In this place it is meant to express, that by Walton's skill in bio- 
graphy, those persons whose lives he has written are so accurately represented, as that, even 
after their deaths, they are a^ain, as it were, brought to life. 

+ I. e. Suetonius Tranquillus. 

X The contracting of surnames is a faulty practice ; the above might stand for " Duppa," 
but signifies " Duport." This person was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Pro- 
fessor of Greek in that University. His father, John, had a hand m the translation of King 
James's Bible. — Fuller's Ch. Hist, book x. p. 46. Dr James Duport wrote also the tatin 
verses preceding these ; and both copies are extant in a volume of Latin poems bjt him, sn- 
titled " Musae SubsecivK," printed at Cambridge, in 8vo. 1676. 







VV.\^\K 






AMWELL HILL. 



THE 

COMPLETE ANGLER. 

PART FIRST. 

CHAPTER I. 

CONFERENCE BETWIXT AN ANGLER, A HUNTER, AND A FALCONER ; 
EACH COMMENDING HIS RECREATION. 



PISCATOR, VENATOR, AUCEPS. 

Piscator. You are well overtaken, gentlemen! A good 
morning to you both ! I have stretched my legs up Tottenham 
Hill to overtake you, hoping your business may occasion you 
towards Ware, whither I am going this fine fresh May morning. 

Venator. Sir, I for my part shall almost answer your hopes ; 
for my purpose is to drink my morning's draught at the Thatched 
House in Hodsden, and I think not to rest till 1 come thither, 
where I have appointed a friend or two to meet me ; but for 
this gentleman that you see with me, I know not how far he 
intends his journey : he came so lately into my company that I 
have scarce had time to ask him the question. 

Auceps. Sir, I shall by your favour bear you company as far 
as Theobald's, * and there leave you ; for then I turn up to a 
friend's house, who mews f a hawk for me, which I now long 
to see. 

Venator. Sir, we are all so happy as to have a fine, fresh, 
cool morning ; and I hope we shall each be the happier in the 

* Theobald's, in the county of Hertford, a house built by Lord Burleigh, 
and much improved by bis son, Holi rt, Earl of Salisbury, who exchanged 
it with King James the First for Hatfield.— Camden's Brit. Hertfordshire. 

t Mew signifies to moult, and hence we understand, that the friend of 
Auceps kept liis hawk while it moulted. — J. R. 



42 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Other's company. And, gentlemen, that I may not lose yours, 
I shall either abate or amend my pace to enjoy it, knowing that, 
as the Italians say, good company in a journey makes the way to 
seem the shorter. 

Auceps. It may do so, sir, Avith the help of good discourse, 
which, methinks, we may promise from you, that both look 
and speak so cheerfully : and for my part, I promise you, as an 
invitation to it, that I will be as free and open-hearted as dis- 
cretion will allow me to be with strangers. 

Venator. And, sir, I promise the like. 

Piscator. I am right glad to hear your answers ; and in 
confidence you speak the truth, I shall put on a boldness to 
ask you, sir, whether business or pleasure caused you to be 
so early up, and walk so fast ? for this other gentleman hath 
declared he is going to see a hawk that a friend mews for him. 

Venator. Sir, mine is a mixture of both, a little business and 
more pleasure ; for I intend this day to do all my business, and 
then bestow another day or two in hunting the otter, which a 
friend that I go to meet tells me is much pleasanter than any 
Other chase whatsoever : howsoever, I mean to try it ; for 
to-morrow morning we shall meet a pack of otter dogs of noble 
Mr Saddler's,* upon Am well Hill, who will be there so early 
that they intend to prevent the sun rising. 

Piscator. Sir, my fortune has answered my desires, and my 
purpose is to bestow a day or two in helping to destroy some 
of those villainous vermin ; for I hate them perfectly, because 
they love fish so well, or rather, because they destroy so much ; 
indeed so much that, in my judgment, all men that keep otter 
dogs ought to have pensions from the king, to encourage them 
to destroy the very breed of those base otters, they do so much 
mischief. 

Venator. But what say you to the foxes of the nation, would' 
not you as vidllingly have them destroyed ? for doubtless they 
do as much mischief as otters do. 

Piscator. Oh, sir, if they do it, it is not so much to me and 
my fraternity, as those base vermin the otters do. 

Auceps. Why, sir, I pray of what fraternity are you, that you 
are so angry with the poor otters ? 

Piscator. I am, sir, a brother of the angle, and therefore 
an enemy to the otter : for you are to note, that we anglers 

* Sir Henry Chauncy, in speakincc of this gpntleman, says, that, " he 
delighted much in hawking and hunting, and the pleasures of a country 
life ; was famous for his noble table, his groat hospitality to his neighbours, 
and his abundant charity to the poor ; and, after he had lived to a great 
age, died on the 12th dav of February, IfifiO, without issue; whereupon 
this manor descended to Walter Lord Aston, the son and heir of Gertrude, 
his sister." Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, p. 219. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 43 

all love one another, and therefore do I bate the otter both for 
my own and for their sakes who are of my brotherhood. 

Venator. And I am a lover of hounds : I have followed many 
a pack of dogs many a mile, and heard many merry huntsmen 
make sport and scoff at anglers, 

Auceps. And I profess myself a falconer, and have heard 
many grave, serious men pity them, it is such a heavy, contemp- 
tible, dull, recreation. 

Piscator. You know, gentlemen, it is an easy thing to scoff 
at any art or recreation ; a httle wit mixed with ill-nature, confi- 
dence, and malice, will do it ; but though they often venture 
boldly, yet they are often caught, even in their own trap, 
according to that of Lucian, the father of the family of scoffers : 

Lucian, well skill'd in scoffing, this hath writ, — . 
Friend, that 's your foliy whicli you think your wit; 
This, you vent oft, void both of wit and fear. 
Meaning another when yourself you jeer. 

If to this you add what Solomon says of scoffers, that they 
are an abomination to mankind, let him that thinks fit scoff on, 
and be a scoffer stUl ; but I account them enemies to me and to 
all that love vutue and angling. 

And for you that have heard many grave, serious men pity 
anglers ; let- me tell you, sir, there be many men that are by 
others taken to be serious and grave men, which we contemn 
and pity. Men that are taken to be grave, because nature hath 
made them of a sour complexion — money-getting men, men 
that spend aU their time, first in getting, and next in anxious 
care to keep it — men that are condemned to be rich, and 
then always busy or discontented: for these poor rich men, 
we anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow 
their thoughts to think ourselves so happy. No, no, sir! we 
enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions, and, 
as the learned and ingenuous Montaigne* says, like himself, 
freely, " WTien my cat and I entertain each other with mutual 
apish tricks, as plajdng with a garter, who knows but that I 
make my cat more sport than she makes me ? Shall I conclude 
her to be simple, that has her time to begin or refuse to play 
as freely as I myself have ? Nay, who knows but that it is a 
defect of my not understanding her language (for doubtless cats 
talk and reason ^^^th one another) that we agree no better? 
and who knows but that she pities me for being no -wiser than 
to play with her, and laughs and censures my folly for making 
sport for her, when we two play together?" 

Thus freely speaks Montaigne concerning cats ; and I hope I 
may take as great a liberty to blame any man, and laugh at him 

» In Apology for Raimond de Sebonde. 



44 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

too, let him be never so grave, that hath not heard what 
anglers can say in the justification of their Art and Recreation ; 
which I may again tell you, is so full of pleasure, that we need 
not borrow their thoughts to tliink ourselves happy. 

Venator. Sir, you have almost amazed me ; for, though I am 
no scoffer, yet I have — I pray let me speak it without offence 
— always looked upon anglers as more patient and more simple 
men than, I fear, I shall find you to be. 

Piscator. Sir, I hope you will not judge my earnestness to 
be impatience : and for my simplicity, if by that you mean a 
harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the 
primitive Christians, who were, as most anglers are, qidet men, 
and followers of peace — men that were so simply wise as not 
to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation 
and a fear to die, — if you mean such simple men as lived in 
those times Avhen there were fewer lawyers — when men might 
have had a lordship safely conveyed to them in a piece of 
parchment no bigger than yoiu" hand, though several sheets 
will not do it safely in this wiser age, — I say, sir, if you take us 
anglers to be such simple men as I have spoke of, then myself 
and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood : 
But if by simplicity you meant to express a general defect in 
those that profess and practise the excellent art of angling, 1 
hope in time to disabuse you, and make the contrary appear so 
evidently, that if you will but have patience to hear me, I shall 
remove all the anticipations that discourse, or time, or prejudice, 
have possessed you with against that laudable and ancient art ; 
for I know it is worthy the knowledge and practice of a vvdse 
man. 

But, gentlemen, though I be able to do this, I am not so 
unmannerly as to engross all the discourse to myself ; and, there- 
fore, you two having declared yourselves, the one to be a lover 
of hawks, the other of hounds, I shall be most glad to hear 
what you can say in the commendation of that recreation which 
each of you love and practise ; and having heard what you can 
say, I shall be glad to exercise your attention with what I can 
say concerning my own recreation and art of angling, and, by 
this means, we shall make the way to seem the shorter ; and 
if you like my motion, I would have Mr Falconer to begin. 

Auceps. Your motion is consented to with all my heart ; and 
to testify it, I will begin as you have desired me. 

And first, for the element that 1 use to trade in, which is the 
air, an element of more worth than weight, an element that 
doubtless exceeds both the earth and water ; for though I some- 
times deal in both, yet the air is most properly mine — land my 
hawks use that most, and it yields us most recreation : it stops 
not the high soaring of my noble generous falcon ; in it she 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 45 

ascends to such a height as the dull eyes of beasts and fish are 
not able to reach to; their bodies are too gross for such high 
elevations : in the air my troops of hawks soar up on high, 
and when they are lost in the sight of men, then they attend 
upon and converse with the gods ; therefore I think my eagle 
is so justly styled Jove's servant in ordinary : and that very 
falcon that I am now going to see, deserves no meaner a 
title, for she usually in her flight endangers herself, like the son 
of Daedalus, to have her wings scorched by the sun's heat, she 
flies so near it ; but her mettle makes her careless of danger, 
for she then heeds nothing, but makes her nimble pinions cut 
the fluid air, and so makes her highway over the steepest 
mountains and deepest rivers, and, in her glorious career, looks 
wdth contempt upon those high steeples and magnificent palaces 
which we adore and wonder at ; from which height I can make 
her to descend, by a word from my mouth, (which she both 
knows and obeys,) to accept of meat from my hand, to own 
me for her master, to go home Mith me, and be wiUing the 
next day to afford me the Hke recreation. 

And more : this element of air, which I profess to trade in, the 
worth of it is such, and it is of such necessity, that no creature 
whatsoever — not only those numerous creatm'es that feed on the 
face of the earth, but those various creatures that have their 
dwelling A\ithin the waters, every creature that hath life in its 
nostrils, stands in need of my element. The waters cannot 
preserve the fish without air, witness the not breaking of ice in 
an extreme frost ; the reason is, for that if the inspiring and 
expiring organ of any animal be stopped, it suddenly }ields to 
nature and dies. Thus necessary is air to the existence both of 
fish and beasts, nay, even to man himself ; that air, or breath of 
life, with whiL'h God at first inspired mankind, he, if he wants it, 
dies presently-, becomes a sad object to all that loved and beheld 
him, and in an instant turns to putrefaction. 

Nay, more, the very birds of the air, those that be not hawks, 
are both so many, and so useful and pleasant to mankind, that I 
must not let them pass -without some observations : they both 
feed and refresh him ; feed him AAdth their choice bodies, and 
refresh him with their heavenly voices : * I will not undertake to 
mention the several kinds of fowl by which this is done : and his 
curious palate pleased by day, and which with their very excre- 
ments afford him a soft lodging at night. These I wWl pass by, 

* To these particulars may be added, that the kings of Persia were wont 
to hawk after butterflies witli sparrows and stares, or starlings, trained for 
the purpose. — Burton on Melancholy, 1651, p. 268. from the relations of Sir 
Anthony Shirley. And we are also told, that M. de Luisnes, (;ifterward» 
prime minister of France,) in the nonage of Louis XIIl, gained much upon 
liim by making hawks catch little birds, and by making some of those little 
birds again catch butterflies. — Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p 134. 



46 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

but not those little nimble musicians of tbe air, that warble forth 
their curious ditties, with which natui-e hath furnished them to 
the shame of art. 

As first the lark, when she means to rejoice ; to cheer herself 
and those that hear her ; she then quits the earth and sings as 
she ascends higher into the air, and having ended her heavenly- 
employment, grows then mute and sad, to think she must descend 
to the dull earth, which she would not touch, but for necessity. 
How do the blackbird and throssel,* with their melodious 
voices, bid welcome to the cheerful Spring, and in their fixed 
months warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can 
reach to ! 

Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular 
seasons, as namely the laverock, f the titlark, the little linnet, 
and the honest robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead. 

But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes 
such sweet loud music out of her httle instrumental throat, that 
it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that 
at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, 
as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the 
natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her 
voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, " Lord, what 
music has thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou 
affordest bad men such music on earth ! " 

And this makes me the less to wonder at the many aviaries in 
Italy, or at the great charge of Varro his aviary, the ruins of 
M'hich are yet to be seen in Rome, and is still so famous there, 
that it is reckoned for one of those notables which men of foreign 
nations either record or lay up in their memories when they return 
from travel. 

This for the birds of pleasure, of which very much more might 
be said. My next shall be of birds of political use. I think 'tis 
not to be doubted that swallows have been taught to carry letters 
between two armies. But 'tis certain, that when the Turks 
besieged Malta or Rhodes — I now remember not which it was — 
pigeons are then related to carry and recarry letters : and Mr 
G. Sandys, in his Travels, relates it to be done betmxt Aleppo 
and Babylon. But if that be disbelieved, it is not to be doubted 
that the dove was sent out of the ark by Noah, to give him notice 
of land, when to him all appeared to be sea ; and the dove proved 
a faithful and comfortable messenger. And for the sacrifices of 
the law, a pair of turtle-doves, or young pigeons, were as well 
accepted as costly bulls and rams. " And when God would feed 
the prophet Elijah," 1 Kings xvii. after a kind of miraculous 
manner, he did it by ravens, who brought him meat morning and 

* The song- thrush, {turdus mtistcus.) — J. R. 

t The skylark. Walton's name, laverock, ia still common in Scotland. —J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 47 

evening. Lastly, the Holy Ghost, when he descended visiMy 
upon our Saviour, did it by assuming the shape of a dove. And, 
to conclude this part of my discourse, pray remember these 
wonders were done by birds of the air, the element in which 
they and I take so much pleasure. 

There is also a little contemptible -winged creature, an inhabi- 
tant of my aerial element, namely, the laborious bee, of whose 
prudence, policy, and regular government of their ovm common- 
wealth, I might say much, as also of their several kinds, and how 
useful their honey and wax are both for meat and medicines to 
mankind ; but I will leave them to their sweet labour, \vithout 
the least disturbance, believing them to be all very busy at this 
very time amongst the herbs and flowers that we see nature puts 
forth this May morning. 

And now to return to my hawks, from whom I have made 
too long a digression : you are to note, that they are usually 
distinguished into two kinds, namely, the long-wdnged and the 
short-wdnged hawk ; of the first kind, there be chiefly in use 
amongst us in this nation, the Gerfalcon and Jerkin, the Falcon 
and Tassel-gentel, the Laner and Laneret, the Bockerel and 
Bockeret, the Saker and Sacaret, the Merlin and Jack Merlin, 
the Hobby and Jack. 

There is the Stelletto of Spain, tjie Blood-red Rook front 
Turkey, theWaskite from Virginia. 

And there is of short-^^dnged hawks, the Eagle and Iron, the 
Goshawk and Tarcel, the Sparhawk and Musket, the French 
Pye, of two sorts. 

These are reckoned hawks of note and worth ; but we have 
also of an inferior rank, the Stanyel, the Ringtail, the Raven, 
the Buzzard, the Forked Kite, the Bald Buzzard, the Hen- 
driver, and others that I forbear to name. 

Gentlemen, if I should enlarge my discourse to the observation 
of the Eires, the Brancher, the Ramish Hawk, the Haggard, and 
the two sorts of Lentners, and then treat of their several ayries, 
their me^Adngs, rare order of casting, and the renovation of their 
feathers — their reclaiming, dieting, and then come to their rare 
stories of practice, — I say, if I should enter into these and 
many other observations that I could make, it would be much, 
very much pleasure to me : but lest I should break the rules of 
civility A^dth you, by taking up more than the proportion of 
time allotted to me, I will here break off, and entreat you, Mr 
Venator, to say what you are able in the commendation of 
hunting, to which you are so much affected ; and if time ^vill 
serve, I will beg your favour for a farther enlargement of some 
of those several heads of which I have spoken. But no more at 
present. 

Venator. Well, sir, and I \\dll now take my turn, and wdll 



48 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

first begin -with a commendation of the earth, as you have done 
most excellently of the air ; the earth being that element upon 
which I drive my pleasant, wholesome, hungry trade. The 
earth is a solid settled element ; an element most universally 
beneficial both to man and beast ; to men who have their several 
recreations upon it, as horse races, hunting, sweet smells, 
pleasant walks : the earth feeds man and all those several beasts 
that both feed him and afford him recreation. What pleasure 
doth man take in hunting the stately stag, the generous buck, 
the wild boar, the cunning otter, the crafty fox, and the fearful 
hare ! And if I may descend to a lower game, what pleasure 
is it sometimes Math gins to betray the very vermin of the earth! 
as namely, the Fichat, the Fulimart, the Ferret, the Polecat,* the 
Mouldwarp,f and the like creatures that live upon the face and 
within the bowels of the earth. How doth the earth bring 
forth herbs, flowers, and fruits, both for physic and the pleasure 
of mankind ; and above all, to me at least, the fruitful vine, of 
which when I drink moderately, it clears my brain, cheers my 
heart, and sharpens my wit. How could Cleopatra have feasted 
Mark Antony with eight wild boars roasted whole at one supper, 
and other meat suitable, if the earth had not been a bountiful 
mother ? But to pass by the mighty Elephant, which the earth 
breeds and nourisheth, and descend to the least of creatures, 
how doth the earth afford us a doctrinal example in the httle 
Pismire, who, in the summer, provides and lays up her winter 
provision, and teaches man to do the like ! % The earth feeds 
and carries those horses that carry us ! If I would be prodigal of 
my time and your patience, what might not I say in commenda- 
tions of the earth, that puts limits to the proud and raging sea, 
and by that means preserves both man and beast that it destroys 
them not, as we see it daily doth those that venture upon the 
sea, and are there shipwrecked, drovnied, and left to feed 
haddocks ; when we that are so wise as to keep ourselves on earthy 
walk, and talk, and live, and eat, and drink, and go a-hunting ; 
of which recreation I \\dll say a little, and then leave Mr Piscator 
to the commendation of Angling. 

Hunting is a game for princes and noble persons. It hath been 
highly prized in all ages : it was one of the qualifications that 
Xenophon bestowed on his Cyrus, that he was a hunter of wild 
beasts. Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of 
manly exercises in their riper age. What more manly exercise 
than hunting the wild boar, the stag, the buck, the fox, or the 

* The fitchet, or fitchew ; the fulimart, or fumart ; the ferret, and the 
polecat, appear to be all the same species, {mustela pidorius.) — J. R. 

f The mole, still called mouduwart in Scotland. — J. K. 

% This is a popular mistake. Ants remain torpid, or nearly so, during 
winter, and do not then eat, as I have repeatedly proved, by opening their 
nests, in which I never could detect any winter provision of food. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 49 

hare ? How doth it preserve health, and increase strength and 
activdty ! 

And for the dogs that we use, Avho can commend their 
excellency to that height which they deserve ! How perfect is 
the hound at smelling, who never leaves or forsakes his first 
scent, but follows it through so many changes and varieties of 
other scents, even over and in the v/ater, and into the earth ! 
What music doth a pack of dogs then make to any man, whose 
heart and ears are so happy as to be set to the tune of such 
instruments ! Hov/ \\-ill a right greyhound fix his eye on the 
best buck in a herd, single him out, and follow him,' and him 
only, through a whole herd of rascal game, and still know and 
then kiU him ! For my hounds, I know the language of them, 
and they know the language and meaning of one another as 
perfectly as we know the voices of those with whom we dis- 
course daily. 

I might enlarge myself in the commendation of hunting, and 
of the noble hound especially, as also of the docibleness of dogs 
in general ; and I might make many observations of land creatures, 
that, for composition, order, figure, and constitution, approach 
nearest to the completeness and understanding of man ; especially 
of those creatures, which Moses in the Law permitted to the 
Jews, which have cloven hoofs, and chew the cud; which I 
shall forbear to name, because I \W11 not be so uncivil to Mr 
Piscator, as not to allow him a time for the commendation of 
Angling, which he calls an art ; but doubtless it is an easy one ; 
and Mr Auceps, I doubt we shall hear a watery discourse of it, 
but I hope it udll not be a long one. 

Auceps. And I hope so too, though I fear it vdU. 

Piscator. Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you. I 
confess my discourse is like to prove suitable to mv recreation, 
— calm and quiet. ^Ye seldom take the name of God into our 
mouths, but it is either to praise him or pray to him : if others 
use it vainly in the midst of their recreations, so vainly as if 
they meant to conjure, I must tell you it is neither our fault 
nor our custom ; we protest against it. But, pray remember, 
I accuse nobody ; for as I would not make a watery discourse, 
so I would not put too much \anegar into it ; nor would I raise 
the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of 
another's.* And so much for the prologue to what I mean to 
say. 

And now for the water, the element that I trade in : The 

* This affords, I think, an irrefragable answer to Lord Byron's libel on 
our excellent author, where he says, 

And anjling too,.that"solitary vice. 
Whatever Izaak Walton bings or says : 
The quaint old cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 

Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it. J. R, 

D 



50 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the element upon 
which the Spirit of God did first move, the element which God 
commanded to bring forth living creatures abundantly; and 
without which, those that inhabit the land, even all creatures 
that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putre- 
faction. Moses, the great lawgiver and chief philosopher, skilled 
in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was called the friend of 
God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, names this element 
the first in the creation ; * this is the element upon which the 
Spirit of God did first move, and is the chief ingredient in. the 
creation : many philosophers have made it to comprehend all the 
other elements, and most allow it the chiefest in the mixtion of 
all living creatures. 

There be that profess to believe that all bodies are made of 
water, and may be reduced back again to water only ; they 
endeavour to demonstrate it thus : 

Take a willow, or any like speedy growing plant, newly 
rooted in a box or barrel full of earth, weigh them all together 
exactly when the tree begins to grow, and then weigh all together 
after the tree is increased from its first rooting, to weigh an 
hundred pound weight more than when it was first rooted and 
weighed; and you shall find this augment of the tree to be 
without the diminution of one drachm weight of the earth. 
Hence they infer tliis increase of wood to be from water of rain, 
or from dew, and not to be from any other element : and they 
affirm, they can reduce this wood back again to water ; and they 
affirm also, the same may be done in any animal or vegetable. 
And this I take to be a fair testimony of the excellency of my 
element of water. 

The v/ater is more productive than the earth. Nay, the earth 
hath no fruitfulness without showers or dews ; for all the herbs, 
and flowers, and fruit, are produced and thrive by the water ; 
and the very minerals are fed by streams that run under ground; f 
whose natural course carries them to the tops of many high 
mountains, as we see by several springs breaking forth on the 
tops of the highest hills ; and this is also witnessed by the daily 
trial and testimony of several miners. 

Nay, the increase of those creatures that are bred and fed in 
the water is not only more and more miraculous, but more 
advantageous to man, not only for the lengthening of his life, but 
for the preventing of sickness ; for it is observed by the most 
learned physicians, that the casting off of Lent, and other fish 
days, which hath not only given the lie to so many learned, 

* Pindar says, " Water is the best of all tliing-s." — J. R. 

+ These are merely vn.<rue reports of inaccurate, or inipossiV-le experi- 
ments, at variance with all that is known in vcg-etable physiology or in 
chemistry, — J. K. 



i 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 31 

pious, wise founders of colleges, for wliich we should be ashamed, 
hath doubtless been the chief cause of those many putrid, shaking, 
intermitting agues, unto which this nation of ours is now more 
subject than those wiser countries that feed on herbs, salads, 
and plenty of fish ; * of wliich it is observed in story, that the 
greatest part of the world now do. And it may be 'fit to 
remember that Moses, Levit. xi, 9. Deut. xiv. 9. appointed fish 
to be the chief diet for the best commonwealth that ever yet 
was. 

And it is observable, not only that there are fish, as namely 
the whale, three times as big as the mighty elephant, that is so 
fierce in battle, but that the mightiest feasts have been of fish. 
The Romans, in the height of their glory, have made fish the 
mistress of all their entertainments ; they have had music to 
usher in their sturgeons, lampreys, and mullets, which they 
would purchase at rates rather to be wondered at than believed. 
He that shall view the v»ritings of I\Iacrobius or Varro, may be 
confirmed and informed of this, and of the incredible value of 
their fish and fish-ponds. 

But, gentlemen; I have almost lost myself, wliich I confess 
I may easily do in this philosophical discourse ; I met wdth most 
of it very lately, and I hope happily, in a conference with a 
most learned physician, Dr Wharton, a dear friend, that loves 
both me and my art of angling. But, however, I will wade 
no deeper in these mysterious arguments, but pass to such 
observations as I can manage with more pleasure, and less 
fear of running into error. But I must not yet forsake the 
waters, by whose help we have so many known advantages. 

And first, to pass by the miraculous cures of our knowTi 
baths, how advantageous is the sea for our daily traffic, without 
which we could not now subsist ! Kow does it not only furnish 
us wdth food and physic for the bodies, but with such observa- 
tions for the mind as ingenious persons would not want ! 

How ignorant had we been of the beauty of Florence, of 
the monuments, urns, and rarities that yet remain in and near 
unto old and new Rome, so many as it is said Anil take up 
a year's time to view, and afford to each of them but a con- 
venient consideration ! And therefore it is not to be wondered 
at, that so learned and devout a father as Saint Jerome, after 
his %vish to have seen Christ in the flesh, and to have heard Saint 
Paul preach, makes his third wish, to have seen Rome in her 
glory ; and that glory is not yet all lost, for what pleasure is 
it to see the monuments of Livy, the choicest of the historians ; 

* Nothing could be more opposed than this to the medical opinions 
which are at present held. Shi'll fish, indeed, is esteemed less stimulating 
than other animal food, for those afl'ectcd with inflammatory disorders. 



0'2 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

of TuUy, the best of orators ; * and to see the bay trees that 
now grow out of the very tomb of Virgil ! These, to any that 
love learning, must be pleasing. But what pleasure is it to a 
devout Christian to see there the humble house in which Saint 
Paul was content to dwell, and to view the many rich statues 
that are there made in honour of his memory ! nay, to see the 
very place in which Saint Peter and he lie buried together ! These 
are in and near to Rome. And how much more doth it 
please the pious curiosity of a Christian, to see that place on 
which the blessed Saviour of the world was pleased to humble 
himself, and take our nature upon him, and to converse with 
men : to see Mount Sion, Jerusalem, and the very sepulchre of 
our Lord Jesus ! How may it beget and heighten the zeal of 
a Christian, to see the devotions that are daily paid to him at 
that place ! Gentlemen, lest I forget myself, I will stop here, 
and remember you, that but for my element of water, the inha- 
bitants of this poor island must remain ignorant that such things 
ever were, or that any of them have yet a being. | 

Gentlemen, I might both enlarge and lose myself in such 
like arguments ; I might tell you that Almighty God is said 
to have spoken to a fish, but never to a beast ; that he hath 
made a whale a ship, to carry and set his prophet Jonah safe 
on the appointed shore. Of these I might speak, but I must 
in manners break off, for I see Theobald's House. I cry you 
mercy for being so long, and thank you for your patience. 

Auceps. Sir, my pardon is easily granted you : I except 
against nothing that you have said ; nevertheless, I must part 
Avith you at this park-wall, for which I am very sorry ; but I 
assure you, Mr Piscator, I now part with you full of good 
thoughts, not only of yourself, but your recreation. And so, 
gentlemen, God keep you both. 

Piscator. Well, now, Mr Venator, you shall neither want 
time, nor my attention to hear you enlarge your discourse 
concerning Hunting. 

Venator. Not I, sir : I remember you said that Angling itself 
was of great antiquity, and a perfect art, and an art not easily 
attained to ; and you have so won upon me in your former 
discourse, that I am very desirous to hear what you can say 
farther concerning those particulars. 

Piscator. Sir, I did say so : and I doubt not but if you and I 
did converse together but a few hours, to leave you possessed 
with the same high and happy thoughts that now possess me of 

* Walton's opinions on Liyy and Cicero, are far different from those 
now commonly entertained, — of the one being a tedious fabulist, and the 
other a mere builder of flowing sentences, without pith or point. — J. R. 

t Walton forgets that, independent of water, we might make an over- 
land journey to Rome or Jerusalem. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 53 

it ; not only of the antiquity of angling, but that it deserves 
commendations ; and that it is an art, and an art worthy the 
knowledge and practice of a wise man. 

Venator. Pray, sir, speak of them what you think fit, for 
we have yet five miles to the Thatched House ; during which 
walk, I dare promise you my patience and dihgent attention 
shall not be wanting. And if you shall make that to appear 
which you have undertaken, first, that it is an art, and an art 
worth the learning, I shall beg that I may attend you a day or 
two a-fishing, and that I may become your scholar, and be 
instructed in the art itself which you so much magnify. 

Plscator. Oh, sir, doubt not but that angling is an art : is it 
not an art to deceive a trout wth an artificial fly ? a trout ! that 
is more sharp sighted* than any hawk you have named, and more 
watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold ; f 
and yet, I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow, for a 
friend's breakfast : doubt not therefore, sir, but that angling is 
an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, 
whether you be capable of learrung it ? for angling is somewhat 
like poetry, — men are to be born so: I mean with inclinations 
to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice : 
but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an 
inquiring, searching, obser\ing AA-it,J but he must bring a large 

♦ Fish may be sharp sighted enough within the sphere of their Tision; 
but from the great projecting convexity of the eyeball in all of them, 
they must be very near sighted. — J. R 

f This is a mistake : it was Auceps, and not Venator, that named the 
hawks ; and Auceps had before taken his leave of these his companions. 

X Markham, in his Country Contentments, has a whole chapter on the 
subject of the angler's apparel, and inward qualities ; some of which are. 
" That he be a general scholar, and seen in all the liberal sciences ; as a 

frammarian, to know how to write, or discourse, of his art in true and 
tting terms. He should," says he, " have sweetness of speech, to entice 
others to delight in an exercise so much laudable. He should have strength 
of argument, to defend and maintain his profession against envy and slan- 
der." Thou seest, reader, how easily the author has despatched grammar, 
rhetoric, and logic, three of the liberal sciences ; and his reasons are not 
a whit less convincing with respect to the other four. 

A man would think, now, that with proper baits, good taekle in his 
pannier, and so much science in his liead, our angler would stand a pretty 
good chance to catch fish ! but, alas ! those are little to the purpose, without 
the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity ; and unless two at least 
of the cardinal virtues can be persuaded to go a-fishing, the angler may as 
well stay at home ; for hear what Mr Markham says as to fortitude : 
" Then must he be strong and valiant ; neither to be amazed with storms, 
nor affrighted with thunder; nnd if he is not temperate, but has a gnaw- 
ing stomach that will not endure much fasting, but must observe hours, 
it troubleth the mind and body, and loseth that delight which maketh the 
pastime only pleasing." 

There is no doubt but Walton had this chapter of Markham in his eye ; 
and as there is a humorous solemnity in thus attempting to dignify an art, 
which surely borrows as little of its perfections from learning as any that 
is practised, it was thought it might divert the reader to quote it. 



o4 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

measure of hope and patience, * and a love and propensity to 
the art itself ; but having once got and practised it, then doubt 
not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to 
be, like virtue, a reward to itself. 

Venator. Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that 
I long much to have you proceed, and in the order that you 
propose. 

Piscator. Then first, for the antiquity of Angling, of which 
I shall not say much, but only this : some say it is as ancient 
as Deucalion's flood ; others, that Belus, who was the first 
inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor 
of angling ; and some others say, (for former times have had 
their disquisitions about the antiquity of it,) that Seth, one of 
the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, and that by them it was 
derived to posterity : f others say that he left it engraven on those 
pillars which he erected, and trusted to preserve the knowledge 
of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that precious know- 
ledge, and those useful arts, which by God's appointment or 
allowance, and his noble industry, were thereby preserved from 
perishing in Noah's flood. 

These, sir, have been the opinions of several men, that have 
possibly endeavoured to make angling more ancient than is 
needful, or may well be warranted ; but, for my part, I shall 
content myself in telling you, that angling is much more ancient 
than the incarnation of our Saviour ; for, in the prophet Amos, 
mention is made of fish hooks ; and in the book of Job, (which 
was long before the days of Amos, for that book is said to be 
writ by Moses,) mention is made also of fish hooks, which must 
imply anglers in those times. 

* Dr Franklin was in the habit of illustratinsr thp patience of an angler 
by mentioning-, that as he set out from Philadelphia at six o'clock on a 
summer's morning, to go about fifleen miles, he passed a brook where a 
gentleman was angling ; he inquired what sport, and was told none ; 
" But," added the gentleman, " I have only been here hvo hours.'" 'Ihe 
Doctor continued his journey ; and, on his return in the evening, found 
the angler at the same spot, and repeated his inquiry ; " Very good sport," 
was the reply. The query was naturally resumed, by asking how many 
fish he had caught? " None at all," answered the "gentleman ; "but, 
about the middle of the day, I had a tnost ghrious nibble." 

" The river Lea angler," says Daniel, " being daily seen at one particular 
spot, a brother angler conceived it must be the resort of abundance of fish, 
and the7-e, one morning at daybreak, began his operation*. The usual 
attendant of the place arrived some hours after, and threw in his line. A 
long silence ensued, when the first comer remarked, that he was out of 
luck in not having caught any fish in this favourite hole, ' which,' says he, 
' I am convinced it is with you, from the constant attention I have seen 
you pay to it.' — ' Sir,' replies the gentleman, ' I c<mfess long custom has 
rendered me extremely partial to the spot ; but, as for the fish, I assure you 
that here have I angled h^r forty 7/ears, and never had a bite yet.'" — J. R. 

+ This fabulous stuff is repeated as trustworthy in most of the works 
on angling, including nearly all the Encyclopedias. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 55 

But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a 
gentleman, by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, 
virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation of 
riches ; or, wanting those virtues myself, boast that these were in 
my ancestors, (and yet I grant, that where a noble and ancient 
descent and such merits meet in any man, it is a double dignifica- 
tion of that person ;) so, if this antiquity of angling, which for 
my part I have not forced, shall, like an ancient family, be 
either an honour or an ornament to this virtuous art which I 
profess to love and practise, I shall be the gladder that I made 
an accidental mention of the antiquity of it, of which I shall 
say no more, but proceed to that just commendation which I 
think it deserves. 

And for that, I shall tell you, that in ancient times a debate 
hath risen, and it remains yet unresolved, whether the happiness 
of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or 



action 



Concerning which, some have endeavoured to maintain their 
opinion of the first ;-by sajdng, that the nearer we mortals come 
to God by way of imitation, the more happy we are. And they 
say, that God enjoys himself only by a contemplation of his own 
infiniteness, eternity, power, and goodness, and the like. And 
upon this ground, many cloisteral men of great learning and 
devotion prefer contemplation before action. And many of the 
fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in their 
commentaries upon the words of our Saviour to Martha, Luke 
X. 41, 42. 

And, on the contrary, there want not men of equal autho- 
rity and credit, that prefer action to be the more excellent ; as, 
namely, experiments in physic, and the application of it, both 
for the ease and prolongation of man's life ; by which each man 
is enabled to act and do good to others, — either to serve his 
country, or do good to particular persons. And they say, also, 
that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and virtue, and 
is a maintainer of humane society ; and for these, and other like 
reasons, to be preferred before contemplation. 

Concerning which two opinions I shall forbear to add a third, 
by declaring my o\\ni ; and rest myself contented in telling you, 
my very worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do 
most properly belong to the most honest, ingenuous, quiet, and 
harmless art of angling. 

And first, I shall tell yen what some have observed, and I 
have found it to be a real truth, that the very sitting by the 
river's side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contem- 
plation, but will invite an angler to it ; and this seems to be 
maintained by the learned Pet. du Moulin, who, in his chscourse 
of the fulfilling of prophecies, observes, " that when God intended 



56 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

to reveal any future events or high notions to his prophets, he 
then carried them either to the deserts, or the sea-shore, that 
having so separated them from amidst the press of people and 
business, and the cares of the world, he might settle their mind 
in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation." 

And this seems also to be intimated by the Children of Israel, 
(Psal. cxxxvii.) who having in a sad condition banished aU mirth 
and music from their pensive hearts, and having hung up their 
then mute harps upon the wiUow trees growing by the rivers of 
Babylon, sat down upon those banks, bemoaning the ruins of 
Sion, and contemplating their own sad condition. 

And an ingenious Spaniard says, that " rivers and the 
inhabitants of the watery element Avere made for wise men to 
contemplate, and fools to pass by without consideration." And 
though I will not rank myself in the number of the first, yet 
give me leave to free myself from the last, by oifering to you a 
short contemplation, — first of rivers, and then of fish ; con- 
cerning which I doubt not but to give you many observations 
that Avill appear very considerable : I am sure they have appeared 
so to me, and made many an hour pass away more pleasantly, as 
I have sat quietly on a flowery bank by a calm river, and con- 
templated what I shall now relate to you. 

And, first, concerning rivers; there be so many wonders 
reported and written of them, and of the several creatures that 
be bred and live in them, and those by authors of so good credit, 
that we need not to deny them an historical faith. 

As, namely, of a river in Epirus, that puts out any lighted 
torch, and kindles any torch that was not lighted.* Some 
waters, being drunk, cause madness, some drunkenness, and 
some laughter to death. The river Selarus in a few hours 
turns a rod, or wand, to stone ; and our Camden mentions the 
like in England, and the Hke in Lochmere, in Ireland. J There 
is also a river in Arabia, of which all the sheep that drink thereof 
have their wool turned into a vermilion colour. J And one of 
no less credit than Aristotle, tells us of a merry river, the river 
Elusina, that dances at the noise of music ; for with music it 
bubbles, dances, and grows sandy, and so continues till the 
music ceases ; but then it presently returns to its wonted calm- 
ness and clearness. § And Camden tells us of a well near to 
Kirby, in Westmoreland, that ebbs and flows several times 
every day ; || and he tells us of a river in Siu-rey, (it is called 

* From evolving' sulphuretted hydrogen gas. — J. R, 

+ He means Loch Neagh, which certainly petrifies wood, but not in a few 
hours. — J. R. 

t This is certainly fabulous. — J. R. 

§ A report, no doubt taken from some bubbling spring. — J. R. 

II There is a similar well, as I have witnessed, in the Peak of Derbyshire. 
-J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 57 

Mole,) that after it has run several miles, being opposed by 
hills, finds or makes itself a way under ground, and breaks out 
again so far off, that the inhabitants thereabout boast, as the 
Spaniards do of their river Anus, that they feed divers flocks 
of sheep upon a bridge. And, lastly, for I would not tire your 
patience, one of no less authority than Josephus, that learned 
Jew, tells us of a river in Judea that runs s^viftly all the six 
days of the week, and stands still and rests all their Sabbath.* 

But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and tell you some 
things of the monsters, or fish, call them what you will, that 
they breed and feed in them. Pliny the philosopher says, in 
the third chapter of his ninth book, that in the Indian Sea, the 
fish called the Balcena, or whirlpool, is so long and broad as to take 
up more in length and breadth than two acres of gi'ound ; and, 
of other fish of two hundred cubits long ; and that, in the river 
Ganges, there be eels of thirty feet long. He says there, that 
these monsters appear in that sea only when the tempestuous 
winds oppose the torrents of waters falling from the rocks into 
it, and so turning what lay at the bottom to be seen on the 
water's top. And' he says, that the people of Cadara, an island 
near this place, make the timber for their houses of those fish- 
bones. He there tells us, that there are sometimes a thousand 
of these great eels found wrapt or interwoven together, f He 
tells us there, that it appears that dolphins love music, and will 
come when called for, by some men or boys that know, and 
used to feed them ; and that they can swim as SAvift as an arrow 
can be shot out of a bow : and much of this is spoken con- 
cerning the dolphin, J and other fish, as may be found also in 
the learned Dr Casaubon's Discourse of Credulity and Incredulity^ 
printed by him about the year 1670. 

I know, we islanders are averse to the belief of these wonders ; 
but there be so many strange creatures to be now seen, many 
collected by John Tradescant, and others added by my friend 
Elias Ashmole, Esq. § who now keeps them carefully and 
methodically at his house near to Lambeth, near London, as 

* Unquestionably fabulous. — J. R. 

t This is all fabulous, or much exaggerated. —J. R. 

t Mr Laing, in his Voyage to Spitzbergen, says, "the seals crowded 
round th^ehip to hear his violin;" and Valerius Flaccus says, " Gaude- 
bant carina phocae." — J. R. 

§ The Tradescanta were the first collectors of natural curiosities in this 
kingdom ; Ashmole and Sir Hans Sloane were the next. The generous spirit 
of these persons seems to have been transfused into, and at present (1784) 
to reside in, a private gentleman of unbounded curiosity and liberality, Sir 
Ashton Lever, whose collections, for beauty, variety, and copiousness, 
exceed all description, and surpass every thing of the kind in the known 
world. 

After Sir Ashton Lever's death, this collection was disposed of by 
lottery, and came into the hands of Mr Parkinson, who (in 1806) sold tha 
whole, in separate lots, by public auction. 



58 tHE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

may get some belief of some of the other wonders I mentioned. 
I will tell you some of the wonders that you may now see, and 
not till then believe, unless you think fit. 

You may there see the Hog-fish, the Dog-fish, the Dolphin, the 
Coney-fish, the Parrot-fish, the Shark, the Poison-fish, Sword- 
fish, and not only other incredible fish, but you may there see the 
Salamander, several sorts of Barnacles, of Solan Geese, the Bird 
of Paradise ; such sorts of Snakes, and such birds' nests, and of 
so various forms, and so wonderfully made, as may beget wonder 
and amusement in any beholder ; and so many hundred of other 
rarities in that collection, as will make the other wonders I spake 
of the less incredible ; for you may note, that the waters are 
Nature's storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders. 

But, sir, least this discourse may seem tedious, I shall give it 
a sweet conclusion out of that holy poet, Mr George Herbert, 
his divine Cotitemplation on God's Providence : 

Lord ! who hath praise enough — nay, who hath any ? 

None can express thy works, but he that knows thein ; 
And none can know thy works, they are so many. 

And so complete, hut only lie that owes them. 

We all acknowledge both thy power and love 

To be exact, transcendant, and divine ; 
Who dost so strangely and so swoetly move. 

Whilst all things have their end, yet none but thine. 

Wherefore, most sacred Spirit I I here present. 

For me, and all my fellows, praise to thee ; 
And just it is that I should pay the rent. 

Because the benefit accrues to me. 

And as concerning fish, in that psalm. Psalm civ. wherein, for 
height of poetry and wonders, the prophet David seems even to 
exceed himself, — how doth he there express himself in choice 
metaphors, even to the amazement of a contemplative reader, 
concerning the sea, the rivers, and the fish therein contained ! 
And the great naturalist Pliny says, " That Nature's great and 
wonderful power is more demonstrated in the sea than on the 
Imd." And this may appear, by the numerous and various 
creatures inhabiting both in and about that element ; as to the 
readers of Gesner, Rondeletius, Pliny, Ausonius, Aristotle, 
and others, may be demonstrated. But I will sweeten this 
discourse also out of a contemplation in divine Du Bartas, (in 
the Fifth Day,) who says : 

God quicken'd in the sea, and in the rivers. 
So many fishes of so many features, 
That in the waters we may see ail creatures, 
Even all that on the earth are to be found, 
As if the world were in deep waters drown 'd. 
For seas, as well as skies, have sun, moon, stars j 
As well as air— swallows, rooks, and stares ; 



li.ii; COMPLETE ANGLER. 39 

As well as earth — vinp?, roses, nettles, melons. 
Mushrooms, pinks, gilliflowers, and many millions 
Of other plants, more rare, more strang'e than these. 
As very fishes, living in the seas ; 
As also rams, calves, horses, hares, and hofrs, 
Wolves, urchins, lions, elephants, and doers ; 
Yea, men and maids ; and, which I most admire, 
The mitred bishop, and the cmvled friar ; * 
Of which, examples, but a few years since, 
Were shewn the Norway and Polonian prince. 

These seem to be wonders ; but have had so many confirma- 
tions from men of learning and credit, that you need not doubt 
them. Nor are the number, nor the various shapes, of fishes 
more strange, or more fit for contemplation, than their different 
natures, inchnations, and actions ; concermng which I shall beg 
your patient ear a httle longer. 

The Cuttle-fish wall cast a long gut out of her throat, wliich, 
like as an angler doth his line, she sendeth forth and pulleth in 
a^in at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come 
near to her ; and the cuttle-fish, being then hid in the gravel, 
lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it ; at which time 
she, by little and little, draws the smaller fish so near to her 
that she may leap upon her, and then catches and devours her : 
and, for this reason, some have called this fish the Sea-angler, f 

And there is a fish called a Hermit, that, at a certain age, gets 
into a dead fish's shell, and, hke a hermit, dwells there alone, 
studying the wind and weather ; and so turns her shell, that she 

» This story of the bishop fish is told by Rondeletins, and vouched by 
Bellonius. Without taking- much pains in the translation, it is as follows : 
*' In the year 1531, a fish was taken in Polonia, that represented a bishop. 
He was brought to the king ; but seeming to desire to return to his own 
element, the king commanded him to b^- carried back to the sea, into which 
he immediately threw himself." Rondoletius had before related the story 
of a monk fish, which is what Du Bartas means by the " cowled friar.*' 
The re.ider may see the portraits of these wonderful personages in Ronde. 
letius ; or, in the Posthumous Works of the reverend and learned Mr John 
Gregory, in quarto, London, IfiSJ, p. 121, 122, where they are exhibited. 

Stow, in his Annals, p. 137, from the Chronicle of Radiilpkiis Coggeshale, 
gives the following relation of a sea-monster, taken on the coast of Sufi'olk, 
temp. Henry II. 

" Neare un-to Orford in Suffolk, certaine fishers of the sea tooke in their 
nets a fish, having- the shape of a man in all points : which fish was kept by 
Bartlemew de Glaunvill", custos of the cattle of Orford, in the same castle, 
by the space of six moneths and more, for a wonder. He spake not a word. 
All manner of meates he did cat, but most greedily raw ti>h, after he had 
crushed out the moisture. Offentiiues he was brought to the church, where 
he shewed no tokens of adDration. At leni^'th," says this author, " when 
he was not well looked to, be stole away to the sea, and never after 
appeared." The wisdom of these fishermen tn taking the monster to 
church, calls to remembrance many instances of similar sagacity recorded 
of the wise men of Gotham. Finding him so indevout, we may suppose 
them to have been ready to exclaim with Caliban in the Tempest, 
By this good light, a very shallow monster ! 

t The cuttle-fish hns not one long gut, as here represented, but eight 
long arms, not cast out of, but surrounding its mouth or throat, with which 
it catches its prey. — J. R. 



60 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

makes it defend her from the injuries that they would bring 
upon her. 

There is also a fish called by JE]iaii, in his ninth book " Of 
Living Creatures," chap. xvi. the Adonis, or darling of the sea; 
so called, because it is a loving and innocent fish, a fish that 
hurts nothing that hath life, and is at peace with all the 
numerous inhabitants of that vast watery element ; and truly, I 
think most anglers are so disposed to most of mankind. 

And there are also lustful and chaste fishes, of which I shall 
give you examples. 

And, first, what Du Bartas says of a fish called the Sargus, 
wliich, because none can express it better than he does, I shall 
give you in his own words ; supposing it shall not have the less 
credit for being verse ; for he hath gathered this and other 
observations out of authors that have been great and industrious 
searchers into the secrets of nature : 

The adulterous Sargus doth not only change 
"Wives every day, in the deep streams, but, strange ! 
As if the honey of sea-love delight 
Could not suffice his ranging appetite, 
Goes courting she-goats on the grassy shore. 
Horning their husbands that had horns before. 

And the same author writes concerning the Cantharus, that 
which you shall also hear in his own words : 

But, contrary, the constant Cantharus 
Is ever constant to his faithful spouse ; 
In nuptial duties spending his chaste life 
Never loves any but his own dear wife. 

Sir, but a little longer and I have done. 

Venator. Sir, take what liberty you think fit, for your 
discourse seems to be music, and charms me to an attention. 

Piscator. Why, then, sir, I \vill take a liberty to teU, or 
rather to remember you, what is said of Turtle-doves : first, 
that they silently phght their troth and marry ; and that then 
the survivor scorns, as the Thracian women are said to do, to 
outhve his or her mate, and this is taken for a truth ; * and if the 
survivor shall ever couple with another, then not only the living, 
but the dead, be it either the he or the she, is denied the name 
and honour of a true Turtle-dove, f 

* The falsity of this common opinion has been proved by numerous 
experiments : the whole race of doves and pigeons being the very reverse 
of constant or continent mates. — JR. 

f Of swans, it is also said, that if either of a pair die, or be otherwise 
separated from its mate, the other does not long survive ; and that it is 
chiefly for this reason that the stealing of swans is, by our law, made penal ; 
so as that " he who stealeth a swan in an open and common river, lawfully 
marked ; the same swan shall be hung in a house by the beak ; and he who 
etole it shall, in recompense thereof, give to the owner so much wheat as 
may cover all the swan, by putting and turning the wheat upon the head 
of the swan, until the head of the swan be covered with wheat" — Coke's 
Reports, part vii. The case of Swans. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 61 

And to parallel this land rarity, and teach mankind moral 
faithfulness, and to condemn those that talk of religion, and yet 
come short of the moral faith of fish and fowl — men that violate 
the law affirmed by St Paul, (Rom. ii. 14, 15.) to be writ in 
their hearts, and which, he says, shall at the last day condemn 
and leave them without excuse, — . I pray hearken to what Du 
Bartas sings, (in the Fifth Day,) for the hearing of such conjugal 
faithfulness mil be music to all chaste ears ; and therefore I pray 
hearken to what Du Bartas sings of the Mullet : 

But for chaste love the Mullet hath no peer ; 
For, if the fisher hath surprised her pheer,* 
As mad with wo, to shore she followeth, 
Prest f to consort him, both in life and death. 

On the contrary, what shall I say of the House Cock, which 
treads any hen, and then, contrary to the Swan, the Partridge, 
and Pigeon, takes no care to hatch, to feed, or to cherish his ovni 
brood, but is senseless, though they perish. if And 'tis con- 
siderable, that the Hen, (which, because she also takes any cock, 
expects it not,) who is sure the chickens be her owti, hath, by 
a moral impression, her care and affection to her own brood 
more than doubled, even to such a height, that our Saviour, in 
expressing his love to Jerusalem, (Matt, xxiii. 37.) quotes her 
for an example of tender affection ; as his Father had done Job 
for a pattern of patience. 

A.nd to parallel this Cock, there be divers fishes that cast their 
spawTi on flags or stones, and then leave it uncovered and exposed 
to become a prey and be devoured by vermin or other fishes. 
But other fishes, as namely the Barbel, take such care for the 
preservation of their seed, that (unlike to the Cock or the Cuckoo) 
they mutually labour, both the spawTier and the melter, to cover 
their spawTi wdth sand, or watch it, or hide it in some secret 
place, unfrequented by vermin or by any fish but themselves. § 

Sir, these examples may, to you and others, seem strange ; 
but they are testified, some by Aristotle, some by PKny, some 
by Gesner, || and by many others of credit, and are believed and 

♦ Or fellow ; so bed-pheer, bed-fellow. 

f Prest, from the French, pret, Lat. paratus, ready, prepared. So Psalm 
civ. old version, — 

He maketh his spirites as heralds to go. 

And lightnings to serve, we see also prest. 

Vide Glossary to Robert of Gloucester and to Peter Langtoft, edit. Hearne. 

t Capons, however, and even cocks, may be taught to feed chickens even 
better than their own mothers, as was proved by the experiments of the 
celebrated Reaumur, as I have detailed at length in my Do7nestic Habits of 
Birds— J. n. 

% Neither fishes nor insects take any care of their young beyond deposit^ 
ing their eggs in a place where they are likely, when hatched, to procure 
food. — J. R. 

II Of these three Aristotle was the only original observer, and may be 
trusted where he did not depend on hearsay. Pliny and Gesner were mere 
compilers. ~ J. R, 



62 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

known by divers, both of wisdom and experience, to been 
trutli ; and indeed are, as I said at the beginning, fit for the 
contemplation of a most serious and a most pious man. And, 
doubtless, this made the prophet David say, ' ' They that occupy 
themselves in deep waters see the wonderful works of God : " 
indeed, such wonders and pleasures, too, as the land aifords 
not. And that they be fit for the contemplation of the most 
prudent, and pious, and peaceable men, seems to be testified by 
the practice of so many devout and contemplative men as the 
patriarchs and prophets of old, and of the apostles of our Saviour 
in our latter times, of which twelve we are sure he chose four 
that were simple fishermen, whom he inspired, and sent to 
publish his blessed \vill to the Gentiles, and inspired them also 
with a power to speak all languages, and by their powerful 
eloquence to beget faith in the unbelieving Jews, and themselves 
to suffer for that Saviour whom their forefathers and they had 
crucified, and, in their sufferings, to preach freedom from the 
encumbrances of the la.\v, and a new way to everlasting life. 
This was the employment of these happy fishermen ; concerning 
vv^hich choice some have made these observations : 

First, that he never reproved these for their employment or 
calling, as he did the scribes and the money-changers. And, 
secondly, he found that the hearts of such men, by nature, were 
fitted for contemplation and quietness — men of mild, and sweet, 
and peaceable spirits, as indeed most anglers are : these men our 
blessed Saviour, who is observed to love to plant grace in good 
natures, though indeed nothing be too hard for him, yet these 
men he chose to call from their irreproveable employment of 
fishing, and gave them grace to be his disciples, and to follow 
him, and do wonders ; I say four of twelve. 

And it is observable, that it was our Saviour's will that 
these, our four fishermen, should have a priority of nomination 
in the catalogue of his twelve apostles, (Matt, x.) : as namely, 
first. Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint James, and Saint John ; 
and then the rest in their order. 

And it is yet more observable, that when our blessed 
Saviour went up into the Mount, when he left the rest of his 
disciples, and chose only three to bear him company at his 
Transfiguration, that those three were all fishermen. And it 
is to be believed, that all the other apostles, after they betook 
themselves to follow Christ, betook theniselves to be fishermen 
too ; for it is certain that the greater number of them were found 
together, fishing, by Jesus, after his resurrection, as it is recorded 
in the 21st chapter of Saint John's Gospel. 

And since I have your promise to hear me with patience, I 
will take the liberty to lock back upon an observation that hath 
been made by an ingenious and learned man, who observers. 



THE COiMPLETE ANGLER. 63 

that God liath been pleased to allow those whom he himself hath 
appointed to write liis holy Avill in Holy Writ, yet to express his 
will in such metapliors as their former affections or practice had 
inclined them to. And he brings Solomon for an example, who, 
before his conversion, was remarkably carnally amorous ; and 
after, by God's appointment, wrote that spiritual dialogue, or 
holy amorous love-song, the Canticles, betwixt God and his 
church, in which he says, " his beloved had eyes like the fish 
pools of Heshbon." 

And if this hold in reason, as I see none to the contrary, then 
it may be probably concluded, that JMoses (who, I told you 
before, writ the book of Job) and the prophet Amos, who was 
a shepherd, were both anglers ; for you shall, in all the Old 
Testament, find fish-hooks, I think, but twice mentioned, 
namely, by meek Moses, the friend of God, and by the humble 
prophet Amos.* 

Concerning vrhich last, namely the prophet Amos, I shall 
make but this observation, , that he that shall read the humble, 
loAvly, plain style of that prophet, and compare it with the high, 
glorious, eloquent style of the prophet Isaiah, (though they be 
both equally true,) may easily believe Amos to be, not only a 
shepherd, but a good-natured plain fisherman ; which I do the 
rather believe, by comparing the affectionate, loving, lowly, 
humble Epistles of Saint Peter, Saint James, and Saint John, 
whom we know were all fishers, with the glorious language and 
high metaphors of Saint Paul, who sve may believe was not. 

And for the lawfulness of fisliing, — it may very well be main- 
tained by our Saviour's bidding St Peter cast his hook into the 
water and catch a fish, for money to pay tribute to Caesar. 

And let me tell you, that angling is of high esteem, and of 
much use in other nations. He that reads the Voyages of 
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, f shall find that there he declares to 
have found a king and several priests a-fishing. 

And he that reads Plutarch shall find, that angling was not 

» Walton ivas a srood Soripturist, and therefore can hardly be supposed 
to have been irnornnt of the passag-e in Isaiah, chap. xix. 8. " The fishers 
shall mourn, and all they that cast angle upon the brooks shall lament, and 
they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish." Which words, as 
they do but imply the use of Mbh-hooks, he might think not directly to iiis 
purpose ; but in the translation of the abo\ e prophet by the learned Bishop 
Lowth, who himself assures me that tlie wuid hook is truly rendered, the 
passage stands thus : 

And the fishers shall mourn and lament ; 

All those that cast the hook in the river. 

And those that spread nets on the face of the waters shall languish. 
The following passage Walton seems likewise to have forgotten when 
he wrote the above, unless tlie reason before assigned induced him to reject 
it : " They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their 
net, and gather them in their drag, therefore they rejoice and are glad." 
Habakkuk, chap. i. ver. 15. 
t A traveller whose veracity i= much questioned. 



64 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and 
that they, in the midst of their wonderful glory, used angling as 
a principal recreation.* And let me tell you, that in the Scrip- 
ture, angling is always taken in the best sense ; and that though 
hunting may be sometimes so taken, yet it is but seldom to be 
so understood. And let me add this more : he that views the 
ancient Ecclesiastical Canons, shall find hunting to be forbidden 
to churchmen, as being a turbulent, toilsome, perplexing recrea- 
tion ; and shall find angling allowed to clergymen, as being a 
harmless recreation — a recreation that invites them to contem- 
plation and quietness. 

I might here enlarge myself, by telling you what commenda- 
tions our learned Perkins bestows on angling; and how dear 
a lover, and great a practiser of it our learned Dr Whitaker f 
was, as indeed many others of great learning have been. But I 
will content myself with two memorable men, that lived near to 
our own time, whom I also take to have been ornaments to the 
art of angling. 

The first is Dr Nowel, sometime Dean of the cathedral church 
of St Paul's, in London, where his monument stands yet undefaced 
— a man that, in the reformation of Queen Elizabeth, (not that of 
Henry VIII.) was so noted for his meek spirit, deep learning, 
prudence, and piety, that the then parhament and convocation 
both chose, enjoined, and trusted him to be the man to make a 
catechism for public use, such a one as should stand as a rule for 
faith and manners to their posterity. And the good old man, 
(though he was very learned, yet knowing that God leads us 
not to heaven by many nor by hard questions,) like an honest 

* I must here so far differ from my author, as to say, that if angling was 
not contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, that illus- 
trious prostitute endeavoured to make it so. The fact related by Plutarch 
is the following : — 

" It would be very tedious and trifling to recount all his follies : but his 
fishing must not be forgot. He went out one day to angle with Cleopatra ; 
and being so unfortunate as catch nothing in the presence of his mistress, 
he was very much vexed, and gave secret orders to the fishermen to dive 
tinder water, and put fishes that had been fresh taken upon his hook. 
After he had drawn up two or three, Cleopatra perceived the trick; she 
pretended, however, to be surprised at his good fortune and dexterity ; 
told it to all her friends, and invited them to come and see him fish the 
next day. Accordingly, a very large company went out in the fishing 
vessels; and as soon as Antony had let down his line, she commanded one 
of her servants to be beforehand with Antony's, and, diving into the 
water, to fix upon his hook a salted fish, one of those wliich were brought 
from the Enxine Sea." 

f The fact respecting Whitaker is thus attested by Dr Fuller, in his 
Holy State, book iii. chap. 13. " Fishing with an angle is to some rather 
a torture than a pleasure, to stand an hour as mute as the fish they mean 
to take ; yet herewithal Dr Whitaker was much delighted." 

To these examples of divines, lovers of angling, I here add (1784) that of 
Dr Leigh, the present Master of Baliol College, Oxford, who, though 
turned of ninety, makes it the recreation of his vacant hours. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. <o5 

angler, made that good, plain, unperplexed catecliism wluch is 
printed \vitli our good old Service- Book, — I say, this good man 
was a dear lover and constant practiser of angling, as any age 
can produce : and his custom was to spend, besides his fixed 
hours of prayer, (those hours which, by command of the church, 
were enjoined the clergy, and voluntarily dedicated to devotion 
by many primitive Christians,) — I say, besides thbse hours, 
this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in 
angling ; and also (for I have conversed with those which have 
conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part of his revenue, and 
usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to 
those rivers in which it was caught ; saying often, " that charity 
gave life to religion : " and, at his return to his house, would 
praise God he had spent that day free from worldly trouble, 
both harmlessly, and in a recreation that became a churchman. 
And this good man was well content, if not desirous, that 
posterity should know he was an angler, as may appear by his 
picture, now to be seen, and carefi^y kept, in Brazen-Nose 
College, to which he was a liberal benefactor. In which picture 
he is drawn, leaning on a desk, with his Bible before him : and 
on one hand of him his lines, hooks, and other tackling, lying 
in a round ; and, on his other hand, are his angle-rods of several 
sorts,* and by. them this is written, " that he died 13th February 
1601, being aged ninety-five years, forty-four of which he had 
been dean of St Paul's church, and that his age had neither 
impaired liis hearing, nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened his 
memory, nor made any of the faculties of his mind weak or 
useless." It is said that angling and temperance were great causes 
of these blessings. And I \\Tsh the like to all that imitate him, 
and love the memory of so good a man. 

My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, 
the late provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton, (a man 
with whom I have often fished and conversed,) a man, whose 
foreign employments in the service of this nation, and whose 
experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness, made his company 

* Fuller, in his Wo7-thies, (Lancashire, p. 115,) has thought it worth 
recording- of this pious and learned divine, and that in language so very 
quaint, as to be but just intelligible, that he was accustomed to fish in the 
Thames ; and having one day left his bottle of ale in tl»e grass, on the bank 
of the river, lie found it some days after, no bottle, but a gun, such the 
sound at the opening thereof. And hence, with what degree of sagacity 
let the reader determine, he seems to derive the original of bottled ale in 
England. Could lie have shewn that the botHe was of leather, it is odds 
but he had attributed to Mm the invention of that noble vehicle, and 
made 

his soul in heaven to dwell, 

For first devising the leatham bottel ; 

as, in a fit of maudlin devotion, sings the author of a humorous and well- 
known old ballad. 



66 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind. This man, 
whose very approbation of angling were sufficient to eon\dnce 
any modest censurer of it, this man was also a most dear lover, 
and a frequent practiser, of the art of anghng ; of which he 
would say, " it was an employment for his idle time, which was 
then not idly spent ; for angling was, after tedious study, a 
rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, 
a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer 
of contentedness ;" and " that it begat habits of peace and 
patience in those that professed and practised it." Indeed, 
my friend, you wall find angling to be like the virtue of humi- 
lity, which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings 
attending upon it. 

Sir, this was the sapng of that learned man, * and I do 
easily believe, that peace and patience, and a calm content, 
did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton, 
because I know, that when he was beyond seventy years of 
age, he made this description of a part of the present pleasure 
that possessed him, as he sat quietly, in a summer's evening, 
on a bank a-fishing. It is a description of the spring ; which, 
because it glided as soft and sweetly from his pen, as that river 
does at this time, by which it was then made, I shall repeat it 
unto you : 

This day dame Nature seem'd in love. 
The lusty sap be^aii to move. 
Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines. 
And birds had drawn their valentines. 
The jealous trout, that low did lie. 
Rose at a well dissembled fly; 

* I may add to our author's list of distinguished anglers, Professor 
Wilson of Edinburgh, the late Dr Bahbington of London, and the late 
Sir Humphry Davy, who has imitnted Walton's work very closely, in plan 
and sentiment, in his Sulnwnia. " If," says Sir Humphry, «« you require a 
poetical authority against that of Lord Byron, I mention the philosophical 
and powerful poet of the lakes, and the author of 

An Oxphic tale indeed, 
A tale divine, of hi^h and passionate thoughts, 
To their own music chanted. — Coleridge. 

who is a lover both of fly-fishing and fly-fishermen. Gay's poem you 
know, and his passionate fondness for the amusement, which was his 
principal occupation in the summer at Amesbury ; and the late excellent 
John Tdbin. author of the Honn/ Moon, was an ardent angler. Nay, I can 
find authorities of all kinds, statesmen, heroes, an.i philosophers; 1 can go 
back to Trajan, v. ho was fond of angling. Nelson was a good fly-fisher, 
and as a proof of his passion for it, continued the pursuit even with his 
left hand. Dr Faiey was ardently attached to this amusement, so much 
so, that whin the "Bishop of Durham inquired of him, when one of his 
most important works Avould b^ finished, he said, with great simplicity 
and good hnmonr, ' My lord, I shall woi k steadily at it when the fly-tishing 
season is over,' as if this were a business of his life." Salmonia, p. 7, 
3d edit. 
Sir Humphry taught Dr Wollaston fly-fishing. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 67 

There stood my friend, \vith patient skill. 

Attending of his trembling- quill ; 

Already were the eaves possess'd 

With the swift pilgrim's * daubed nest ; 

The groves already did rejoice 

In Philomel's triumphing voice ; 

The showers were short, the weather mild. 

The morning fresh, the evening smiled. 

Joan takes her neat rubb'd pail, and now 

She trips to milk the sand-red cow ; 

Where, for some sturdy foot-ball swain, 

Joan strokes a syllabub or twain. 

The fields and gardens were beset 

With tulips, crocus, violet : 

And now, though late, the modest rose 

Did more than half a blush disclose. 

Thus all looks gay and full of cheer, 

To welcome the riew-liveried year. 

These were the thoughts that then possessed the undis- 
turbed mind of Sir Henry Wotton. Will you hear the wish 
of another angler, and the commendation of his happy life, 
which he also sings in verse ; namely, Jo. Davors, Esq. 

Let me live harmlessly ; and near the brink 

Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling place. 
Where I may see my quill or cork down sink 

With eager bite of perch, or bleak, or dace ; 
And on the world and my Creator think : 

Whilst some men strive ill gotten goods t' embrace. 
And others spend their tinie in base excess 
Of wine, or worse, in war and wantonness. 

Let them that list, these pastimes still pursue. 
And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill ; 

So I the fields and meadows green may view. 
And daily by fresh rivers walk at will. 

Among the daisies and the violets blue. 
Red hyacinth, and yellow daffodil, 

Purple narcissus like the morning rays, 

Pale gander-grass, and azure culver-keys. 

I count it higher pleasure to behold 

The stately compass of the lofty skv; 
And in the midst thereof, like burning gold, 

The flaming chariot of the world's great eye ; 
The watery clouds that, in the air up-roll'd. 

With sundry kinds of painted colours fly ; 
And fair Aurora, lifting up her head. 
Still blushing, rise from old Tithonus' bed. 

The hills and mountains raised from the plains. 
The plains extended level with the ground ; 

The grounds divided into sundry veins. 
The veins enclosed with rivers running round ; 

These rivers making way through nature's chains 
With headlong course "into the sea profound j 

The raging sea, beneath the valleys low, 

Where lakes and rills and rivulets do flow. 

* The swallow. 



•68 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

The lofty woods, the forests wide and long-, 

Adorn 'd with leaves and branches fresh and green, 

In whose cool bowers the birds, with many a song. 
Do welnome with their choir the Summer's queen; 

The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts among 
Are intermix'd, with verdant grass between ; 

The silver scaled fish that softly swim 

Within the sweet brook's crystal, Wcttery stream. 

All these, and many more of His creation 
That made the heavens, the angler oft doth see; 

Taking therein no little delectation. 
To think how strange, how wonderful they be y 

Framing thereof an inward contemplation 
To set his heart from other fancies free ; 

And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye. 

His mind is rapt above the starry sky. 

Sir, I am glad my memory has not lost these last verses, 
because they are somewhat more pleasant and more suitable 
to May-day than my harsh discourse. And I am glad your 
patience hath held out so long, as to hear them and me ; for 
both of them have brought us AA'ithin the sight of the Thatched 
House. And I must be your debtor, if you think it worth your 
attention, for the rest of my promised discourse, till some 
other opportunity, and a like time of leisure. 

Venator. Sir, you have angled me on with much pleasure 
to the Thatche-d House ; and I now find your words true, 
' ' that good company makes the way seem short ; " for, trust 
me, sir, I thought we had wanted three miles of this house, till 
you shewed it to me. But now we are at it, we'll turn into 
it, and refresh ourselves with a cup of drink and a little rest. 

Piscator. Most gladly, sir, and we '11 drink a civil cup to all 
the otter hunters that are to meet you to-morrow. 

Venator. That Ave will, sir, and to all the lovers of angling 
too, of which number I am now willing to be one myself ; for, 
by the help of your good discourse and company, I have put on 
new thoughts, both of the art of angling, and of all that profess 
it : and if you will but meet me to-morrow at the time and place 
appointed, and bestow one day with me and my friends in hunt- 
ing the Otter, I will dedicate the next two days to wait upon 
you ; and we two will, for that time, do nothing but angle, and 
talk of fish and fishing. 

Piscator. ' Tis a match, sir ; I will not fail you, God Avilling, 
to be at Amwell Hill to-morrow morning before sun-rising. 



THE COMPLETE AKGLER. 69 

CHAPTER II. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE OTTER AXD CHUB. 

Venator. My friend Piscator, you have kept time with ray 
thou.i^hts ; for the sun is just rising, and I myself just now come 
to tliis place, and the dogs have just now put down an otter. 
liOok ! down at the bottom of the hill there, in that meadow, 
chequered with water lihes and lady-smocks, — there you may see 
what work they make : look ! look ! you may see all busy, 
men and dogs, dogs and men, all busy. 

Piscator. Sir, I am right glad to meet you, and glad to have 
so fair an entrance into this day's sport, and glad to see so many 
dogs and more men all in pursuit of the otter. Let's compli- 
ment no longer, but join unto them. Come, honest Venator, 
let 's be gone, let us make haste ; I long to be doing : no 
reasonable hedge or ditch shall hold me. 

Venator. Gentleman huntsman, where found you this Otter ? 

Huntsman. Marry, sir, we found her a mile from this place, 
a-fishing. She has this morning eaten the greatest part of this 
trout ; she has only left thus much of it, as you see, and was 
fishing for more ; when we came, we found her just at it : but 
we were here very early ; we were here an hour before sun-rise, 
and have given her no rest since we came ; sure, she will hardly 
escape all these dogs and men. I am to have the skin, if we 
kill her. 

Venator. Why, sir, what 's the skin worth ? 

Huntsman. 'Tis worth ten shillings to make gloves ; the 
gloves of an Otter are the best fortification for your hands that 
can be thought on against wet weather. 

Piscator. I pray, honest huntsman, let me ask you a pleasant 
question : do you hunt a beast or a fish ? 

Huntsman. Sir, It is not in my power to resolve you ; I leave 
it to be resolved by the college of Carthusians, who have made 
vows never to eat flesh. But, I have heard, the question hath 
been debated among many great clerks, and they seem to differ 
about it ; yet most agree that her tail is fish : and if her body 
be fish too, then I may say that a fish will walk upon land ; 
for an Otter does so sometimes, five, or six, or ten miles in a 
night, to catch for her young ones, or to glut herself yAxh fish. 
And I can tell you that pigeons vdW fly forty miles for a break- 
fast ; but, sir, I am sure the Otter devours much fish, and kills 
and spoils much more than he eats. And I can tell you, that 
this dog-fisher — for so the Latins call him — can smell a fish 



70 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

in the water a hundred yards from him : Gesner says much 
farther, and that his stones are good against the falhng 
sickness ; and that there is an herb, benione, which, being hung 
in a linen cloth, near a fish pond, or any haunt that he uses, 
makes him to avoid the place ; which proves he smells both by 
water and land. And I can tell you, there is brave hunting 
this water-dog in Cornwall, where there have been so many, 
that our learned Camden says there is a river called Ottersey, 
\^'liich was so named by reason of the abundance of otters that 
bred and fed in it. And thus much for my knowledge of the 
Otter ; which you may now see above water at vent, and the 
dogs close mth him : I now see he will not last long. Follow, 
therefore, my masters, follow ; for Sweetlips was like to have 
him at this last vent. 

Venator. Oh me ! all the horse are got over the river ; 
what shall we do now ? shall we follow them over the water ? 

Huntsman. No, sir, no ; be not so eager : stay a little, and 
follow me ; for both they and the dogs will be suddenly on 
this side again, I warrant you, and the Otter too, it may be. 
Now, have at him with Kilbuck, for he vents again. 

Venator. Marry, so he does ; for look ! he vents in that 
corner. Now, now, Ringwood has him : now, he is gone 
again, and has bit the poor dog. Now Sweetlips has her; 
hold her, Sweetlips ! now all the dogs have her, some above, and 
some under Avater ; but now, now she is tired, and past losing. 
Come, bring her to me, Sweetlips. Look ! it is a bitch-otter, 
and she has lately whelped. Let's go to the place where she 
was put down, and not far from it you vdll find all her young 
ones, I dare warrant you, and kill them all too. 

Huntsman. Come, gentlemen! come all! let's go to the 
place where we put down the Otter. Look you ! hereabout it 
was that she kennelled ; look you ! here it was indeed ! for here's 
her young ones, no less than five : come, let's kill them all. 

Piscator. No : I pray sir, save me one, and I '11 try if I can 
make her tame, as I know an ingenious gentleman in Leicester- 
shire, Mr Nicholas Seagrave, has done ; who hath not only 
made her tame, but to catch fish, and do many other things 
of much pleasure. 

Huntsman. Take one with all my heart ; but let us kill the 
rest. And now, let's go to an honest alehouse, where we 
may have a cup of good barley wine, and sing Old Rose, and 
all of us rejoice together. 

Venator. Come, my friend Piscator, let me invite you along 
with us. I '11 bear your charges this night, and you shall bear 
mine to-morrow ; for my intention is to accompany you a day 
or two in fishing. 

Piscator. Sir, your request is granted ; and I shall be right 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 71 

giad both to exchange such a courtesy, and also to enjoy your 
company. 



Venator. Well, now let 's go to your sport of angling. 

Piscator. Let 's be going, vnth all my heart. God keep you 
all, gentlemen, and send you meet, this day, w'ith another bitch- 
otter, and kill her merrily, and all her young ones too. 

Venator. Now, Piscator, v.'here will } ou begin to fish ? 

Piscator. We are not yet come to a likely place : I must walk 
a mile farther yet before I begin. 

Venator. Well, then, I pray, as we walk, tell me freely, how- 
do you like your lodging, and mine host, and the company ? Is 
not mine host a witty man ? 

Piscator. Sir, I will tell you presently what I think of your 
host : but, first, I \\dll tell you, I am glad these otters were 
kiUed ; and I am sorry that there are no more otter-killers, for I 
know that the want of otter-killers, and the not keeping the 
fence-months for the preservation of fish, will, in time, prove 
the destruction of all rivers. And those very few that are left, 
that make conscience of the laws of the nation, and of keeping 
days of abstinence, ^vill be forced to eat tiesh, or suffer more 
inconveniences than are yet foreseen. 

Veyiator. Why, sir, what be those that you call the fence- 
months ? 

Piscator. Sir, they be principally 'three, namely, March, April, 
and May ; for these be the usual months that salmon come out 
of the sea to spawni in most fresh rivers. * And their fry would, 
about a certain time, return back to the salt water, if they were 
not hindered by weirs and unlawful gins, which the greedy 
fishermen set, and so destroy them by thousands, as they would, 
being so taught by nature, change the fresh for salt water. He 
that shall view the ^^dse statutes made in the 13th of Edward the 
First, and the like in Richard the Third, may see several pro- 
visions made against the destruction of fish : and though I profess 
no knowledge of the law, yet I am sure the regulation of these 
defects might be easily mended. But I remember that a wise 
friend of mine did usually say, " That wliich is every body's 
business is nobody's business." If it were otherwise, there 
could not be so m.any nets and fish, that are under the statute 
size, sold daily amongst us ; and of which the conservators of the 
waters should be ashamed, f 

* This is a mistake ; for saluion come out of the sea to spawn in October 
•and November. — J. \i. 

t About the year 1'770, npon the trial of an indictment before me at 
Hicks's.hall, a basket was produced in evidence, containing flounders that 
had been taken with unlawful nets in the river Thames, so small that scarce 



72 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

But, above all, the taking fish in spawning time may be said 
to be against nature : it is like the taking the dam on the nest when 
she hatches her young — a sin so against nature that Almighty 
God hath, in the Levitical law, made a law against it. 

But the poor fish have enemies enough beside such unnatural 
fishermen ; as, namely, the otters that I spake of, the Cormorant, 
the Bittern, the Osprey, the Sea-gull, the Heron, the King-fisher, 
the Gorara,*the Puet,tthe Swan, Goose, Duck, and the Craber,* 
which some call the Water-rat : against all which any honest man 
may make a just quarrel, but I will not ; I will leave them to 
be quarrelled ^vith and killed by others ; for I am not of a cruel 
nature — I love to kill nothing but fish. 

And, now, to your question concerning your host, to speak 
truly, he is not to me a good companion : for most of his conceits 
were either Scripture jests, or lascivious jests, for which I count 
no man wdtty : for the devil will help a man, that way inclined, 
to the first ; and his own corrupt nature, which he always carries 
>vith him, to the latter. But a companion that feasts the company 
with wt and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed 
with them, he is the man ; and, indeed, such a companion should 
have his charges borne ; and to such company I hope to bring 
you this night ; for at Trout Hall, not far from this place, where 
I purpose to lodge to-night, there is usually an angler that proves 
good company. And, let me tell you, good company and good 
discourse are the very sinews of virtue. But for such (Hscourse 
as we heard last night, it infects others ; the very boys vnW learn 
to talk and swear, as they heard mine host, and another of the 
company that shall be nameless. I am sorry the other is a 
gentleman — for less religion will not save their souls than a 
beggar's — I think more will be required at the last great day. 
Well, you know wl at orn pie is able to do ; and I know what 
the poet says in the like case, which is worthy to be noted by. 
all parents and people of civihty, — 

many a one 

Owes to his countrv his r(>ligion ; 

And in another vvouhl as stroncly grow, 

Had but his nurse or mother taught him so. 

This is reason put into verse, and worthy the consideration 
of a wise man. But of this no more ; for though I love civility 
yet I hate severe censures. I 'il to my own art, and I doubt not 

any one of them would cover a half-crown piere. The indictment was 
for an affrav and an assault on a person authorized to seize nr.statutable 
nets ; and the sentence of the offender, a year's imprisonment in Newgate. 

*I do not exactly know what animals are meant by " Gorara" and 
•'Craber. "—J. R. 

t Probably the Peewit Gull (Lartts ridihwidus^ Leislek.) — J. II. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 73 

but at yonder tree I shall catch a Chub : and then we'll turn to 
an honest cleanly hostess, that I know right well, rest ourselves 
there, and dress it for our dinner. 

Venator. Oh, sir ! a Chub is the worst fish that smms : I 
hoped for a Trout to my dinner. 

Piscator. Trust me, sir, there is not a likely place for a Trout 
hereabout : and we staid so long to take our leave of your hunts- 
men this morning, that the sun is got so high, and shines so 
clear, that I will not undertake the catching of a Trout till 
evening. And though a Chub be, by you and many others, 
reckoned the worst of fish, yet you shall see I '11 make it a good 
fish by dressing it. 

Venator. Why, how will you dress him ? 

Piscator. I '11 tell you by and by, when I have caught hira. 
Look you here, sir, do you see ? (but you must stand very close,) 
there lie upon the top of the water, in this very hole, twenty 
Chubs. I '11 catch only one, and that shall be the biggest of 
them all : and that I will do so, I '11 hold you twenty to one : 
and you shall see it done. 

Venator. Ay, marry, sir ! now you talk like an artist, and 
I '11 say you are one, when I shall see you perform what you 
say you can do : but I yet doubt it. 

Piticator. You shall not doubt it long, for you shall see me 
do it presently. Look ! the biggest of these Chubs has had some 
brui-e upon his tail, by a Pike, or some other accident, and that 
looks like a white spot : that very Chub I mean to put into 
your hands pieseutly. Sit you but down in the shade, and stay 
but a little while, and I '11 warrant you, I "11 bring him to you. 

Venator. I '11 sit down and hope well, because you seem to be 
so confident. 

Piscator. Look you, sir, there is a trial of my skill ! there he ix 




Chub Lenciscus Cephalus. 

that very Chub that I shewed you, with the white spot on his 
tail. And I '11 be as certain to make him a good dish of meat. 



74 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

as I was to catcli him : I '11 now lead you to an honest alehouse, 
where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the -wdndows,. 
and twenty ballads stuck about the wall. There my hostess 
(which I may tell you is both cleanly, and handsome, and civil) 
hath dressed many a one for me, and shall novv^ dress it after my 
fashion, and I warrant it good meat. 

Venator. Come, sir, vnXh. all my heart! for I begin to be 
hungry, and long to be at it, and indeed to rest myself too ; for 
though I have walked but four miles this morning, yet I begin 
to })e weary : yesterday's hunting hangs still upon me. 

Piscator. Well, sir, and you shall quickly be at rest, for 
yonder is the house I mean to bring you to. 

Come, hostess, how do you do ? Will you first give us a cup of 
your best drink, and then dress this Chub as you dressed my 
last, when I and my friend were here about eight or ten days 
ago? But you must do me one courtesy,. — it must be done 
instantly. 

Hostess. I -will do it, Mr Piscator, and with all the speed I 
can. 

Piscator. Now, sir, has not my hostess made haste? and 
does not the fish look lovely ? 

Venator. Both, upon my word, sir ! and, therefore, let 's say 
grace and fall to eating of it. 

Piscator. Well, sir, how do you like it ? 

Venator. Trust me, 'tis as good meat as I ever tasted. Now 
let me thank you for it, drink to you, and beg a courtesy of 
you, but it must not be denied me. 

Piscator. What is it, I pray, sir ? You are so modest, that, 
methinks, I may promise to grant it before it is asked. 

Venator. Why, sir, it is, that from henceforth you would 
allow me to call you master, and that really I may be your 
scholar : for you are such a companion, and have so quickly, 
caught and so excL41ently cooked this fish, as makes me ambi- 
tious to be your scholar. 

Piscator. Give me your hand ! from this time forward I will 
be your master, and teach you as much of this ai't as I am able ; 
and will, as you desire me, tell you somewhat of the nature of 
most of the fish that we are to angle for, and I am sure I botli 
can and will tell you more than any common angler yet knows. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW TO FISH FOR AND TO DRESS THE CHAVENDER OR CHUB. 

Piscator. The Chub, though he eat well thus dressed, yet, as 
Ee is usually dressed, he does not. He is objected against, not 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 75 

only for being full of small forked bones, dispersed through all 
his body, but that he eats waterish, and that the flesh of him is 
not fh-m, but short and tasteless. The French esteem him so 
mean, as to call him un villain: nevertheless he may be so 
dressed as to make him very good meat, — as, namely, if he be 
a large Chub, then dress him thus : 

First, scale him, and then wash him clean, and then take 
out his guts ; and to that end make the hole as little and near 
to his gills as you may conveniently, and especially make clean 
his throat froin the grass and weeds that are usually in it ; for 
if that be not very clean, it ^^^ll make him to taste very sour. 
Having so done, put some sweet herbs into his belly ; and then 
tie liim with two or three spUnters to a spit, and roast him, 
basted often uith vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, ^^^th 
good store of salt mixed with it. Being thus dressed, you will 
find him a much better dish of meat than you, or most folk, 
even than anglers themselves, do imagine ; for this dries up 
the fliud watery humour with which all Chubs do abound. 

But take this rule with you, that a Chub newly taken and 
newly dressed is so much better than a Chub of a day's keeping 
after he is dead, that I can compare him to nothing so fitly as 
to cherries newly gathered from a tree, and others that have 
been bruised and lain a day or two in water. But the Chub 
being thus used, and dressed presently, and not washed after 
he is gutted, (for note, that lying long in water, and washing 
the blood out of any fish after they be gutted, abates much 
of their sweetness,) you will find the Chub (being dressed 
in the blood, and qmckly) to be such meat as will recom- 
pense your labour, and disabuse your opinion. 

Or you may dress the Chavender, or Chub, thus : — 

When you have scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, 
and washed him very clean, then chine, or slit, him through the 
middle, as a salt -fish is usually cut ; then give him three or 
four cuts, or scotches, on the back with your knife, and broil 
him on charcoal, or wood coal, that are free from smoke : and, 
all the time he is a-broiling, baste him with the best sw^eet 
butter, and good store of salt mixed with it. And, to this, add 
a little thyme cut exceedingly small, or bruised into the butter. 
The Cheven thus dressed, hath the watery taste taken away, 
for which so many except against him. Thus was the Cheven 
dressed that you now liked so well, and commended so much. 
But note again, that if this Chub that you eat of had been kept 
till to-morrow, he had not been worth a rush. And remember, 
that his throat be washed very clean — I say very clean — and 
his body i;ot washed after he is giitted, as indeed no fish 
should be. 

Well, scholar, you see what pains I have taken to recover 



76 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

the lost credit of the poor despised Chub. And now I will 
give you some rules how to catch him : and I am glad to enter 
you into the art of fishing by catching a Chub ; for there is no 
fish better to enter a young angler, he is so easily caught, — but 
then it must be this particular way. 

Go to the same hole in which I caught my Chub, where, in 
most hot days, you will find a dozen or twenty Chevens floating 
near the top of the water. Get two or three grasshoppers as 
you go over the meadow ; and get secretly behind the tree, 
and stand as free from motion as is possible. Then put a 
grasshopper on your hook, and let your hook hang a quarter of 
a yard short of the water, to which end you must rest your rod 
on some bough of the tree. But it is likely the Chubs will sink 
down towards the bottom of the water, at the first shadow of 
your rod, (for a Chub is the fearfullest of fishes,) and will do so if 
but a bird flies over him and makes the least shadow on the 
water.* But they will presently rise up to the top again, and 
there lie soaring till some shadow affrights them again. I say, 
when they lie upon the top of the water look out the best Chub, 
(which you, setting yourself in a fit place, may very easily see,) 
and move your rod as softly as a snail moves, f to that Chub you 
intend to catch ; let your bait fall gently upon the water three 
or four inches before him, and he wll 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 scarce ever lose 
its hold ; and therefore give liim 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. 

Venator. 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 yours was. 

Piscator. Marry, and 1 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 '11 warrant you. 

Venator. But, master, what if I could not have found a 
Grasshopper ? 

Piscator. Then I may tell you, that a black snail, with hi§ 
belly slit, to shew his white, or a piece of soft cheese, wiU 
usually do as well. Nay, sometimes a worm, or any kind of 

* This fearfulness of fishes of shadows seems to me to disprove Walton's 
©pinion of their quick-sightedness, inasmuch as they see nothing distinctly. 
— J. R. 

+ " No throwing," says Titus, in Blackwood's Magazine. •• Put your 
bait in as gently as a thief at a public dinner puts his haud into the high 
sherifl's pocket." — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 11 

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 ^vill 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 hoar 
him leap at flies, then, if you get a Grasshopper, 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 witli a 
Grasshopper. 

Venator. But before you go farther, I pray, good master, 
what mean you by a leather-mouthed fish ? 

Piscator. By a leather-mouthed fish, I mean such as have 
their teeth in their throat, as the Chub, or Cheven; and so tlie 
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 its 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 observe to be very full of bones, and the 
skin very thin, and httle 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. 

Venator. I thank you, good master, for this observation. 
But now what shall be done wdth my Chub, or Cheven, that I 
have caught ? 

Piscator. 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 Nullingness 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 uangs cut off", or at any kind of snail, or at the 
Black Bee that breeds in clay walls.* And he never refuses 



* The Anthophora retusa of nntnralists. It is the female only that is 
black, the male being brown, with a feathering of hairs on his feet. Of 
these Linnaeus made two species. — J. K. 



78 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

a Grasshopper on the top of a swift stream,* nor, at the bottom, 
the young Humble-beet 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 lemon colour. 
And some make a paste, for the winter months, (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. X 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 vdsh 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 wdll commend to 
your consideration how curious former times have been in the 
like kind. 

You shall read in Seneca, his Natural Questions, lib. iii. 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 he says, they took great pleasure to see 
their Mullets change to several colours, when they were dying. 
But enough of this ; for I doubt I have staid too long from 
giving you some observations of the Trout, and how to fish for 
him, which shall take up the next of my spare time. 

* In the Thames, ahove Richmond, the best way of using' the Grasshop- 
per ioT Chub, is to fish with it as with an artificial fly ;the first joints of the 
legs must be pinched off; and in this way, when the weed is rotten, which 
is seldom till September, the largest Dace are taken. 

t The Boinbus muscorum of naturalists. — J. R. 

t The hooks. No. 3. or 4;, may be used, whipped upon a strong gut, with 
a quill float on it. He bites so eagerly, that on taking the bait. " you may," 
Eays Hawkins, •' hear his jaws chop like those of a dog." — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 79 



CHAPTER IV. 

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURE AND BREEDING OF THE TROUT, 
AND HOW TO FISH FOR HIM ; AND THE MILKMAID'S SONG. 

Piscator. The Trout is a fish highly valued, both in this 
and foreign nations. He may be justly said, as the old poet 
siiid of wine, and we EngHsh say of venison, to be a generous 
fish : a fish that is so like the Buck that he also has his seasons ; 
for it is observed, that he comes in and goes out of season with 
the Stag and Buck. Gesner says, his name is of a German 
offspring ; and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely, in 
the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel ; and that he 
may justly contend wdth all fresh- water fish, as the Mullet may 
with all sea-fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste ; and 
that being in right season, the most dainty palates have allowed 
precedency to him. 

And, before I go farther in my discourse, let me tell you, 
that you are to observe, that as there be some barren Does that 
are good in summer, so there be some barren Trouts that are 
good in winter : but there are not many that are so ; for usually 
they be in their perfection in the month of May, and decline 
\vith the Buck. Now, you are to take notice, that in several 
countries, as in Germany and in other parts, compared to ours, 
fish do differ much in their bigness, and shape, and other ways ; 
and so do Trouts. It is well known, that in the Lake Leman 
(the Lake of Geneva) there are Trouts taken three cubits 
long, as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit : and 
Mercator says, the Trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva 
are a great part of the merchandise of that famous city. And 
you are farther to know, that there be certain waters that breed 
Trouts, remarkable both for their number and smallness. I 
know a little brook in Kent,* that breeds them to a number 
incredible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, 
but none greater than about the size of a Gudgeon, There are 
also, in divers rivers, especially that relate to, or be near to the 
sea, (as Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor,) a little 
Trout called a Samlet, or Skegger Troutf (in both which 
places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing,) that will 
bite as fast and as freelv as Minnows : these be bv some taken 



* The Cray, if I mistake not, whirh is about eiffht miles from where I am 
nowwritirifr, and is famous for small tronr. — J." R. 

f This appi-ars to lie w liat i> tcrund tlie Par iu tlie uoith. and which, I 
thiuk, is a piiculiar species. — I. H. 



80 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

to be young Salmons ; but in those waters they never grow to 
be bigger than a herring. 




There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a Trout called 
there a Fordidge Trout, a Trout that bears the name of the town 
where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of tish ; 
many of them near the bigness of Salmon, but known by their 
different colour, and in their best season they cut very white ; 
and none of these have been known to be caught vAth an angle, 
unless it were one that was caught by Sir George Hastings, an 
excellent angler, and now with God : and he hath told me, he 
thought that Trout bit not for hunger, but wantonness ; and it 
is rather to be believed, because both he, then, and many others 
before him, have been curious to search into their bellies, what 
the food was by which they lived, and have found out nothing 
by which they might satisfy their curiosity.* 

Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported 
by good authors, that Grasshoppers and some fish have no 
mouths, but are nourished and take breath by the porousness of 
their gills, man knows not how : and this may be believed, if 
we consider that when the Raven hath hatched her eggs, she 
takes no farther care, but leaves her young ones to the care of 



* The same is true of the Salmon, which has never any thing besides a 
yellow fluid in his stomach when caught. The same is also true of^^the 
Herring. — J. R. 

f " It has been said by naturalists," says Sir John Hawkins, " particu- 
larly by Sir Theodore Mayerne, that the Grasshopper has no mouth, but a 
pipe in his breast, throvigh which it sucks the dew, which is its nutriment." 

Nothing could be more absurd than this, which may be disproved by any 
body that chooses to examine the large and obvious jaws in the Grass- 
hopper. So far from living on dew, Grasshoppers are so voracious that they 
make no ceremony, as I have often witnessed,"and proved by experiment, 
of eating their own species. I can scarcely comprehend how Walton was 
not set riglit by some of his dignified Episcopal friends in reference to the 
gross perversion of the text respecting the young Ravens. Even supposing 
worms to be bred in the nests, the poor things could not help themselves 
thereto J. R. , * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 81 

tile God of nature, who is said, in the Psahns, "to feed the 
young Ravens that call upon him." And they be kept alive and 
fed by a dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or some other 
ways that we mortals know not. And this may be beUeved of 
the Fordidge Trout, which, as it is said of the Stork that he 
knows his season, so he knows his times (I think almost his 
day) of coming into that river out of the sea, where he lives 
(and, it is like, feeds) nine months of the year, and fasts three in 
the river of Fordidge. And you are to note, that those to\vns- 
men are very punctual in observing the time of beginning to fish 
for them ; and boast much, that their river affords a Trout that 
exceeds all others. And just so does Sussex boast of several 
fish, as namely, a Shelsey Cockle, a Chichester Lobster, an 
Arundel Mullet, an Amerly Trout. 

And, now, for some confirmation of the Fordidge Trout : you 
axe to know that this Trout is thought to eat nothing in the fresh 
water ; and it may be the better believed, because it is AveU 
kno\\Ti, that Swallows, . and Bats, and Wagtails, A',liich are 
called half-year birds, and not seen to fly in England for six 
months in the year, but (about Michaelmas) leave us for a hotter 
cHmate, yet some of them that have been left behind their 
fellows, have been found, many thousands at a time, in hollow 
trees.* or clay caves, where they have been observed to live, 
and sleep out the whole winter, without meat. And so Albertus 
observes, that there is one kind of frog, that huth her mouth 
naturally shut up about the end of August, and that she lives so 
all the winter : and though it be strange to some, yet it is known 
to too many among us to be doubted. f 

And so much for these Fordidge Trouts, which never aflTord 
an angler sport, but either live their time of being in the fresh 
water, by their meat formerly gotten in the sea, (not unlike the 
Swallow or Frog,) or by the virtue of the fresh water only; or, 
as the bird of Paradise and the Chameleon are said to live, by 
the sun and the air. % 

* View Sir Frnncis Bacon, Exper. 899. 

No proof worthy of the least credit hns erer been given of this popular 
notion, whirli is indeed physirally impossible. — J. R. 

t There can be no doubt tliat the mouth of tlie Frog is closed during its 
winter torpidity. — J. R. 

t That the Chame.'eon lives by the air alone is a vulgar error, it being 
well known that its food is Fhes and other insects." See Sir Thomaa 
Brown's Inquiry into f'l^gar and Common Errors, book iii. chap. 21. 



B2 THE COMPLETE ANGLER, 




Bull Trout. — Salmo Fario. — Variety. 

There is also in Northumberland a Trout called a Bull Trout,* 
of a much greater length and bigness than any in these southern 
parts. And there ^xe, in many rivers that relate to the sea, 
Salmon Trouts, as much different from others, both in shape and 
in their spots, as we see sheep in some countries differ one from 
another in their shape and bigness, and in the fineness of their 
wool. And, certainly, as some pastures breed larger sheep ; so 
do some rivers, by reason of the ground over which they run, 
breed larger Trouts. 




Salmon Trout. — Sahna Trntta. 

Now the next thing that I will commend to your consideration 
is, that the Trout is of a more sudden growth than other fish. 
Concerning which, you are also to take notice, that he lives not 
so long as the Perch, and.' divers other fishes do, as Sir Francis 
Bacon hath observed in his History of Life and Death. 

And next you are to take notice, that he is not like the 
Crocodile, which if he lives'never so long, yet always thrives till 
his death : but 'tis not so with the Trout ; for after he is come to 
his full growth, he declines in his body, and keeps his bigness, 

* ThislTr fnit is also found in the south of Scotland. The river Tarras 
in Dumfries-s hire is proverbially famed for it. — S. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 83 

or thrives only in his head till his death.* And you are to 
know, that he ^^ill, about (especially before) the time of his 
spa^vning, get, almost miraculously, through weirs and riood- 
gates, against the streams ; even through such high and swift 
places as is almost incredible. Next, that the Trout usually 
spawTis about October or November, but in some rivers a little 
sooner or later ; which is the more observable, because most other 
fish spa^vn in the spring or summer, when the sun hath warmed 
both the earth and water, and made it fit for generation. And 
you are to note, that he continues many months out of season ; 
for it may be observed of the Trout, that he is like the Buck or 
the Ox, that wall not be fat in many months, though he go in 
the very same pasture that Horses do, which will be fat in one 
month. And so you may observe, that most other fishes recover 
strength, and grow sooner fat and in season, than the Trout doth. 

And next you are to note, that till the sun gets to such a 
height as to warm the earth and the water, the Trout is sick, and 
lean, and lousy, and unwholesome ; for you shall, in winter, find 
him to have a big head, and then to be lank, and thin, and 
lean ; at which time many of them have sticking on them Sugs, 
or Trout-lice ; which is a kind of a worm, in shape live a clove, 
or pin ^vith a big head, and sticks close to him, and sucks his 
moisture : those, I think, the Trout breeds himself; and never 
thrives till he free himself from them, which is when warm 
weather comes ; and then, as he grows stronger, he gets from 
the dead still Avater into the sharp streams and the gravel, and 
there rubs off these worms or lice ; and then, as he grows 
stronger, so he gets him into s\Adfter and swifter streams, and 
there lies at the watch for any Fly or Minnow that comes near 
to him ; and he especially loves the Way-tiy, which is bred of 
the Cod- worm, or Cadis ; and these make the Trout bold and 
lusty, and he is usually fatter and better meat at the end of the 
month [May] than at any time of the year. 

Now you are to know that it is observed, that usually 
the best Trouts are either red or yellow ; though some (as the 
Fordidge Trout) be white and yet good ; but that is not usual : 
and it is a note observable, that the female Trout hath usually 
a less head and a deeper body than the male Trout, and is 
usually the better meat. And note, that a hog-back and a little 
head to either Trout, Salmon, or any other fish, is a sign that 
that fish is in season. 

But yet you are to note, that as you see some ^^dllows or 
palm-trees bud and blossom sooner than others do, so some 
Trouts be, in rivers, sooner in season : and as some hollies or 

» This opinion has arisen from mistaking- a largre Trout, after spawniner, 
when his head looks larg-e, because his body is lean, for an old Trout 
declining tliroughage. — J. R. 



84 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

oaks are longer before tliey cast their leaves, so are some Trouts 
in rivers longer before they go out of season. 

And you are to note, that there are several kinds of Trouts: 
but these several kinds are not considered but by very few men ; 
for they go under the general name of Trouts : just as Pigeons 
do in most places ; though it is certain there are tame and wild 
Pigeons : and of the tame, there be Helmits and Runts, and 
Carriers and Croppers, and indeed too many to name. Nay, 
the Royal Society * have found and published lately, that there 
be thirty and three kinds of Spiders, and yet all, for aught I 
know, go under that one general name of Spider. And it is so 
with many kinds of fish, and of Trouts especially, which differ 
in their bigness, and shape, and spots, and colour. The great 
Kentish hens may be an instance, compared to other hens. 
And, doubtless, there is a kind of small Trout which will never 
thrive to be big, that breeds very many more than others do 
that be of a larger size : which you may rather believe, if you 
consider that the little Wren and Titmouse will have twenty 
young ones at a time, when, usually, the noble Hawk, or the 
musical Throssel, or Blackbird, exceed not four or five. 

And now you shall see me try my skill to catch a Trout. 
And at my next walking, either this evening or to-morrow 
morning, I mil give you direction how you yourself shall fish 
for him. 

Venator. Trust me, master, I see now it is a harder matter 
to catch a Trout than a Chub ; for I have put on patience, and 
followed you these two hours, and not seen a fish stir neither 
at your minnow nor your worm. 

Piscator. Well, scholar, you must endure worse luck some- 
time, or you will never make a good angler. But what say 
you now ? there is a Trout now, and a good one too, if I can 
but hold him ; and two or three turns more Mali tire him. Now 
you see he lies still, and the sleight is to land him : reach me 
that landing net. So, sir, now he is mine own : what say you 
now, is not this worth all my labour and your patience ? 

Venator. On my word, master, this is a gallant Trout ; what 
shall -we do with him ? 

Piscator. Marry, e'en eat him to supper : we '11 go to my 
hostess from whence we came ; she told me, as I was going out 
of door, that my brother Peter, a good angler and a cheerful 
companion, had sent word he would lodge there to-night, and 
bring a friend with him. My hostess has two beds, and I know 
you and I may have the best : we'll rejoice wdth my brother 
Peter and his friend, tell tales, or sing ballads, or make a catch, 
or find some harmless sport to content us and pass away a little 
time without offence to God or man. 

* He must mean Dr Lister. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 85 

Venator. A match, good master, let 's go to that house ; for 
the Unen looks white, and smells of lavender, and I long to lie 
in a pair of sheets that smell so. Let 's be going, good master, 
for I am hungry again with fishing. 

Piscator. Nay, stay a little, good scholar ; I caught my last 
Trout %\ith a Worm ; now I will put on a Minnow, and try a 
quarter of an hour about yonder trees for another ; and so walk 
towards our lodging. Look you, scholar, thereabout we shall 
have a bite presently, or not at all. Have with you, sir : o' my 
word I have hold of him. Oh ! it is a great logger-headed 
Chub ; come, hang him upon that willow twig and let 's be going. 
But turn out of the way a little, good scholar, towards yonder 
high honeysuckle hedge ; there we '11 sit and sing, whilst this 
shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a 
sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant 
meadows. 

Look ! under that broad beech tree I sat do\ra, when I was 
last this Avay a-fishing ; .and the birds in the adjoining grove 
seemed to have a friendly contention ^^•ith an echo, whose dead 
voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near to the brow of that 
primrose hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams gUde 
silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea ; yet some- 
times opposed by rugged roots and pebble stones, which broke 
their waves, and turned them into foam. And sometimes I 
beguiled time by ^dewing the harmless lambs ; some leaping 
securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in 
the cheerful sun ; and saw others craving comfort from the 
swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and 
other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content, that I 
thought, as the poet hath happily expressed it, 

I was for that time lifted above earth ; 
And possess'd joys not promised in my birth. 

As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second 
pleasure entertained me, — 'twas a handsome milkmaid, that had 
not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind 
\\ath any fears of many things that wll never be, as too many- 
men too often do ; but she cast away all care, and sung like a 
nightingale ; her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it ; it 
was that smooth song which was made by Kit jiarlo w, * now at 

* Christopher Marlow, a poet of no small eminence. He was sometime 
a student at Canibridgo, and, after that, an actor on and writer for the 
stage. There are extant of his writings, five tracedics and a poem that 
bears his name, entitled Hero and Leander, which, he not living to com. 
plete it, was finished by Chapman. Tlie song here mentioned is printed, 
with his name to it, in ii Collection entitled, England's Helicon, 4to. 1600, 
as is also the Answer, here said to be written by Sir Walter Raleigh, but 
there subscribed '* Ignoto." Of Marlow it is said, that he was the author 



86 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

least fifty years ago. And the milkmaid's mother sung an 
answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh, in his 
younger days. 

They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good ; I think 
much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this 
critical age. Look yonder ! on my word yonder they both be 
a-milking again. I will give her the Chub, and persuade them 
to sing those two songs to us. 

God speed you, good woman ! I have been a-fishing ; and am 
going to Bleak Hall * to my bed ; and having caught more fish 
than will sup myself and my friend, I will bestow tliis upon you 
and your daughter ; for I use to sell none. 

Milk-woman. Marry ! God requite you, sir, and we '11 eat it 
cheerfully. And if you come this way a-fishing two months 
hence, a grace of God ! I '11 give you a syllabub of new verjuice, 
in a new made haycock, for it. And my maudlin shall sing you 
one of her best ballads ; for she and I both love all anglers, 
they be such honest, civil, quiet men. In the meantime will 
you drink a draught of red cow's milk ? you shall have it freely. 

Piscator. No, I thank you ; but, I pray, do us a courtesy that 
shall stand you and your daughter in nothing, and yet we will 
think ourselves still something in your debt : it is but to sing 
us a song that was sung by your daughter when I last passed 
over this meadow, about eight or nine days since. 

Milk-woman. What song was it, I pray? Was it Come 
Shepherds, deck your herds ? or. As at noon Dulcinia rested ? 
or, PhilUda flouts me ? or, Chevy Chase ? or, Johnny Arm^ 
strong ? or, Troy Town ? f 

Piscator. No, it is none of those ; it is a song that your 
daughter sung the first part, and you sung the answer to it. 

Milk-woman. Oh, I know it now. I learned the first part in 
my golden age, when I was about the age of my poor daughter ; 
and the latter part, which indeed fits me best now, but two or 
three years ago, when the cares of the world began to take hold 
of me : but you shall, God willing, hear them both ; and sung 
as well as we can, for we both love anglers. Come, Maudlin, 
sing the first part to the gentlemen, -with a merry heart ; and 
I 'U sing the second when you have done. 

of divers atheistical and blasphemous discourses ; and that in a quarrel 
■with a serving man, his rival in a connection with a lewd woman, he 
received a stab with a dagger, and shortly after died of the stroke. Wood 
Athen. Oxon. vol. i. 338, and Beard's Theatre of God's Judgmeyits. 

* The author seems here to have forgot himself; for, page 72, he says 
he is to lodge at Trout Hall. 

t See the songs, As at Noon, Chexnf Chase, Johnny Armstrong, and Troy 
Town, printed after the most authentic copies, in Percy's Reliques o/Atu. 
dent English Poetry. PhilUda flouts me, is to be found in Whittingham's 
edition of Elegant Extracts in Verse, vol. v. p. 239, 



THE COMPLETE ANGLEK 87 



THE MILKMAID S SONG. 

Come live with me, and be my love, 
And we will all the pleasures prove 
That valleys, orroves, or hills, or field, 
Or woods, and steepy mountains yield ; 

Where we will sit upon the rocks, 
And see the shepherds feed our flocks, 
By shallow rivers, to whose falls 
Melodious birds sing madrigals. 

And I will make thee beds of roses, 
And then a thousand fragrant posies, 
A cap of flowers and a kirtle, 
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle ; 

A gown made of the finest wool, 
Which from our pretty lambs we pull ; 
Slippers, lined choicely for the cold, 
With buckles of the purest gold ; 

A belt of straw and ivy buds, 
With coral clasps and amber studs : 
And if these pleasures may thee move. 
Come live with me, and be my love. 

Thy silver dishes for thy meat, 
As precious as the gods do eat, 
Shall, on an ivory table, be 
Prepared each day for thee and me- 

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 
For thy delight, each May morning. 
If these delights thy mind may move, 
Then live with me, and be my love. * 

Venator. Trust me, master, it is a choice song, and sweetly 
sung by honest Maudlin. I now see it was not without cause 
that our own Queen Elizabeth did so often ^\ish herself a 
milkmaid all the month of May, because they are not troubled 

* Dr Warburton, in his notes on the Merry Wives of Windsor, ascribes 
this song to Shakespeare : it is true, Sir Hucrh Evans, in the third act of 
that play, sings four lines of it ; and it occurs in a Collection ofPoemt, said 
to be Shakespeare's, printed by Thomas Cotes for John Benson, 12mo. 1640, 
with some variations. On the contrary, it is to be found, \vith the name of 
" Christopher Marlow" to it, '\n England's Helicon; and Walton has just 
said it was made by Kit Marlow. The reader will judge of these evidences 
as he pleases. 



88 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



witli fears and cares, but sing sweetly all the day, and sleep 
securely all the night : and, without doubt, honest, innocent, 
pretty Maudlin does so. I '11 bestow Sir Thomas Overbury's 
milkmaid's Avish upon her, ' ' that she may die in the spring ; 
and, being dead, may have good store of flowers stuck roimd 
about her winding sheet." * 



THE MILKMAID S MOTHER S ANSWER. 

If all the world and love were young, 
And truth in every shepherd's tongue, 
These pretty pleasures might me move 
To live with thee, and be thy love. 

But Time drives flocks from field to fold. 
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold ; 
Then Philomel becometh dumb, 
And age complains of care to come. 

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields 
To wayward winter reckoning yields. 
A honey tongue, a heart of gall, 
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. 

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, 
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, 
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten; 
In folly ripe, in reason rotten. 

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds. 
Thy coral clasps and amber studs, 
All these in me no means can move 
To come to thee, and be thy love. 

What should we talk of dainties, then. 
Of better meat than 's fit for men ? 
These are but vain : that 's only good 
Which God hath bless'd, and sent for food. 

But could youth last and love still breed, 
Had joys no date nor age no need ; 
Then those delights my mind might move 
To live with thee, and be thy love. 

Mother. Well, I have done my song. But stay, honest 
anglers ; for I will make Maudlin to sing you one short song 
more — Maudlin, sing that song that you sung last night, when 

* Sir Thomas Overbury's character of a fayre and happy milkmaid, 
printed with his poem, entitled The Wife, in 12rao. 1655. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 89 

young Coridon the Shepherd played so piu-ely on his oaten pipe 
to you and your cousin Betty. 
Maudlin. I will, mother. 

I married a wife of late, 
The more 's my unhappy fate ; 
I married her for love, 
As my fancy did me move, 
And not for a worldly estate ! 

But oh ! the green sickness 
Soon changed her likeness j 
And all her beauty did fail. 
But 'tis not so 
With those that go. 
Through frost and snow, 
As all men know. 
And carry the milking pail. 

Piscator. Well sung, "good woman ! I thank you. I 'U give 
you another dish of fish one of these days, and then beg another 
song of you. Come, scholar ! let Maudlin alone : do not you 
offer to spoil her voice. Look! yonder comes mine hostess, to 
call us to supper. How now ! is my brother Peter come ? 

Hostess. Yes, and a friend wdth him. They are both glad to 
hear that you are in these parts ; and long to see you, and long 
to be at supper, for they be very hungry. 



CHAPTER V. 

IIORE DIRECTIONS HOW TO FISH FOR, AND HOW TO MAKE FOR 
THE TROUT AN ARTIFICIAL MINNOW. AND FLIES, WITH SOME 
MERRIMENT. 

Piscator. Well met, brother Peter; I heard you and a friend 
would lodge here to-night, and that hath made me to bring my 
friend to lodge here too. My friend is one that would fain be 
a brother of the angle : he hath been an angler but this day ; 
and I have taught him how to catch a Chub by daping %vith a 
grasshopper ; and the Chub he caught was a lusty one of nineteen 
inches long. But pray, brother Peter, who is your companion ? 

Peter. Brother Piscator, my friend is an honest countryman, 
and his name is Coridon ; and he is a do\\'nright witty com- 
panion, that met me here purposely to be pleasant and eat a 
Trout ; and I have not yet wetted ray line since we met toge- 
ther : but I hope to fit liim with a Trout for his breakfast ; for 
rU be early up. 



90 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Piscator. Nay, brother, you shall not stay so long ; tor, look 
you, here is a^TiiOUT* 




\^nll fill six reasonable bellies Come, hostess, dress it pre- 
sently ; and get us what other meat the house will afford ; and 
give us some of your best barley wine, the good liquor that our 
honest forefathers did use to drink of ; the drink which preserved 
their health, and made them live so long, and to do so many 
good deeds. 

Peter. O' my word, this Trout is perfect in season. Come, 
I thank you, and here is a hearty draught to you, and to all the 
brothers of the angle wheresoever they be, and to my young 
brother's good fortune to-morrow, I will furnish him with a 
rod if you will furnish him with the rest of the tackling ; we 
will set him up and make him a fisher. 

And I will tell him one thing for his encouragement, that his 
fortune hath made him happy to be scholar to such a master ; a 
master that knows as much, both of the nature and breeding of 
fish, as any man ; and can also tell him as well how to catch 
and cook them, from the Minnow to the Salmon, as any that I 
ever met withal. 

Piscator. Trust me, brother Peter, I find my scholar to be so 
suitable to my own humour, which is to be free and pleasant, 
and civilly merry, that my resolution is to hide nothing that I 
know from him. Believe me, scholar, this is my resolution ; 
and so here 's to you a hearty draught, and to all that love us, 
and the honest art of Angling. 

Venator. Trust me, good master, you shall not sow your 
seed in barren ground ; for I hope to return you an increase 
answerable to your hopes : but, however, you shall find me 
obedient, and thankful, and serviceable, to my best ability. 

Piscator. 'Tis enough, honest scholar ; come, let 's to supper. 
Come, my friend Coridon, this Trout looks lovely ; it was 
twenty-two inches when it was taken ; and the belly of it 
looked some part of it as yellow as a marigold, and part of it 
as white as a lily ; and yet, methinks, it looks better in this 
good sauce. 
* This is the Wandle variety of Trout, with marbled spots like a Tortoise. - 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 91 

Coridon. Indeed, honest friend, it looks well, and tastes 
well : I thank you for it, and so doth my friend Peter, or else 
he is to blame. 

Peter. Yes, and so I do ; we all thank you : and when we 
have supped, I nn^U get my friend Coridon to sing you a song 
for requital. 

Coridon. I ^\all sing a song, if any body Avill sing another : 
else, to be plain vnth. you, I will sing none. I am none of those 
that sing for meat, but for company: I say, " 'Tis merry in 
hall, when men sing all."* 

Piscator. I '11 promise you 1 11 sing a song that was lately 
made, at my request, by Mr William Basse ; one that had made 
the choice songs of the Hunter in his Career, and of Tom of 
Bedlam, f and many others of note ; and this, that I will sing, 
is in praise of angling. 

Coridon. And then mine shall be the praise of a country- 
man's life. WTiat \vill the rest sing of? 

Peter. I wiU promise you, I -w-ill sing another song in praise 
of angling to-morrow night ; for we ^^ill not part till then, but 
fish to-morrow, and sup together ; and the next day every 
man leave fishing, and fall to his business. 

Venator. ' Tis a match ; and I will provide you a song or a 
catch against then, too, which shall give some addition of mirth 
to the company ; for we aaiII be civil, and as merry as beggars. 

Piscator. 'Tis a match, my masters. Let's e'en say grace, 
and turn to the fire, drink the other cup to whet our whistles, 
and so sing away all sad thoughts. 

Come on, my masters, who begins ? I think it is best to 
draw cuts, and avoid contention. 

Peter. It is a match. Look, the shortest cut falls to Coridon. 

Coridon. Well then, I Avill begin, for I hate contention. 

coridok's sokg. 

Oh, the sweet contentment 
The countr\'man doth find ! 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, 

Heigh troloUie lollie lee. 
That quiet contemplation 
Possesseth all my mind ; 

Then care away, 

And wend along with me. 

« Parody on the adage : 

"It's merry in hall. 

When beards wag all." — i. e. when all are eating. 
t This song;, beginning " Forth from my sad and darksome cell," with 
the music to it, set by Hen. Lawes, is printed in a book, entitled Choice 
Ayres, Songs, and Dialogues, to sing to the Theorbo, Lute, and Bass Viol, 
folio, 1675 ; and in Playford's Antidote against Melancholy, 8vo. 1669 j also 
in Dr Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 357. 



92 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

For courts are full of flattery, 
As hath too oft been tried ; 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, &c. 
The city full of wantonness, 
And both are full of pride : 

Then care away, &c. 

But oh, the honest countryman 
Speaks truly from his heart. 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, &c. 
His pride is in his tillage. 
His hor: es, and his cart : 

Then care away, &c. 

Our clothing is good sheep skins, 
Gray russet for our wives ; 

Heigh trolollie loliie loe, &c. 
'Tis warmth and not gay clothing 
That doth prolong our lives. 

Then care away, &c. 

The ploughman, though he labour hard. 
Yet on the holiday, 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, &c. 
No emperor so merrily 
Doth pass his time away. 

Then care away, &c. . 

To recompense our tillage, 
The heavens aiford us showers ; 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, &c. 
And for our sweet refreshments 
The earth affords us bowers : 

Then care away, &c. 

The cuckoo and the nightingale 
Full merrily do sing, 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, &c. 
And with their pleasant roundelays 
Bid welcome to the spring ; 

Then care away, &c. 

This is not half the happiness 
The countryman enjoys ; 

Heigh trolollie lollie loe, &c. 
Though others think they have as much, 
Yet he that says so lies : 

Then come away, turn 

Countryman with me. 

Jo. Chalkhili..* 

* John Chalkhill, Esq. of whom mention is made in the author's Life. 
Mr Singer, in reprinting the elegant poem of T/iealtnaatid Clearchus, threw 



THE COxMPLETE ANGLER. 93 

Piscator. Well sung, Coridon ! tliis song was sung -with 
mettle ; and it was choicely fitted to the occasion : I shall love 
you for it as long as I know you. I would you were a brother 
of the angle ; for a companion that is cheerful, and free from 
swearing and scurrilous discourse, is worth gold. I love such 
mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one 
another next morning ; nor men, that cannot well bear it, to 
repent the money they spend when they be warmed ^\'ith drink. 
And take this for a rule : you may pick out such times and such 
companies, that you may make yourselves merrier for a little 
than a great deal of money ; for " ' Tis the company, and not 
the charge, that makes the feast ; " and such a companion you 
prove : I thank you for it. 

But I \vi\i not compliment you out of the debt that I owe 
you, and therefore I will begin my song, and %nsh it may be so 
well liked : 



THE ANGLER S SOKG. 

As inward love breeds outward talk, 
The hound some praise, and soma the hawk ; 
Some, better pleased with private sport, 
Use tennis, some a mistress court : 

But these delights I neither wish 

Nor envy, while I freely fish. 

Who hunts, doth oft in danger ride ;' 
Who hawks lures oft both far and wide ; 
Who uses games shall often prove 
A loser ; but who falls in love 

Is fetter'd in fond Cupid's snare : 

My angle breeds me no such care. 

Of recreation there is none 
So free as fishing is alone ; 
All other pastimes do no less 
Than mind and body both possess; 

My hand alone my work can do, 

So I can fish and study too. 

I care not, I, to fish in seas, 

Fresh rivers best my mind do please, 

out a conjecture, that, as Walton had been silent upon the life of his 
friend Chalkhill, he might be altog^etht-r a fictitious personage, and be only 
a pseudonyme for Walton himself. This liint by subsequent writers has 
been considered proof positive. Unfortunately John ChalkJiill's tomb of 
black marble is still to be seen on the walls of Wiarhestcr Cathedral, by 
which it appears he died in May, 1671), at the age of eighty. Walton's 
preface to Theahna speaks of him as dead in May, 1678 ; but, as the book 
was not published till 1683, when Walton was ninety years old, it is 
probably an error of memory. 



94 THE COMPLETE ANGLER* 

Whose sweet calm course I contemplate, 
And seek in life to imitate : 

In civil bounds I fain would keep, 

And for my past offences weep. 

And when the timorous Trout I wait 
To take, and he devours my bait. 
How poor a thing sometimes I find 
Will captivate a greedy mind : 

And when none bite, I praise the wise, 

Whom vain allurements ne'er surprise. 

But yet, though while I fish I fast, 
I make good fortune my repast ; 
And thereunto my friend invite, 
In whom 1 more than that delight : 

Who is more welcome to my dish 

Than to my angle was my fish. 

As well content no prize to take, 
As use of taken prize to make : 
For so our Lord was pleased, when 
He fishers made fishers of men ; 

Where (which is in no other game) 

A man may fish and praise his name. 

The first men that our Saviour dear 
Did choose to wait upon him here 
Bless'd fishers were, and fish the last 
Food was that he on earth did taste ; 

I therefore strive to follow those 

Whom he to follow him hath chose. 

Coridon. Well sung, brother ! you have paid your debt in 
good coin. We anglers are all beholden to the good man that 
made this song: come, hostess, give us more ale, and let's 
drmk to him. 

And now let 's every one go to bed, that we may rise early : 
but first let's pay our reckoning, for I will have nothing to 
hinder me in the morning ; for my purpose is to prevent the 
sun rising. 

Peter. A match. Come, Coridon, you are to be my bed- 
fellow. I know, brother, you and your scholar will lie together. 
But where shall we meet to-morrow night? for my friend 
Coridon and I will go up the water towards Ware. 

Piscator. And my scholar and I vnil go down towards 
Waltham. 

Coridon. Then let 's meet here, for here are fresh sheets that 
smell of lavender ; and I am sure we cannot expect better meat 
or better usage in any place. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 95 

Peter. 'Tis a match. Good-night to every body. 
Piscator. And so say I. 
Venator. And so say I. 



Piscator. Good morrow, good hostess. I see my brother 
Peter is still in bed. Come, give my scholar and me a morning 
drink, and a bit of meat to breakfast ; and be sure to get a good 
dish of meat or two against supper, for we shall come home as 
hungry as hawks. Come, scholar, let's be going. 

Venator. Well now, good master, as we walk towards the 
river, give me direction, according to your promise, how I 
shall fish for a Trout. 

Piscator. My honest scholar, I \\ill take this very convenient 
opportunity to do it. 

The Trout is usually caught with a Worm, or a Minnow, 
(which some call a Penk,) or with a Fly, namely, either a natural 
or an artificial fly : concerning which three, I will give you 
some observations and directions. 

And, first, for Worms. Of these there be very many sorts : 
some breed- only in the earth, as the Earth-worm ; others of or 
amongst plants, as the Dug- worm ; and others breed either 
out of excrements, or in the bodies of living creatures, as in the 
horns of sheep or deer ; or some in dead flesh, as the Maggot, 
or Gentle, and others. 

Now these be most of them particidarly good for parti- 
cular fishes. But for the Trout, the Dew-worm, which some 
also call the Lob- worm,* and the Brandling, are the chief; and 
especially the first for a great Trout, and the latter for a less. 
There be also of Lob-worms, some called Squirrel-tails, (a 
worm that has a red head, a streak do^vn the back, and broad 
tail,) which are noted to be the best, because they are the 
toughest and most lively, and live longest in the water ; for 
you are to know that a dead worm is but a dead bait, and like 
to catch nothing, compared to a lively, quick, stirring worm. 
And for a Brandling, he is usually found in an old dung-hill, or 
some very rotten place near to it, but most usually in cow- 
dung, or hog's-dung, rather than horse-dung, which is some- 
what too hot and dry for that worm. But the best of them are 
to be found in the bark of the tanners, which they cast up in 
heaps after they have used it about their leather. 

There are also divers other kinds of worms, which, for colour 



» The Dew-wonn, or Earth-worm, is the Lutnbrimut gigas of Duges ; 
but the Lob-worm i? taken in some ang-ling books for the Grub of the 
Cockchafer, ( Melalontha vulgaris. ) — J. K, 



96 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

and shape, alter even as the ground out of which they are got 
as the Marsh-worm, the Tag-tail, the Flag- worm, the Dock 
worm, the Oak-worm, the Gilt-tail, the Twachel or Lob- 
worm, * which of all others is the most excellent bait for a 
Salmon, and too many to name, even as many sorts as some 
think there be of several herbs or shrubs, or of several kinds of 
birds in the air : of which I shall say no more, but tell you, 
that what worms soever you fish with, are the better of being 
well scoured, that is, long kept before they be used: and in 
case you have not been so provident, then the way to cleanse 
and scour them quickly is to put them all night in water, if 
they be Lob-worms, and then put them into your bag Vvdth 
fennel. But you must not put your Brandlings above an hour 
in water, and then put them into fennel, for sudden use ; 
but if you have time, and purpose to keep them long, then they 
be best preserved in an earthen pot, with good store of moss, 
which is to be fresh every three or four days in summer, and 
every week or eight days in winter ; or, at least, the moss 
taken from them, and clean washed, and wrung betwixt your 
hands till it be dry, and then put it to them again. And when 
your worms, especially the Brandling, begins to be sick and 
lose of his bigness, then you may recover him, by putting a little 
milk or cream (about a spoonful ui a day) into them, by drops 
on the moss ; and if there be added to the cream an egg beaten 
and boiled in it, then it will both fatten and preserve them 
long.f And note, that when the knot, which is near to the middle 

* To avoid confusion, it maybe necessary to remark, that the same kind 
of worm is, in different places, known by different names : thus the Marsh 
and the Meadow-worm are the same ; and the Lob-worm, or Twachel, is 
also called the Dew-worm and the Garden-worm; and the Dock-worm 
is, in some places, called the Flag'- worm. 

The Tagr-tail is fonnd in March and April, in marled lands or meadows, 
after a shower of rain, or in a morning, when the weather is calm and not • 
cold. 

To find the Oak-worm, beat on an oak tree that grows over a highway 
or bare place, and they will fall for you to gather. 

To find the Dock-worm, go to an old pond or pit, and pnll up some of 
the flags ; shake the rofits in the water, and, amongst the fi! res that grow 
from the roots you will find little husks, or cases, of a reddish or yelloudsh 
colour; open these carefully with a pin, and take from thence a little 
worm, pale and yellow, or white, like a Gentle, but longer and slenderer, 
with rows of feet down his belly, and a red head : this is the Dock, or 
Flag- worm, an excellent bait for Grayling, Tench, Bream, Carp, Roach, 
and Dace. 

f The following is also an excellent way : namely, Take a piece of hop- 
sack, or other very coarse clo(h, and wash it clean, and let it dry, then 
wet it in the liquor wherein beef has been boiled, (but be cafeful that the 
beef is fresh, for salt will kilt the worms,) and wriig it, but not quite dry; 
put the worms into this cloth, and lay them in an earthen pot, and let 
them stand from morning till night ; then take the worms from the cloth 
and wa hit, and wet it figain in some of the liquor : do thus once a-day, 
and you may keep worms in perfect health, and fit for use, for near a 
month. 

Observe that the Lob-worm, Marsh-worm, and Red-v/orm, will bear * 
more scouring than any others, and are better for long keeping. 



THE COMPLETE AN.GtER. 97 

of the Brandling, begins to swell, then he is sick ; and if he he 
not well looked to, is near dying. And for moss, you are to 
note, that there be divers kinds of it, which I could name to 
you, but I will only tell you that that which is likest a buck's 
horn is tbe best, except it be soft white moss, which grows on 
some heaths, and is hard to be found. And note, th?it in a very 
dry time, when you are put to an extremity for worms, walnut 
tree leaves squeezed into water, or salt in water, to make it 
bitter or salt, and then that water poured on the ground where 
you shall see worms are used to rise in the night, \vill make 
them to appear above ground presently.* And you may take 
notice, some say that camphor put into your bag with your 
moss and worms gives them a strong and so tempting a smell, 
that the fish fare the worse and you the better for it. 

And now, I shall shew you how to bait your hook with a 
worm, so as shall prevent you from much trouble, and the loss 
of many a hook too, when you fish for a Trout Avith a running 
line ; f that is to say, when y^u fish ivw ^hini by hand at the 
ground. J will direct y^}^^ 4^ ,a# ={da«f^,^ i. .can, that you 
may not mistake. 

Suppose it be a big li^V-vyOEni: .put your took into Jiim some- 
what above the middle, and out again a litde below the middle ; 
having so done, draw your worm above the arming of your hook , 
but note, that at the entering of your hook, it must not be at 

* This practice was one of the common sports of school-boys at the time 
Erasmus wrote his Colloquies^. In that entitled Venatio, or Hunting, a 
company of them g-o abroad into the fields, and one named Laurence pro- 
poses fishing ; but having- no worms, Bartholus objects the want of them, 
till Laurence tells him how he may get some. The dialogue is very 
natural and descriptive, and being but short, is here given. " Laurence. 
I should like to go a-fishing ; I have a neat hook. Bartiioliii. But where 
will you get baits ? Laurence. There are earth-worms everywhere to be 
had. Baitliohis. So there are, if they would but creep out of the ground 
to you. Ltturenice. I will make a great many thousands jump out presently. 
Barthohis. How? by \yitchcraft ? Laurence. You shall see the art. Fill 
this bucket with water : break these green shells of walnuts to pieces, 
and put them into it; wet the ground with the v.^ater. Now, mind a 
little. JDo you see them coming out ? Bartholus. I see a miracle ; I believe 
the armed men started out of the earth after this manner, from the 
serpent's tpeth that were sown." 

'I'he above exclamation is au allusion to the fable in the second book of 
Ovid's Metamorpfioses ; where Cadmus, by scattering the serpent's teeth 
on the ground, caused armed men to spring out of it. 

f The running line, so called because it runs along the ground, is made 
of strong silk, which you may buy at the fishing-tackle shops : but I prefer 
hair, as being less apt to tangle, and is thus titted up : About ten inches 
from the end, fasten a small cleft shot, then make a hole through a pistol 
or itiusket bullet, according to the swiftness of the stream you fish in ; and 
put the line through it, and draw the bullet down to the shot : to the end 
of your line fasten au Indian grass, or silkworm-gut, with a large hook. 
<)r you may, instead of a bullet, fix four large shot^ at the distance of 
eight inches from the hook. The running line is used for Trout, Grayling, 
and Salmon-smelts ; and is proper only for stre.afps and j^pid watery. 
See part ii. chap. XL 

G 



98 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

the head-end of the worm, but at the tail-end of him, that the 
point of your hook may come out toward the head-end ; and, 
having drawn him above the arming of your hook, then put the 
point of your hook again into the very head of the worm, till it 
come near to the place where the point of the hook first came 
out, and then draw back that part of the worm that was above 
the shank, or arming of your hook, and so fish with it. And if 
you mean to fish with two worms, then put the second on before 
you turn back the hook's head of the first worm. _ You cannot 
lose above two or three worms before you attain to what I 
direct you ; and having attained it, you will find it very useful, 
and thank me for it ; for you will run on the ground without 
tangling. 




MiKNQw — Cypriiius Phoxinus. — Linn^us. 

Now for the Minnow, or Penk : he is not easily found and 
caught till March, or in April, for then he appears first in the 
river. Nature having taught him to shelter and hide himself in 
the udnter in ditches that be near to the river, and there both 
to hide and keep himself warm in the mud, or in the weeds, 
which rot not so soon as in a running rivei', in which place if he 
were in winter, the distempered floods that are usually in that 
season would suffer him to take no rest, but carry him headlong 
to mills and weirs, to his confusion. And of these Minnows, 
first, you are to know, that the biggest size is not the best ; and 
next, that the middle size and the whitest are the best ; and 
then you are to know, that your Minnow must be so put on 
your hook that it must turn round when it is drawn against the 
stream ; and, that it may turn nimbly, you must put on a big 
sized hook, as I shall now direct you, which is thus : Put your 
hook in at his mouth, and out at his gill ; then, having drawn 
your hook two or three inches beyond or through his gill, put 
it again into his mouth, and the point and beard out at his tail ; 
and then tie the hook and his tail about, very neatly, with 'a 
white thread, which will make it the apter to turn quick in the 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 99 

water : that dor.e, pull back that part of your line which Avas 
slack when you did put your hook into the Minnow the second 
time ; I say, pull that part of your line back, so that it shall 
fasten the head, so that the body of the Minnow shall be almost 
straight on your hook; this done, try how it mil turn, by 
drawing it cross the water or against a stream ; and if it do not 
turn nimbly, then turn the tail a little to the right or left hand, 
and try again till :t turn quick, for if not, you are in danger to 
catch nothing; for know, that it is impossible that it should 
turn too quick.* And you are yet to know that in case you want 
a Minnow, then a small Loach, or a Stickle-bag, or any other 
small fish that will turn quick, will serve as well. And you 
are yet to know that you may salt them, and by that means keep 
them ready and fit for use three or fom- days, or longer ; and 
that, of salt, bay-salt is the best. 

And here let me tell you, what many old anglers know 
right well, that at some times, and in some waters, a Minnow 
is not to be got ; and therefore, let me tell you, I have, 
which I AAall shew to you, an artificial Minnow, that will catch 
a Trout as well as an artificial fly : and it was made by a hand- 
some woman that had a fine hand, and a live Minnow lying by 
her : the mould or body of the Minnow was cloth, and wrought 
upon, or over it thus, A\ith a needle ; the back of it Vvith very 
sad French green silk, and paler green silk towards the belly, 
shadowed as perfectly as you can imagine, just as you see a 
Minnow : the belly was ■\\Tought also with a needle, and it was 
a part of it white silk, and another part of it with silver thread : 
tlie tail and fins were of a quill, which was shaven thin ; the 
eyes were of two little black beads ; and the head was so 
shadowed, and all of it so curiously Avrought, and so exactly 
dissembled, that it would beguile any sharp-sighted Trout in a 
swift stream. f And this Minnow I \\ill now shew you, (look, 
here it is,) and, if you like it, lend it you, to have two or three 
made by it ; for they be easily carried about an angler, and be 
of excellent use; for, note, that a large Trout will come as 
fiercely at a Minnow as the highest mettled hawk doth seize on 
a partridge, or a greyhound on a hare. I have been told that 
a hundred and sixty Minnows have been found in a Trout's 
belly : either the Trout had devoured so many, or the miller 
that gave it a friend of mine had forced them down his throat 
after he had taken him. 

Now for Flies, which are the third bait wherewith Trouts aie 

* 1 have never been able to cause a Minnow to spin well in trolling-, 
unless the tail was bent nearly to a semicirrle. — J. R. 

f Artificial Minnou-s, made with mother-of-pearl, are to be purchased 
at all the tackle shops ; but I should always prefer a live one, when it can 
be had. In using an artificial Minnow, smear it with fish slime. — J. R. 



100 THE eOMPLET*: AN<3iLS:il. 

usually taken. You are to know Dhat there are as many sorts 
of flies as there be of fruits : I will name you but some of them ; 
as the Dun-fly, the Stons-fly, the Red-fly, the Moor-fly, the 
Tawney-fly, the Shell-fly, the Cloudy or Blackish-fly, the 
Flag-fly, the Vine-fly: there be of flies, Caterpillars", and 
Canker-flies, and Bear-flies : and indeed .too many either for me 
to name, or for you to remember. And their breeding is so 
various and wonderful, that I ^ight easily amaze myself, and 
tire you in a relation of them. 

And, yet, I vail exercise your promised patience iby saying a 
little of the Caterpillar, or the Palmer -fly,* or worm ; that by 
tliem ,you may guess what a work it were, :in a discourse, but 
to run over those very many flies, worms, and little living 
'Creatures, with which the sun and summer adorn and beautif}' 
the river banks and meadows, both for the recreation and 
contemplation of us anglers ; pleasures which, I think, myself 
enjoy more than any other man that is not of my profession. 

Phny holds an opinion, that many have their birth or being 
from a dew that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees ; 
and that some kinds of them are from a dew left upon herbs 
or flowers ; and others, from a idew left upon coleworts or 
cabbages : all which kinds of dews being thickened and con- 
densed, are by the sun's generative heat, most of them, 
hatched, and in three days made living creatures :f and these 
of several shapes and colours ; some being hard and tough, some 
smooth and soft ; some are ihorned in their head, some in their 
tail, some have none ; some have hair, some none ; some 
have sixteen feet, some less, and soine have none : but (as our 
Topsel, in his liistory of Serpents, hath with great diligence 
observed) those which have snone .move upon the earth, or upon 
broad leaves, their motion being not unlike to the waves of the 
sea. Some of them he alsoobserves to be bred of the eggs of other 
Caterpillars, % and that those in their time turn to be butterflies; 
and again, that their eggs turn the following year to be Cater- 
pillars. And some affirm, that every plant has its particular fly 
or Caterpillar, which it breeds and feeds. I have seen, and. may 
therefore affirm it, a green Caterpillar, or worm, as big as a 

* What ang-lers call a Palmer is any caterpillar, and it is called a fly, 
though it has no wings; because, in angling, they trail it like a fly over 
the water. — J. R. 

f All that Walton writes about insects shews the extreme ignorance 
which then prevailed respecting natural history. Redi, by his ingenious 
experiments, exploded the notion so long prevalent of flies being bred 
from putrid meat ; and though Blumenhach, Cuvier, Lamarck, and most 
of our eminent modern naturalists, again reverted to the doctrine of 
equivocal or spontaneous generation, particularly in minute animalcules, 
even this has been very recently exploded by the observations of M. 
Ehrenbi-rg of Berlin. — J. R. 

X No Caterpillars lay eggs, though all are hatched from eggs, laid by 
Butterflies, Moths, or Sand-flies. — J. R. ', 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. IQl 

?mall peascod, which had fourteen legs ; eight on the belly, 
four under the neck, and two near the tail. It was found on a 
hedge of privet ; * and was taken thence, and put into a large 
box, and a little branch or two of privet put to it, on which I 
saw it feed as sharply as a dog gnaws a bone : it lived thus, 
five or six days, and thrived, and dianged the colour two or 
three times, but by some neglect in the keeper of it, it then 
died, and did not turn to a fly: but if it had lived, it had 
doubtless turned to one of those flies that some call flies of prey, 
which those that walk by the rivers may, m summer, see 
fasten on smaller flies,, and, I think, make them their food. 
And 'tis observable, that as there be these flies of prey, which 
be very large, so there be others, very little, created, I think, 
only to feed them, and breed out of I know not what ; whose 
life, they say, nature intended not to exceed an hour ; f and yet 
that hfe is thus made shorter by other fiies^ or by accident. 

'Tis endless to tell you what the curious searchers into 
nature's, productions have observed of these worms and flies : 
but yet I shall teU you what Aldrovandus, our Topsel, and others, 
say of the Palmer-worm, or Caterpillar: that whereas others 
content themselves to feed on particular herbs or leaves (for 
most think those rerj' leaves that gave them life and shape give 
them a particular feeding and nourishment, and that upon them 
tiiey usually abide ;) yet he observes, that tiiis is called a 
Pilgrim, or Palmer-worm, for his very wandering life and 
various food ; not contenting himself, as others do, A\ath any 
one certain place for his abode, nor any certain kind of herbs 
or flowers for his feeding, but will boldly and disorderly wander 
up and down, and not endure to be kept to a diet, or fixed to a 
particular place. J 

Nay, the very colours of Caterpillars are, as one has observed, 
very elegant and beautiful. I shall, for a taste of the rest, 
describe one of them ; which I will, some time the next month, 
shew you feeding on a willow tree ; and you shall find him 
punctually to answer this very description : His lips and mouth 
somewhat yellow ; his eyes black as jet ; his forehead purple ; 
his feet and hinder parts green ; his tail two-forked and black ; 
the whole body stained with a kind of red spots, which run 
along the neck and shoulder-blade, not unhke the form of 
St Andrew's cross, or the letter X, made thus cross-wise, and 
a white line drawn do\\Ti his back to his tail ; all which add 
much beauty to his whole body. And it is to me observable, 



* The Caterpillar of the Privet Hawk Moth, (Sphinx Ltguttri,) which 
1 not, as Walton suspects, " '■ ■^ ^ -. -^ 

f This is qiiite fabulous. 
t These absurd notions 
species under one conunon name. — J- R. 



is not, as Walton suspects, a fly of prey, or Dragon-fly. —J. R. 
f This is qiiite fabulous. — .1. R. 
t These absurd notions arose from confounding some hundreds ai 



102 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



that at a fixed age this caterpillar gives over to eat, and towards 
Avinter comes to be covered over with a strange shell or crust, 
called an aiirelia : and so lives a kind of dead life, without 
eating, all the winter. And as others of several kinds turn to 
beseveral kinds of flies and vermin, the spring following, so 
this caterpillar then turns to be a painted butterfly 




Come, come, my scholar, you see the river stops our morning 
walk : and I will also here stop my discourse : only as we sit 
down under this honeysuckle hedge, whilst I look a line to fit 
the rod that our brother Peter hath lent you, I shall, for a little 
confirmation of what I have said, repeat the observation of 
Du Bartas [6 Day ;] 

God, not contented to each kind to give 

And to infuse the virtue generative, 

By his wise power made many creatures breed 

Of lifeless bodies, without Venus' deed : 

So the cold humour breeds the Salamander, 

Who, in elfect, like to her birth's commander. 

With child with hundred winters, with her touch 

Quenches the fire, though glowing ne'er so much. 

So in the fire, in burning furnace, springs 

The fly Perausta with the flaming wings ; 

Without the fire it dies, in it joys. 

Living in that which all things else destroys. 

So slow Bootes underneath him sees. 

In th' icy islands, goslings hatch 'd of trees ; 

Whose fruitful leaves fallmg into the water, 

Are turn'd, 'tis known, to living fowls soon after 

So rotten planks of broken ships do change 

To barnacles. transformation strange ! 

'Twas first a green tree, then a broken hull. 

Lately a mushroom ; now a flying gull. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 103 

Venator. Oh, my good master, this morning walk has been 
spent to my great pleasure and wonder ; but I pray, Avhen shall 
I have your direction how to make artificial flies, like to those 
that the Trout loves best ; and, also, how to use them ? 

Piscator. My honest scholar, it is now past five of the clock ; 
we will fish till nine ; and then go to breakfast. Go you to yonder 
sycamore tree, and hide your bottle of drink under the hollow 
root of it ; for about that 'time, and in that place, we wall mak;e 
a brave breakfast with a piece of powdered beef, and a radish 
or too, that I have in my fish bag : we shall, I warrant you, 
make a good, honest, wholesome hungry breakfast. And I \\i\\ 
then give you direction for the making and using of your flies : 
and in the meantime, there is your rod and line : and my 
advice is, that you fish as you see me do, and let 's try which 
can catch the first fish. 

Venator. I thank you, master. I mil observe and practise 
your directions as far as I am able. 

Piscator. Look you, scholar ; you see I have hold of a good 
fish : 1 now see it is a Trout. I pray, put that net under him ; 
and touch not my line, for if you do, then we break all.* Well 
done, scholar : I thank you. 

Now for another. Trust me, I have another bite. Come, 
scholar, come, lay down your rod, and help me to land this as 
you did the other. So now we shall be sure to have a good 
dish of fish to supper. 

Venator. I am glad of that ; but I have no fortune : sure, 
master, yours is a better rod and better tackling. 

Piscator. Nay, then, take mine ; and I will fish ^^'ith yours. 
Look you, scholar, I have another. Come do as you did before. 
And now I have a bite at another. Oh me ! he has broke all : 
there's half a line, and a good hook lost. 

Venator. Ay, and a good Trout too. 

Piscator. Nay, the Trout is not lost ; for pray take notice, 
no man can lose what he never had. 

Venator. Master, I can neither catch \\'ith the first nor 
second angle : I have no fortune. 

Piscator. Look you, scholar, I have yet another. And now, 
having caught three brace of Trouts, I AAdll tell you a short tale 
as we walk towards our breakfast. A scholar, a preacher I 
should say, that was to preach, to procure the approbation of a 
parish that he might be their lecturer, had got from his fellow 
pupil the copy of a sermon that was first preached ^\•ith great 
commmendation by him that composed it ; and though the 
borrower of it preached it, word for word, as it was at first, 

» This is an important maxim in angling ; for while the line flows free 
from the rod, this gives way by bending as the fish tugs ; while catching 
the line is certain to snap it. — J. R. 



104 TttE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

yet it was utterly disliked as it was preached by the second to 
his congregation, which the sermon borrower complained of to 
the lender of it, and thus was answered: " I lent you, indeed, 
my fiddle, but not my fiddlestick ; for you are to knoxv, that 
every one cannot make music with my words, which are fitted 
for my own mouth." And so, my scholar, yOu are to know, 
that as the ill pronunciation Or ill accenting of words in a 
sermon spoils it, so the ill carriage of your line, or not fishing, even 
to a foot, in si right place, makes you lOse your labour : arid you 
are to know, that though you have my fiddle, that is, my very 
rod and tacklings with which you see I Catch fish^ yet you have 
not nay fiddlestick, that is, you yet haVe riot skill to know liow 
to carry your hand and line, nor how to guide it to a right 
place : and this must be taught you ; for you are to remember, 
I told you angling is an art, either by practice or a long 
observation, or both. But take this for a rule : When you fish 
for a Trout with a worm, let your line have so niuch, and not 
more lead than Mall fit the strearii in which you fish ; that is to 
say, more in a great troublesome stream than in a smaller that 
is quieter ; as near as may be, so much as ^\'ill sink the bait to 
the bottom, and keep it still in motiori, and not more. 

But now, let 's say grace, and fall to breakfast. What say 
you, scholar, to the providence of an old angler? Does not 
this meat taste well ? and was not this place Well chosCn to eat 
it? for this sycamore tree vnU shade us from the sun's heat. 

Venator. All excellent good ; and my stomach e?icellent 
good, too. And now I remember, and find that true Which 
devout Lessius says, " that poor men, and those thait fast often, 
have miich more pleasure in eating than rich men arid gluttons, 
that always feed before their stomachs are empty of iheir last 
meat, and call for more ; for by that mearis they rob fheriiselves 
of that pleasure that hunger brings to poor men." And I do 
seriously approve of that saying of yours, ' ' that you had rather 
be a civil, well governed, well grounded, temperate poof anglef , 
than a drunken lord : " but 1 hOpe there is rione such. Ho^v- 
ever, I am certain of this, that 1 have been at many very costly 
dinners that have riot afforded riie half tlie content that this has 
done ; for which I thank God and you. 

And now, good master, proceed tO your promised direction 
for making and ordering my artificial fly. 

Piscator. My honest scholar, 1 \vill do it ; for it is a debt diie 
iirito you by my promise. And because you shall riot thirik 
yourself more engaged to me than you really are, I Will freely 
give yoii such directions as Sveire lately given to riie by an inge- 
nious brother of the angles an honest man and a most excellent 
fly fisher. 

You are to note, that there are twelV6 kirids of airtiMal tiidAa 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. l05 

flies, to angle with upon the top of the water. Note, by the 
way, that the fittest season of using these is a bhistefing windy 
day, wlien tlie waters are so troubled that the natural fly cannot 
be seen, or rest upon them. The first is the Dun-fly, in 
March : the body is made of dun wool ; the wings, of the par- 
tridge's feathers. The second is another Dun-fly : the body of 
black wool ; and the wings made of the blark drake's feathers, 
and of the feathers under his tail. The third is the Stone-fly, 
in April : the body is made of black \voot ; mnde yellow under 
the wings and under the tail, and so made with wings of the 
drake. The fourth is the Ruddy-fly, in the beginnine- of May : 
the body made of red wool, wrapt about with black silk ; and 
the feathers are the \nngs of the drake : with the feathers of a 
red capon also, which hang dangling on his sides next to the 
tail. The fifth is the Yellow or Greenish, in May likewise : the 
body made of yellow wool ; and the wings made of the red 
cock's hackle or tail. The sixth is the Black-fly, in May also : 
the body made of black wool, and lapped about like the herl of a 
peacock's tail : the -vnngs are made of the wings of a browTi capon, 
M-ith his blue feathers in his head, "the seventh is the sad 
Yellow-fly, in June : the body is made of black wool, with a 
yellow list on either side ; and the wings taken off the ^Anngs of 
a buzzard, bound with black braked hemp. The eighth is tlifi 
Aioorish-fly : made with the body of duskish wool ; and the Avings 
made of the blackish mail of the drake. The r.inth is th-e TaA^ny- 
fly, good until the middle of June : the body made of taAvny wool ; 
the -wings made contrary, one against the other, made of the 
whitish mail of the wild drake. The tenth is the Wasp-fly, in 
July : the body made of black wool, lapt about \\ith yellow 
silk ; the Mngs made of the feathers of the drake, or of the 
buzzard. The eleventh is the Shell-fly, good in mid .July: the 
body made of greenish wool, lapt about with the herl of a 
peacock's tail; and the wings made of the ^^^ngs of the Buzzard. 
The twelfth is the Dark Drake-fly, good in August : the body 
made with black wool, lapt about with black silk ; Ms wings 
are made with the mail of the black drake, with a black head. 
Thus have you a jury of flies, likely to betray and condemn all 
the Trouts in the river. 

I gh^l next give you some other dirfectious for fly-fishing, 
such as are given by Mr Thomas Barker, * a gentleman that 

« "f hip gpnflfmrtn, addressing himsplf to the noble lotd to whom liit 
book i.i dedirated, thus beeins : 

" I ndpr fatour, I will romplimerif , and pnt a rase to your hononr. 

I mot with P- nrinn ; and upon our discourse be fell out with ine, having » 
food M'oapon, but neither stomarh nor skill : I say this nian may come 
home by Weeping-* ross ; I will cause tl>e clerk to toll his knell. It is the 
tery like case fo the gentleman angler, that goeth to the river for his 
pleasure. This angler hath neither judgment, nor experience} he may 



106 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

hath spent much time in fishing : but I shall do it vdth a little 
variation. 

First, let your rod be light, and very gentle : I take the best 
to be of two pieces. * And let not your line exceed (especially 

corae home lis"htly laden at his leisure." " A man thp.t goeth to the 

river for his pleasure, must understand, when he cometh there, to set forth 
his tackle. 'I'he first thing he must do, is to observe the wiud and sun for 
day, the moon, the stars, and the wanes of the air for nie^ht, to set forth 
his tackles for day or night; and accordingly to go for his pleasure, and 

some profit. " " Now 1 am determined to angle Avith ground-baits, and 

set my tackles to my rod, and go to my pleasure. I begin at the uppermost 
part of the stream, carrying my line with an upright hand, feeling my 
plummet running truly on the ground some ten inches from the hook, 
plumming my line according to the swiftness of the stnam I angle in ; for 
one plummet will not serve for all streams : for the true angling is, that 
tlie plummet run truly on the ground." 

" My lord sent to me at sun-going-down, to provide him a good 

dishofTrouts against the next morning, by six o'clock. 1 went to the 
door to see how the wanes of the air were like to prove. I returned 
answer, that I doubted not, God willing, but to be provided at the time 
appointed. I went presently to the river, and it proved very dark: I 
threw out a line of three silks and three hairs twisted, for the uppermost 
part ; and a line of two hairs and two silks twisted, for the lower part — 
with a good large hook. 1 baited my hook with two Lob-worms, the four 
ejids hanging as meet as I could guess them in the dark. I fell to angle. 
It proved very dark, so that I had good sport ; angling with the Lob- worms 
as I do with the files, on the top of the water: — You will hear the fish 
rise at the top of the water ; then, you must loose a slack line down to the 
bottom as nigh as you can guess ; then hold your line straight, feeling the 
fish bite ; give time, there is no doubt of losing the fish, for there is not 
one araong.st t\ienty but doth gorge the bait : the least stroke you can 
strike fastens the hook, and makes the fish sure ; letting the fish take a 
turn or two, you may take him up with your hands. The night began to 
alter and grow somewhat lighte; ; I took otf the Lob-worms, and set to 
my rod a white Palmer-fly made of a large hook ; I had good sport for the 
time, until it grew lightpr ; so 1 took oft' the white Palmer, and set to a 
red Palmer, made of a large hook : I had good sport until it grew very 
light: then I took off' the red Palmer, and set to a black Palmer; I had 
good sport, and made up the dish of fish. So I put up my tackles, and was 
with my lord at his time appointed for the service. 

" These three files, with the help of the Lob- worms, serve to angle all' 
the year for the night; observing the times (as I have shewed you,) in 
this nightwork ; the wliite fly for darkness, the red fly in medio, and the 
black fly for liglitness. This is the true experience for angling in the 
night, which is Uie surest angling of all, and killeth tlie greatest Trouts. 
Your lines may be strong, but must not be longer than your rod. 

" Now, having taken a good dish of Trouts, I presented them to my 
lord. He having provided good company, commanded me to turn cook, 
and dress them for dinner 

" There comes an honest gentleman, a familiar friend, tome — he 

was an angler — begins to compliment with me, and asked me how I did ? 
when I had been angling? and demanded, in discourse, what was the 
reason I did not relate in my book the dressing of his dish offish, which he 
loved ? I pray you, sir, what dish of Trouts was that? He said it was a 
dish of close-boiled Trouts, buttered with eggs. My answer was to him, 
that every scullion dresseth that dish against his will, because he cannot 
calvor them. I will tell you, in short: Put your Trouts into the kettle 
when the kettle is set to the fire, and let them boil gently, as many cooks 
do ; and they shall boil close enough ; which is a good dish, buttered with 
eggs, good ff)r ploughmen, but not for the palate. Sir, I hope I have given 
you satisfaction. " 

* For your rod, and also for a fly-line, take the directions contaiae^d ia* 
the notes on chap. xxi. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 107 

for three or four links next to the hook,) I say, not exceed 
three or four hairs at the most, though you may fish a little 
stronger above, in the upper part of your line ; but if you can 
attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises, and 
catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself 
with too long a fine, as most do. And before you begin to 
angle, cast to have the wind on your back ; and the sun, if it 
shines, to be before you ; and to fish down the stream ; * and 
carry the point or top of your road downward, by which means 
the shadow of yourself, and rod too, A\dll be the least offensive 
to the fish ; for the sight of any shade amazes the fish, and spoils 
your sport, of which you must take a great care. 

In the middle of March, till which time a man should not in 
honesty catch a Trout, or in April, if the weather be dark, or a 
little windy or cloudy, the best fishing is with the Palmer- 
worm, of which I last spoke to you ; but of these there be divers 
kinds, or at least of divers colours : these and the May-fly are 
the ground of all fly angling : which are to be thus made : 

First, you must arm f your hook \\'ith the line, in the inside 
of it, then take your scissars, and cut so much of a brown 
mallard's feather as, in your own reason, will make the wings 
of it, you having withal regard to the bigness or littleness of 
your hook ; "then lay the outmost part of your feather next to 
your hook, then the point of your feather next the shank of 
your hook ; and, having so done, whip it three or four times 
about the hook with the same silk ^dth which your hook was 
armed ; and hanng made the silk fast, take the hackle of a cock 
or capon's neck, or a plover's top, which is usually better : take 
off the one side of the feather, then take the hackle, silk or 
crewel, gold or silver thread, make these fast at the bent of the 
hook, that is to say, below your arming ; then you must take 
the hackle, the silver or gold thread, and work it up to the 
mngs, sliifting or still removing your finger as you turn the 
silk about the hook, and still looking, at every stop or turn, 
that your gold, or what materials soever you make your fly of, 
do lie right and neatly, and if you find they do so, then when 
you have made the head, make all fast : and then work your 
hackle up to the head, and make that fast : and then, with a 
needle, or pin, divide the wing into two, and then, with the 
arming silk, whip it about cross-M'ays betwixt the wings, and 
then with your thumb you must turn the point of the feathers 
towards the bent of the hook, and then work three or four 

* Thi« must be taken, to walk down the stream ; for it is quite impos- 
sible to keep a fly above water, if drawn down the stream, as most of the 
books absurdly direct. — J. R. 

t To arm is an angling term, meaning to tie, or whip round. — J. R. 



I OB THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

times about the shank of the hook, and then view the pro- 
portion, and if all be neat, and to your liking, fasten. 

I confess, no direction can be given to make a man of a dull 
capacity able to make a fly well : and yet I know this, udth a 
little practice, will help an ingenious angler in a good degree. 
Rut to see a fly made by an artist in that kind is the best 
teaching to make it. And, then, an ingenious angler may 
w:ilk by the river, and mark what flies fall on the water that 
day, and catch one of them, if he see the Trouts leap at a fly 
of that kind ; and then having always hooks ready hung with 
him, and having a bag also always with him, with bear's hair, 
or the hair of a brown or sad-coloured heifer, hackles of a cock 
or a capon, several coloured silk and crewel to make the body of 
the fly, the feathers of a drake's head, black or brown sheep's 
wool, or hog's wool or hair, thread of gold and of silver silk of 
several colours, (especially sad-coloured, to make the fly's head ;) 
and there be also other coloured feathers,* both of little birds and 

* The author not having pnrtirularly punmerated the materials necessary 
for fly-making, it will not be improper, once for all, to do it here. And> 
fifst, you must be provided with bear's hair of divers colours; as gray, 
dun, light and dark coloured, bright bro\vn and that which shines ; al-<o 
camel's hair, dark, light, and of a colour between both ; badger's hair, or 
fur; spaniel's hair from behind the ear, light and dark brown, blackish 
and black; liog's down, wh ch may be had about Christmas, of butchers, 
or rather of those that make brawn ; it should be plucked from under the 
tliroat, and other soft places of the hog, and must be of the following 
coh)urs, namely, black, red, whitish, and sandy; and for other colours, 
3'ou may get them dyed at a dyer's : seal's fur is to be had at the trunk- 
piakers , get this also dyed of the colours of cow's and calf's hair, in all the 
ditterent shades, from the light to the darkest brown ; you will then never 
nend cow's or calf's hair, both which are harsh, and will never work 
kindly, nor lie handsomely : get also mohairs, black, blue, purple, white, 
Tiolet ; Isabella, which colour is described in a note on Cotton's Flies for 
March; Philomot, from feiiille mart, a dead leaf; yellow, and orange; 
camlets, both hair and worsted, blue, yellow, dun, light and dark brown, 
red, violet, purple, black, horse-flesh, pink, and orange colours. Some, 
recommend the hair of abortive colts and calves ; but seal's fur, dyed as 
above, is much better. 

A piece of an old Turkey carpet will furnish excellent dubbing : untwist 
thf- yarn, and pick out the wool, carefully separating the different colours, 
and lay it by. 

Some use for dubbing, barge-sail, concerning which the reader is to 
know, that the sails of west-country and other bart:es, when old, are 
usnally converted into tilts, under which there is almost a continual smoke 
arising from the fire and the steam of the beef-kettle, which all such barges 
carry, and which in time dyes the tilt of a fine brown ; this would be 
excellent duWdng, but that the materials of these sails is sheep's wool, 
which soaks in the water, and soon becomes very heavy : however, get of 
this as many different shades as you can, and have seal's fur and hog- wool 
dved to match them ; which, by reason they are more turgid, stiff, and 
light, and so float better, are, in most cases, to be preferred to worsted, 
crewels, and, indeed, to every other kind of wool ; and observe, that the 
hoff-wool is best for larafe, and the seal's fur for small flies. 

Get also furs of the following animals, namely, the squirrel, particularly 
from its tail ; fox-cub, from the tail, where it is downy, and of an ash 
4'olour; an old fox ; an old otter ; otter cub ; badger; fulimart, or 



THE COMPLETE ^N<JLER. 109 

of speckled fowl, — I say, having those with him in a bag, * and 
trying to make a fly, though he miss at lirst, yet shall he at last 
hit it better, even to such a perfection as none can well teach 
him. And if he hit to make his fly right, and have the luck to 
hit, also, where there is store of Trouts, a dark day, and a right 
wind, ie will catch such store of them as ^v^ll encourage him to 
grow more and more in love ^^ith the art of fly-making. 

Venator. But, my loving master., if any wind ^vill not serv€^ 
then I wish I were in Lapland, to buy a good wind of one of 
the honest witches, that sell so many winds there, and so 
cheap. 

Piscafor. Marry, scholar, but I .would not be there, jior 
indeed from under this tree : for look how it begins to rain, 
and by the clouds, if I mistake not, we shall presently have a 
smoking shower ; and therefore sit close ; this sycamore tree 
will shelter us : and I will tell you, as they shall come into my 
mind, more observations of fly-fishing for a Trout. 

But first for the wind : you ^ve to take notice, that of the 

filmert ; a hare, from the neck, where it is of the colour of withered fern ; 
and above all, tlft? yellow fur of the martern, from oft' the gills or spots 
uuder the jaws. All these, and almost every other kind of fur, are easily 
got at the furrier's. 

Hackles are a very important article in fly-making; they are the lontr 
slender feathers that "hang from the head of a cock down his neck ; there 
may also be fine ones got from near his tail ; be careful that they are not 
too rank, which they are when the flltres are more than half an indi long, 
and for some purposes these are muchtoo big ; be provided with these of 
the following colours, namely, red, dun, yellowish, white, orange, and 
perfect black ; and whenever you meet, alive or dead, with the cock of the 
eame breed, whose hackle is of a strong brown-red, never fail to buy him : 
but observe, that the feathers of a cock chicken, l>e they ever so fine for 
shape and colour, are gcjod for little, for they are too downy and weak to 
stand erect after tliey are once wet, and so are those of the bantam cock. 

Feathers are absolutely necessary for the wings and other parts of flies : 
get therefore feathers from the back and other parts of the wild mallard, 
or drake ; the feathers of a partridge, especially those red ones that are in 
the tail; feathers from a cock pheasant's breast and tail; the wings of a 
blackbird, a brown hen, of a starling, a jay, a land-rail, a throstle, a field- 
fare, and a water-coot ; the feathers from the crown of the pewit, plover, 
or lapwing ; green and copper-coloured peacock's, and black ostrich, 
herle ; feathers from a heron's neck and wings. And remember, that, in 
most instances, where the drjike's or wild mallard's feather is liereafier 
(in the text) directed, that from a starling's wing will do much better, us 
being of a finer grain, and less spongy. 

Be provided with marking silk of all colours ; fine, but very strong, 
fla\v-silk ; gold and silver flatted wire, or twist ; a sharp knife ; hook» 
of all sizes; hog's bristles for loops to your flies; shoemaker's wax; a 
larsre needle to raise your dubbing, when flatted with working; ^nd 
a small, but sharp pair of scissars. 

And lastly, if any materials required in the subsequent lists of fliesmay 
have been omitted in the foregoing catalogue, be careful to add them to 
your former stock, as often as you shall find any such omissions. 

Remember, with all your dubbing, to mix bear's hair and hog's wool, 
which are stifl'. and not apt to imbibe the water, as the fine furs and moi^t 
other kind of dubbing do ; and remember also, that martcrn's fui' is tht* 
iest yellow you can use. 

* To be purchased at the tackle shops. — J. R. 



110 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

winds, the south Avind is said to be the best. One observes, 
that 



when the wind is south. 



It blows your bait into a fish's mouth. 

Next to that, the west wind is believed to be the best : and 
having told you that the east wind is the worst, I need not teU 
which wind is the best in the third degree : and yet (as Solomon 
observes,) that " he that considers the Avind shall never sow : " 
so he that busies his head too much about them, if the weather 
be not made extreme cold by an east wind, shall be a little 
superstitious : for as it is observed by some, that ' ' there is no 
good horse of a bad colour ;" so I have observed, that if it be a 
cloudy day, and not extreme cold, let the wind sit in what 
corner it will, and do its worst, I heed it not. And yet take 
this for a rule, that I would willingly fish, standing on the lee- 
shore ; and you are to take notice, that the fish lies or swims 
nearer the bottom, and in deeper water, in winter than in 
summer ; and also nearer the bottom in a cold day, and then 
gets nearest the lee-side of the water. 

But I promised to tell you more of the fly-fishing for a Trout, 
which I may have time enough to do, for you see it rains May- 
butter. First, for a May-fly, — you may make his body with 
greenish-coloured crewel, or willowish-colour, darkening it in 
most places with waxed silk, or ribbed with black hair, or some 
of them ribbed with silver thread ; and such wdngs, for the colour, 
as you see the fly to have at that season, nay, at that very day 
on the water. Or you may make the Oak-fly, Avith an orange, 
tawny, and black ground ; and the browTi of a mallard's feather 
for the Avings.* And you are to know, that these two are most 
excellent flies, that is, the May-fly and the Oak-fly. 

And let me again tell you, that you keep as far from the water 
as you can possibly, whether you fish with a fly or worm, and 
fish down the stream. And when you fish with a fly, if it be 
possible, let no part of your line touch the water, f but your fly 
only ; and be still moving your fly upon the water, or casting it 
into tlie water, you yourself being also always moving down the 
stream. 



* Some dub the Oak-fly with black wool, and Isabella-coloured mohair, 
and bright brownish bear's hair, warped on with yellow silk, but the head 
of an ash colour ; others dub it with anorancre, tawny, and black ground ; 
others with blackish wool and gold twist ; the wings of the brown of a 
mallard's feather. Rowlkor, in his Art of Angling, p. 63, says, " The body 
may be made of a bittern's feather, and the wiugs of tlie feather of a 
woodcock's wing." 

fThis is impossible, unless you dub with the artificial as with the 
natural fly, which is never practised. The method of throwing or casting 
is more particularly treated of, in the notes on chap. v. part ii. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. Ill 

Mr Barker commends several sorts of tbe Palmer-flies, not 
only those ribbed with silver and gold, but others that have their 
bodies all made of black, or some -with red, and a red hackle. 
You may also make the Hawthorn-fly, which is all black, and 
not big, but very small, the smaller the better ; or the Oak-fly, 
the body of which is orange-colour and black crewel, with a 
broMTi wing ; or a fly made ^^dth a Peacock's feather is excel- 
lent in a bright day : * you must be sure you want not in your 
magazine-bag the Peacock's feather, and grounds of such wool 
and crewel as ^^'ill make the Grasshopper. And note, that 
usually the smallest flies are the best ; and note also, that the 
light fly does usually make most sport in a dark day, and the 
darkest and least fly in a bright or clear day : and lastly, note, 
that you are to repair upon any occasion to your magazine-bag; 
and upon any occasion, vary and make them lighter or sadder, 
according to your fancy, or the day. 

And now I shall tell you, that the fishing Mith a natural fly 
is excellent, and affords much pleasure. They may be found 
thus : the May-fly, usually in and about that month, near to the 
river side, especially against rain : the Oak-fly, on the butt or 
body of an oak or ash, from the beginning of May to the end of 
August ; it is a brownish fly and easy to lie so found, and stands 
usually \A'ith his head dowiiward, that is to say, towards the 
root of the tree:f the small Bla;'k-fly, or Hawthorn fly, is to 
be had on any Hawthorn bush after the leaves be come forth. 
With these and a short line, (as I shewed to angle for a Chub,) 

* A lirotlior of the angle must always be sped 
With tlireeblark PaliTi<»rs, and also t\'.o red ; 
And all made with hackles. In a cloudy day, 
Or in windy weather, angle you may. 

But morning and evening, if the day be bright ; 
And tlie chief point of all is to keep out of sight. 
" In the month of May, none but the i\Iay-fly, 
For every mouth, one," is a pitiful lie. 

The black Hawthorn-fly must be very small ; 
And the sandy hog's-hair is, sure, best of all 
(For the mallard-win? May-fly, and peacock's train, 
Will look like the Flesh-fly) to kill Trout amain. 

The Oak-fly is good, if it have a brown wing, 

So is the Grasshr)pper, that in July doth sinir; 

\Vith a green body make him, on h middle sized hook, 

But when you have catch'd fish, then play the good cook. 

Once more, my good brother, I 'il speak in thy ear ; 
Hog's, red cow's, and bear's wool, to float best appear; 
And so doth your fur, if rightly it fall ; 
But always remember, j\Iake two, and make all. 

A specimen of Mr Barkt-r's poe(?y. 

t The Oak-fly is known also by the names of the Ash-fly and the Wood- 
cock-fly and in Shropshire it is called the Cannon, or DowTihill fly. 



1 1? TfHE C0MPJ.ET;S ^]SGLE,R,. 

yQ,Vi roay cl^pe, ^r dop, and also ^"V'ith a Grasshopper, behind a 
tree, o.r in any deep hole, still making it to move on the top of 
the >vater as if it were alive, and still keeping yourself out oi" 
sight, you shall certainly have sport, if there ]^e Trouts ; yea, i,n 
a .hot 4ay, but especially in the evening of a hot day, you -yvrll 
i^ay^ sport. 

And now, scholar, niy direction for fly-fishing is ended wit^ 
ti^ig shower, for it has done raining. And now, look about you 
ttnd see iow pleasantly that meadow looks ; nay, and the earth 
sni€;lls as sweetly too. Come, let me tell you what holy Mr 
Herbert says of such days and flowers as these, and then we M'ill 
t^hank Qod that we enjoy them, and walk to the river, and sit 
dsKW]» QWetly, and try to catch the other brace of Xrout^. 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 

The bridal of the earth and sky, 

Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 

For thou mi'st die. 

Siweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, 
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, 
Thy root is ever ip its grave — 

And thou must die. 

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
A box where sweets compacted lie ; 
My music shews you have your closes — 
And all must die. 

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 

Like season'd timber, never gives, 

But when the whole world turns to coal. 

Then chiefly lives. 

Venator. I thank you, good master, for your good direction 
for fly-fishing, and for the sweet enjoyment of the pleasant 
day, which is so far spent without offence to God or man : and 
I thank you for the sweet close of your discourse with Mr 
Herbert's verses, who, I have heard, loved angling ; and I do 
the rather believe it, because he had a spirit suitable to anglers, 
and to those primitive Christians that you love, and have so 
much commended. 

Piscator. Well, my loving scholar, and I am pleased to know 
that you are so well pleased with my direction and discourse. 

And since you like these verses of Mr Herbert's so well, let 
me tell you what a reverend and learned divine that professes 
to imitate him (and has indeed done so most excellently) hath 
writ of our book of Common Prayer ; which I know you wiU 
like the better, because he is a friend of mine, and I am sure 
no enemy to angling : 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 113 

What ! Prayer by the Book ? aud Common 9 Yes ! why not ?' 
The spirit of grace 
And supplication 
Is not left free alone 
For time and place, 
But manner too : to read or speak by rote, 
Is all alike to him, that prays 
In's heart, what with his mouth he says. 

They that in private, by themselves alone, 
Do pray, may take 
What liberty they please. 
In choosing of the ways 
Wherein to make 
Their soul's most intimate affections known 
To Him that sees in secret, when 
They're most conceal'd from other men. 

But he that unto others leads the way 
-In public prayer, 
Should do it so 
As all that hear may know 
They need not fear 
To tune their hearts unto his tongue, and say 
Amen ; not doubt they were betray'd 
To blaspheme, when they meant to have pray'd. 

Devotion will add life unto the letter : 
And why should not 
That which authority 
Prescribes, esteemed be 
Advantage got ? 
If the prayer be good, the commoner the better ; 
Prayer in the Church's words, as well 
As sense, of all prayers bears the bell. — Cii. Harvie. 

And now, scholar, I think it will be time to repair to our 
angle rods, wliicli we left in the water to fish for themselves ; 
and you shall choose which shall be yours ; and it is an even 
lay, one of them catches. 

And, let me tell you, this kind of fishing ■s^'ith a dead rod, 
and laying night hooks, are like putting money to use; for they 
both work for the o\\mers when they do nothing but sleep, or 
eat, or rejoice, as you know we have done this last hour, and 
sat as quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore, as 
Virgil's Tityrus and liis Melibceus did under their broad beech 
tree. No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant 
as the life of a well governed angler : for ^^•hen the lawyer is 
swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or 
contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds 

H , 



114 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent 
silver streams, which we now see glide so quietly by us. Indeed, 
my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr Boteler said of 
strawberries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, 
but doubtless God never did ; " and so (if I might be judge) 
*' God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation 
than angling." 

I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose bank, 
and looked doAvn these meadows, I thought of them as Charles 
the Emperor did of the city of Florence : " that they were too 
pleasant to be looked on, but only on holidays." As I then sat 
on tliis very grass, I turned my present thoughts into verse : 
'twas a wish, which I '11 repeat to you. 



THE ANGLER S WISH. 

I in these flowery meads would be : 

These crystal streams should solace me ; 

To whose harmonious bubbling noise 

I with my angle would rejoice. 
Sit here, and see the turtle-dove 
Court his chaste mate to acts of love : 

Or, on that bank, feel the west wind 
Breathe health and plenty : please my mind, 
To see sweet dewdrops kiss these flowers. 
And then wash'd off" by April showers ; 
Here, hear my Kenna sing a song : * 
There, see a blackbird feed her young, 

Or a laverock build her nest : 

Here, give my weary spirts rest, 

And raise my low-pitcn'd thoughts above 

Earth, or what poor mortals love : 

Thus, fi-ee from lawsuits and the noise 

Of princes' courts, I would rejoice ; 

Or, with my Bryan f and a book. 
Loiter long days near Shawford brook ; \ 
There sit by him, and eat my meat. 
There see the sun both rise and set : 

* Like Hermit poor. 

f A friend conjectures this to be the name of his favourite dog. 

X Shawford brook, part of the river Sow, running throug-h the very land 
which Walton bequeathed in his will to the corporation of Stafford to find 
coals for the poor ; the right of fishery in which attaches to this little 
estate. 

The house, described by Walton in his will, is now divided. The brook 
is a beautiful winding stream, and the situation such as would be likely to 
create admiration in a mind like Walton's. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. i 15 

Tliere bid ^ood morning to next day ; 
There meditate my time away; 

And angle on ; and beg to have 

A quiet passage to a welcome grave. 

When I had ended this composure, I left this place, and saw 
a brother of the angle sit under that honeysuckle hedge, one 
that ^\'ill prove worth your acquaintance. I sat down by him, 
and presently we met with an accidental piece of merriment, 
which I wiU relate to you ; for it rains still. 

On the other side of this very hedge sat a gang of gipsies ; 
and near to them sat a gang of beggars. The gipsies were then 
to divide all the money that had been got that week, either by 
stealing hnen or poultry, or by fortune -telling, or legerdemain ; 
or, indeed, by any other sleights and secrets belonging to their 
mysterious government. And the sum that was got that week 
proved to be but twenty and some odd shillings. The odd 
money was agreed to be distributed amongst the poor of their 
own corporation : arid for the remaining twenty shillings, that 
was to be divided unto four gentlemen gipsies, according to 
their several degrees in their commonwealth. 

And the first or chiefest gipsy was, by consent, to have a 
third part of the 20s. which all men know is 6s. 8d. 

The second was to have a fourth part of the 20s. which all 
men know to be 5s. 

The third was to have a fifth part of the 20s. which all men 
know to be 4s. 

The fourth and last gipsy was to have a sixth part of the 
20s. wliich all men know to be 3s. 4d. 
As, for example, 

3 times 6s. 8d. is 20s. 
And so is 4 times 5s. . . 20s. 
And so is 5 times 4s. . 20s. 
And so is 6 tim.es 3s. 4d. . 20s. 
And yet he that divided the money was so very a gipsy, that 
though he gave to every one these said sums, yet he kept one 
shilling of it for himself. 

As for example, s. d. 
6 8 
5 
4 
3 4 



make but 19 
But now you shall know, that when the four gipsies saw 
tliat he had got one shilling ])y dividing the money, though not 



116 THE COAIPLETE ANGLER. 

one of them knew any reason to demand more, yet, like lords 
and courtiers, every gipsy envied him that was the gainer, and 
wrangled with him ; and every one said the remaining shilhng 
belonged to him ; and so they fell to so high a contest about 
it, as none that knows the faithfulness of one gipsy to another 
will easily believe ; only we that have lived these last twenty 
years are certain that money has been able to do much mischief. 
However, the gipsies were too wise to go to law, and did 
therefore choose their choice friends, Rook and Shark, and our 
late English Gusman,* to be their arbitrators and umpires. 
And so they left this honeysuckle hedge, and went to tell 
fortunes and cheat, and get more money and lodging in the 
next village. 

When these were gone we heard as high a contention amongst 
the beggars, whether it was easiest to rip a cloak or unrip a 
cloak ? One beggar affirmed it was all one : but that was 
denied, by asking her, if doing and undoing Avere all one ? 
Then another said, 'twas easiest to unrip a cloak ; for that 
was to let it alone : but she v/as answered, by asking her 
how she unripped it if she let it alone ? and she confessed 
herself mistaken. These and twenty such like questions were 
proposed and answered Avith as much beggarly logic and earnest- 
ness as was ever heard to proceed from the mouth of the most 
pertinacious schismatic ; and sometimes all the beggars (whose 
number was neither more nor less than the poets' nine muses) 
talked all together about this ripping and unripping ; and so loud 
that not one heard what the other said : but at last, one beggar 
craved audience, and told them that old Father Clause, whom Ben 
Jonson, in his Beggar's Bush,-\ created king of their corpora- 
tion, was that night to lodge at an alehouse called " Catch -her- 
by-the-way," not far from Waltham Cross, and in the high road 
towards London; and he therefore desired them to spend no 
more time about that and such like questions, but refer all to 
Father Clause at night, for he was an upright judge, and in the 
meantime draw cuts, what song should be next sung, and who 
should sing it. They all agreed to the motion ; and the lot 
fell to her that was the youngest and veriest virgin of the 
company. And she sung Frank Davidson's song, vv^hich he made 
forty years ago ; and all the others of the company joined to 
sing the burthen wdth her. The ditty was this : but first the 
burthen : 

* Alluding to a work that appeared a few years before, entitled, Tfie 
English Gusman, or The History of that unparalleled Thief, James Hindf 
written by George Fidge. 4to. Lond. 1652. Hind made a considerable 
figure at the time of the great Rebellion, and fought, both at Worcester and 
Warrington, on the king's side. He was arrested, by order of the Parlia- 
ment, in 1651. 

t The comedy of The Boyal Merchant, or. Beggar's Btcsh, was vrritten 
by Beaumont and Fletcher, and not by Ben Jonson. It has also bgen ' 
attributed wholly to Fletcher. 



ETE ANGLER. 117 



Bright shines the sun ; play, beggars, play ' 
Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day. 

What noise of viols is so sweet, 

As when our merr}- ckijipers ring ? 
What mirth doth want when beggars meet ? 

A beggar's life is for a king. 
Eat, drink, and play, sk-ep when we list, 
Go where we will, so stocks be miss'd. 

Bright shines the sun ; play, beggars, play ! 

Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day. 

The world is ours, and ours aloue. 
For we alone have world at will ; 

We purchase not, all is our own, 

Both fields and streets we beggars fill : 
Bright shines the sun ; play, beggars, play ! 
Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day. 

A hundred herds of black and white 

Upon our gowns securely feed ; 
And yet if any dare us bite, 

He dies, therefore, as sure as creed : 
Thus beggars lord it as they please, 
And only beggars live at ease. 

Bright shmes the sun ; play, beggars, play ! 

Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day. 



Venator. I thank you, good master, for this piece of merriment, 
and this song, Avhich was well humoured by the maker, and well 
remembered by you. 

Piseator. But, I pray, forget not the catch w^hich you promised 
to make against night ; for our countryman, honest Coridon, 
\vill expect your catch, and my song, which I must be forced 
to patch up, for it is so long since I learned it, that I have forgot 
a part of it. But, come, now it hath done raining, let's stretch 
our legs a little in a gentle walk to the river, and try what 
interest our angles will pay us for lending them so long to be 
used by the Trouts — lent them, indeed, like usurers, for our 
profit and their destruction. 

Venator. Oh me! look you, master, a fish ! a fish! — Oh, 
master, I have lost her. 

Piseator. Ay marry, sir, that was a good fish indeed : if I had 
had the luck to have taken up that rod, then 'tis twenty to one 
he should not have broke my line by running to the rod's end, 
as you suffered him. I would have held him within the bent 
of my rod, (unless he had been fellow to the great Trout that 
is near an ell long, which was of such a length and depth that 
he had his picture drawn, and now is to be seen at mine host 
Rickabie's, at the George, in Ware,) and it may be by giWng 



nS THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

that very great Trout the rod— that is, by casting it to him into 
the water — I might have caught him at the long run ; for so I 
use always to do when I meet with an overgrown tish ; and you 
will learn to do so too hereafter ; for I tell you, scholar, fishing 
is an art, or, at least, it is an art to catch fish. 

Venator. But, master, I have heard that the great Trout you 
speak of is a Salmon. 

Piscator. Trust me, scholar, I know not what to say to it. 
There are many country people that believe hares change sexes 
every year : and there be very many learned men that think so 
too, for in their dissecting them they find many reasons to incline 
them to that belief. And to make the wonder seem yet less, 
that hares change sexes, note, that Dr Mer. Casaubon affirms, 
in his book Of Credible and Incredible Things, that Gasper 
Peucerus, a learned physician, tells us of a people that once 
a-year turn wolves, partly in shape and partly in conditions.* 
And so, whether this were a Salmon when he came into fresh 
water, and his not returning into the sea hath altered him to 
another colour or kind, I am not able to say ; but I am certain 
he hath all the signs of being a Trout, both for his shape, colour, 
and spots : and yet many think he is not. 

Venator. But, master, will this Trout which I had hold of 
die ? for it is like he hath the hook in his belly. , 

Piscator. I will tell you, scholar, that unless the hook be 
fast in his very gorge, 'tis more than probable he will live, and 
a little time, with the help of the water, will rust the hook, 
and it will in time wear away, as the gravel doth in the horse- 
hoof, which only leaves a false quarter. 

And now, scholar, let's go to my rod. Look you, scholaf, 
I have a fish too, but it proves a logger-headed Chub ; and this 
is not much amiss, for this \n\\ pleasure some poor body, as we 
go to our lodging to meet our brother Peter and honest Coridon. 
Come, now, bait your hook again, and lay it into the water, for 
it rains again ; and we will even retire to the sycamore tree, and 
there I will give you more directions concerning fishing, for I 
would fain make you an artist. 

Venator. Yes, good master, I pray let it be so. 

Piscator. Well, scholar, now we are sat down and are at 
ease, I shall tell you a little more of Trout fishing, before I 
speak of the Salmon, (which I purpose shall be next,) and then 
of the Pike, or Luce. 

You are to know, there is night as well as day fishing for a 
Trout ; and that, in the night, the best Trouts come out of 



* These stories, I need scarcely say, are altogether fabulous, though, 
like most other fancies, they might be shewn to arise from some facts 
perverted. -- J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. J 19 

their holes.* And the manner of taking them is on the top of 
the water wth a great lob or garden-worm, or rather two, which 
you are to fish Avith in a place where the waters run somewhat 
quietly, for in a stream the bait Avill not be so well discerned. 
I say, in a quiet or dead place, near to some swift, there draw 
your bait over the top of the water, to and fro, and if there be 
a good Treut in the hole, he will take it, especially if the night 
be dark, for then he is bold, and lies near the top of the water, 
watching the motion of any frog, or water-rat, or mouse, that 
swims betwixt him and the sky : these he hunts after, if he sees 
the water but WTinkle or move in one of these dead holes, where 
these great old Trouts usually lie, near to their holds ; for you 
are to note, that the great old Trout is both subtle and fearful, 
and lies close all day, and does not usually stir out of his hold, 
but lies in it as close in the day as the timorous hare does in 
her form ; for the chief feeding of either is seldom in the day, 
but usually in the night, and then the great Trout feeds very 
boldly. , 

And you must fish for him Avith a strong line, and not a little 
hook ; and let him have time to gorge your hook, for he does 
not usually forsake it, as he oft will in the day-fishing. And if 
the night be not dark, then fish so with an artificial fly of a 
light colour, and at the snap : nay, he will sometimes rise at a 
dead mouse, or a piece of cloth, or any thing that seems to SAvim 
across the water, or to be in motion. This is a choice way, but 
I have not oft used it, because it is void of the pleasures that 
such days as these, that we two now enjoy, afford an angler. 

And you are to know, that in Hampshire, which I think 
exceeds all England for swift, shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, 
and store of Trouts, they used to catch Trouts in the night, by 
the light of a torch or straw, which, when they have discovered, 
they strike with a Trout-spear, or other ways. This kind of 
way they catch very many : but I would not believe it till I was 
an eye-AA-itness of it, nor do I like it now I have seen it.f 

Venator. But, master, do not Trouts see us in the night ? 

Piscator. Yes, and hear and smell too, both then and in the 
day time : for Gesner observes, the Otter smells a fish forty 
furlongs off him in the water : and that it may be true, seems 
to be affirmed by Sir Francis Bacon, in the Eighth Century of 
his Natural History, who there proves that waters may be the 
medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus, — " that if you knock 

* The holes here meant are not pools, as the same word means below, 
but under the brow of a bank, under the hollow of a stone, or the shelter 
of a tree root, where I have often, when a boy, surprised very large 
Trouts, and cauphtthem with the hand. — J. R. 

t This, when practised with regard to Salmon, is called Black Fithing, 
in Scotland, and has been graphically described by Sir Walter Scott in 
Guy Mannering. I hare myself been more than once engaged in it. — J. R. 



120 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

two stones together very deep under the water, those that stand 
on a bank near to that place may hear the noise %vithout any 
diminution of it by the water." He also offers the like experi- 
ment concerning the letting an anchor fall, by a very long cable 
or rope, on a rock, or the sand, within the sea. And this being 
so well observed and demonstrated as it is by that learned man, 
has made me to believe that Eels unbed themselves and stir at 
the noise of thunder, and not only, as some think, by the motion 
or stirring of the earth which is occasioned by that thunder. 

And this reason of Sir Francis Bacon (Exper. 792) has made 
me crave pardon of one that Ilaughed at for affirming that he knew 
Carps come to a certain place in a pond to be fed at the ringing 
of a bell or the beating of a drum. And, however, it shall be 
a rule for me to make as little noise as I can when I am fishing 
until Sir Francis Bacon be confuted, which I shall give any 
man leave to do.* 

And least you may think him singular in this opinion, I will 
tell you, this seems to be believed by our learned Dr Halcewill, 
who, in his Apology of God's Power and Providence, fol. 360, 
quotes Pliny to report that one of the emperors had particular 
fish ponds, and in them several fish that appeared and came 
when they were called by their particular names, f And St 
James tells us, chap. i. 7- that all things in the sea have 
been tamed by mankind. And Pliny tells us, lib. ix. 35. that 
Antonia, the wife of Drusus, had a Lamprey at whose gills she 
hung jewels, or ear-rings ; and that others have been so tender- 
hearted as to shed tears at the death of fishes which they have 
kept and loved. And these observations, which will to most 
hearers seem wonderful, seem to have a farther confirmation 
from Martial, lib. iv. Epigr. 30. who writes thus : J 

Angler ! wouldst thou be guiltless ? then forbear : 
For these are sacred fishes that swim here, 
Wlio know their sovereign, and will lick his hand • 
Than which none 's greater in the world's command ; 
Nay more, they 've names, and, when they called are, 
Do to their several owners' call repair. 

* That tish hear, is confirmed by the authority of late writers : Swam- 
meidam asserts it, and adds, " They have a wonderful labyrinth of the ear 
for that purpose." See Swammerdam, Of Insects, edit. London, 1758, 
p. 50. A clergyman, a friend of mine, assures me, that at the abbey of St 
Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw Carp come at the whistling of the feeder, 
f Monsieur Berneier, in his History of Indostan, reports the like of the 
Great Mogul. 
X The verses cited are as follow : 

Piecator, fuge ; ne nocens, recedas, 

Sacris piscibus hie natantur unde ; 

Qui norunt dominum, manumque lambunt 

111am qua nihil est, in orbe, majus : 

Quid, quod nomen habent ; et ad magistri 

Vocein quisque sui venit citatus, * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 121 

All the farther use that I shall make of this shall be, to advise 
anglers to be patient, and forbear swearing, least they be heard, 
and catch no fish. 

And so I shall proceed next to tell you, it is certain that 
certain fields near Leominster, a to^^Tl in Herefordshire, are 
observed to make the sheep that graze upon them more fat than 
the next, and also to bear finer wool : that is to say, that that 
year in which they feed in such a particular pasture, they shall 
yield finer wool than they did that year before they came to 
feed in it; and coarser again if they shall return to their 
former pasture ; and again return to a finer wool, being fed in 
the fine wool ground : which I tell you, that you may the better 
believe that I am certain, if I catch a Trout in one meadow, he 
shall be white and faint, and very like to be lousy ; and as 
certainly, if I catch a Trout in the next meadow, he shall be 
strong and red, and lusty, and much better meat. Trust me, 
scholar, I have caught many a Trout in a particular meadow, 
that the very shape and the enamelled colour of him hath been 
such as hath joyed me to look on him : and I have then, \nth 
much pleasure, concluded with Solomon, " Every thing is 
beautiful in his season." * 

I should, by promise, speak next of the Salmon ; but I will, 
by your favour, say a little of the Umber, or Grayling, which 
is so like a Trout for his shape and feeding, that I desire I may 
exercise your patience with a short discourse of him ; and then 
the next shall be of the Sahnon. 



* The Trout delights in small purliner rivers, and brooks with gravelly 
bottoms and a swift stream. His haunts are an eddy, behind a stone, or 
log-, or a bank that projects forward into the river, and against which the 
stream drives ; a sliallow between two streams ; or, towards the latter 
end of the summer, a mill tail. His hold is usually in the deep, under the 
hollow of a bank, or the root of a tree. 

The Trout spawns al)out the beginning of November, and does not 
recover till the beginning of March. 

When you fish for large Trout or Salmon, a winch will be very useful ; 
upon the" rod with which you use the winch, whip a number of small 
rings, of about an eighth of an inch diameter, and at first about two feet 
distant from each other, but afterward diminishing gradually in their 
distances till you come to the end : the winch must be screwed on to the 
butt of your rod ; and round the barrel let there be wound eight or ten 
yards of wove hair or silk line. When you have struck a fish that may 
endanger your tackle, let the line run, and wind him up as he tires. 

When you angle for a Trout, whether with a fly or at the ground, you 
need but make three or four trials in a place ; which, if unsuccessful, you 
may conclude there are none there. 

Walton, in speaking of the several rivers where Trout are found, has 
made no mention of the Kennet • which, undoubtedly, produces as good 
and as many Trouts as any river in England. In the reign of King Charles 
the Second, a Trout was taken in that fiver, near Newbury, with a casting- 
net, which measured forty-five inches in length. 

I may add to this note by Hawkins, that it will be important not to 
carry a Trout, when struck, up the stream ; for, in that case, the force of 
the stream and the strength of the fish united, will probably snap the 
line— J. R. 



122 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OBSERVATIONS OF THE UMBER, OR GRAYLING, AND DIRECTIONS 
HOW TO FISH FOR HIM. 




The Gkayling — Salmo Thymallus. — Linnaeus. 

Piscator. The Umber and Grayling are thought by some to 
differ, as the Herring and Pilchard do ; but though they may 
do so in other nations, I think those in England differ nothing 
but in their names. Aldrovandus says, they be of a Trout 
kind ; and Gesner says, that in his country, which is Switzer- 
land, he is accounted the choicest of all fish. And in Italy, he 
is in the month of May so highly valued, that he is sold then 
at a much higher rate than any other fish. The French, which 
call the Chub tin villain^ call the Umber of the Lake Leman 
UH umble chevalier ; and they value the Umber, or Grayling, so 
highly that they say he feeds on gold ; and say, that many have 
been caught out of their famous river of Loire, out of whose 
bellies grains of gold have been often taken. And some think 
that he feeds on water thyme,* and smells of it at his first 
taking out of the water ; and they may think so with as good 
reason as we do that our Smelts smell like violets at their being 
first caught, which I think is a truth. Aldrovandus says, the 
Salmon, the Grayling, the Trout, and all fish that live in clear 
and sharp streams, are made by their mother Nature of such 
exact shape and pleasant colours purposely to invite us to a joy 
and contentedness in feasting with her. Whether this is a 
truth or not it is not my purpose to dispute ; but 'tis certain, all 

* There is no plant of this name known to botanists, and I think -it must 
be wholly imaginary. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 123 

that write of the Umber declare him to be very medicinable. 
And Gesner says, that the fat of an Umber, or Graylinj?, being 
set, vnih a little honey, a day or two in the sun, in a little glass, 
is very excellent against redness, or swarthiness, or any thing 
that breeds in the eyes. Salvian* takes him to be called 
Umber from his swift swimming, or gliding out of sight more 
like a shadow, or a ghost, than a fish. Much more might be 
said both of his smell and taste : but I shall only tell you, that 
St Ambrose, the glorious bishop of Milan, who lived when the 
church kept fasting days, calls him the Flower-fish, or flower 
of fishes ; and that he was so far in love with him that he would 
not let him pass without the honour of a long discourse ; but I 
must, and pass on to tell you how to take this dainty fish. 

First note, that he grows not to the bigness of a Trout ; for 
the biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches. He 
lives in such rivers as the Trout does, and is usually taken with 
the same baits as the Trout is, and after the same manner ; for he 
^^ill bite both at the Minnow, or worm, or fly, (though he bites 
not often at the Minnow,) and is very gamesome at the fly ; 
and much simpler, and therefore bolder than a Trout ; for he 
vill rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet rise 
again. He has been taken Nvith a fly made of the red feathers 
of a Parakita, a strange outlandish bird ; and he will rise at a 
fly not unlike a gnat, or a small moth, or, indeed, at most flies 
tiiat are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close all winter, 
but is very pleasant and jolly after mid April, and in May, and 
in the hot months. f He is of a very fine shape, his flesh is 
white, his teeth, those little ones that he has, are in his throat, 
yet he has so tender a mouth, that he is oftener lost after an 
angler has hooked him than any other fish. Though there be 
many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove, and in Trent, 
and some other smaller rivers, as that which rims by Salisbury, 
yet he is not so general a fish as the Trout, nor to me so good 
"to eat or to angle for.+ And so I shall take my leave of 
him ; and now come to some observations on the Salmon, and 
how to catch him. 

» Hippolito Salviani, an Italian physician of the sixteenth century : 
he wrote a treatise Z)e Fiscibui, cum'eorum figuris, and died at Rome, 
15'72, aped 59. 

t " Gravlinp," savs Sir Humphry Davy, «' if you take your station by 
the side of "a river, will rise nearer to you than Trout, for "they lie deeper, 
and therefore are not so much scared liy an object on the biink ; but they 
are more delicate in the choice of the Hies than Trout" — J. R. 

X The haunts of the Grayling are so nearly the same with those of the 
Trout, that, in fishing for e'ither, you may, in many rivers, catch both. 

They spawn about the beginning of April, when they lie mostly in 
sharp streams. 

Baits for the Grayling are chiefly the same as those for the Trout, except 
the Minuow, which he will not take so freely. He will also take gentles 



]24 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



CHAPTER VIL 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE SALMON' ; WITH DIUECTIONS HOW TO 
FISH FOE HIM. 




The Salmon— Salma salar LinnjEus. 

Piscator. The Salmon is accounted the king of fresh water 
fish ; and is ever bred in rivers relating to the sea, yet so high, 
or far from it, as admits of no tincture of salt or brackishness. 
He is said to breed, or cast his spawn, in most rivers, in the 
month of August : * some say, that then they dig a hole, or 
grave, in a saife place in the gravel, and there place their eggs, 

very eagerly. When you fish for him with a fly, you can hardly use one 
too small. 

The Grayling is much more apt to rise than descend ; therefore, when 
you angli! for him alone, and not for the Trout, rather use a float, with 
the bait from six to nine inches from the bottom, than the running line. 

The Grayling is found in great plenty in many rivers in the north, 
particularly the Humber. And in the Wye, which runs through Here- 
fordshire and Monmouthshire into the Severn, I have taken, with an 
artificial fly, very large ones ; as also great numbers of a small, but 
excellent fish, of the Trout kind, called a Lastspring ; of which somewhat 
will be said in a subsequent note. They are not easily to be got at without 
a boat, or wading ; for which reason, those of that country use a thing 
they call a thorricle, or truckle ; in some places it is called a coble, from 
the Latin corbula, a little basket ; it is a basket, shaped like the half of a 
walnut shell, but shallower in proportion, and covered on the outside with 
a horse's hide ; it has a bench in the middle, and will just hold one person, 
and is so light, that the countrymen will hang it on their heads like a hood, 
and so travel with a small paddle, which serves for a stick, till they come 
to a river, and then they lanch it and step in. There is great difficulty 
in getting into one of these truckles, for the instant you touch it with 
your foot it flies from you ; and, when you are in, the least inclination of 
the body oversets it. It is very diverting to see how upright a man is 
forced to sit in these vessels, and to mark with what state and solemnity 
he draws up the stone v/hich serves for an anchor, when he would remove, 
and lets it down again : however, it is a sort of navigation that I would 
wish our piscatory disciple never to attempt. 

* Their usual time of spawning is about the latter end of Angust, or 
the beginning of September ; but it is said that those in the Severn spawn 
in May. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 125 

or spawn, after the melter has done his natural office, and then 
hide it most cunningly, and cover it over with gravel and 
stones ; and then leave it to their Creator's protection, who, 
by a gentle heat which he infuses into that cold element, makes 
it brood and beget life in the spaA\Ti, and to become Samlets 
early in the spring next following.* 

The Salmons having spent their appointed time, and done 
this natural duty in the fresh waters, they then haste to the sea 
before winter, both the melter and spaAvner ; but if they be 
stopped by flood-gates, or weirs, or lost in the fresh waters, then 
those so left behind by degrees grow sick, and lean, and unsea- 
sonable, and kipper ; that is to say, have bony gristles grow out 
of their lower chaps, not unhke a Hawk's beak, wliich hinder 
their feeding ; and, in time, such fish so left behind pine away 
and die. It is observed, that he may live thus one year froni 
the sea ; but he then grows insipid and tasteless, and loses both 
his blood and strength, and pines and dies the second year. 
And it is noted, that those little Salmons called Skeggers, 
which abound in many rivers relating to the sea, are bred by 
such sick Salmons that might not go to the sea, and that though 
tliey abound, yet they never thrive to any considerable bigness. f 

But if the old Salmon gets to the sea, then that gristle which 
shews him. to be kipper, wears away, or is cast off, as the Eagle 
is said to cast his bill, and he recovers his strength, and comes 
next summer to the same river, if it be possible, to enjoy the 
former pleasures that there possessed him ; J for, as one ha? 
wittily observed, he has, like some persons of honour and riches 
which have both their winter and summer houses, the fresh 
rivers for summer, and the salt water for -VAinter, to spend his 
life in ; which is not, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed in his 
History of Life and Death, above ten years. And it is to be 
observed, that though the Salmon does grow big in the sea, 
yet he grows not fat but in fresh rivers ; a-nd it is observed, 
that the farther they get from the sea, they be both the fatter 
and better. 

Next, I sliall tell you, that though they make very hard shift 
to get out of the fresh rivers into the sea, yet they will make a 
harder shift to get out of the salt into the fresh rivers, to spa\ATi, 
or possess the pleasures that they have formerly found in them : 
to which end, they \n\\ force themselves through flood-gates or 

* Walton's phrase, "some say," expresses a doubt; but I can affirm, 
from repeated observation, that his account is correct. — J. R. 

t A great deal of this is obviously fanciful and erroneous. — J. R. 

X The migration of the Salmon, and divers other sorts of fishes, is analo- 
pous to that of birds ; and Mr Kay confirms Walton's assertion, bysaying^, 
that " Salmon will yearly ascend \ip a river four or five hundred miles, only 
to cast their spawn, and secure it in banks of sand till the yonn? be hatched 
and exiluded, and then return to sea again." — WUd m ofGrx! munifested 
in the Works of the Creation, p. 130. 



126 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

over wears or hedges, or stops in the water, even to a height 
beyond common belief. Gesner speaks of such places as are 
known to be above eight feet high above water. And our 
Camden mentions, in his Britannia, the like wonder to be in 
Pembrokeshire, where the river Tivy falls into the sea ; and 
that the fall is so downright, and so high, that the people stand 
and wonder at the strength and sleight by which they see the 
Salmon use to get out of the sea into the said river ; and the 
manner and height of the place is so notable, that it is knoAvn 
far by the name of the " Salmon-leap." Concerning which, 
take this also out of Michael Drayton, my honest old friend, as 
he tells it you in his Polyolbion : 

As when the Salmon seeks a fresher stream to find 
(Which hither from the sea comes yearly by his kind,) 
As he towards season grows ; and stems the watery tract 
Where Tivy, falling down, makes a high cataract, 
Forced by the rising rocks that there her course oppose. 
As though within her bounds they meant her to enclose ; 
Here, when the labouring fish does at the foot arrive, 
And finds that by his strength he does but vainly strive ; 
His tail takes in his mouth, and, bending like a bow- 
That 's to full compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw^ 
Then springing at his height, as doth a little wand 
That bended end to end, and started from man's hand, 
Far oflF itself doth cast : so does the Salmon vault ; 
And if, at first, he fail, his second summersault 
He instantly essays, and from his nimble ring 
Still yerking, never leaves until himself he fling 
Above the opposing stream. 

This Michael Drayton tells you of this leap, or summersault, 
of the Salmon. * 

And, next, I shall tell you, that it is observed by Gesner and 
others, that there is no better Salmon than in England ; and 
that though some of our northern counties have as fat and as 
large as the river Thames, yet none are of so excellent a taste, f 

And as I have told you, that Sir Francis Bacon observes, the 
age of a Salmon exceeds not ten years ; so let me next tell you, 
that his growth is very sudden. It is said, that after he is got 

* In the Statistical Account of Benley, we are told of a Salmon leap, by 
the side of which a kettle was kept boiling, and the Salmon frequently, on 
missing^ their spring, fell into this kettle and were boiled alive. —J. R. 

t The following interesting article of intelligence appeared in one of the 
London Journals, 18th April, 1789. — "The largest Salmon ever caught 
was yesterday brought to London. This extraordinary fish measured up- 
wards of four feet from ^he point of the nose to the extremity of the tail, 
and three feet round the thickest part of the body ; its weig^ht was seventy 
pounds within a few ounces. A fishmonger in the Minones cut it up at . 
one shilling per pound, and the whole was sold almost immediately." - 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 127 

into the sea, he becomes, from a Samlet not so bic as a 
Gudgeon, to be a Sahnon, in as short a time as a gosling 
becomes to be a goose. Much of this has been observed, by 
tying a riband, or some known tape or thread, in the tail of 
some young Salmons -which had been taken in weirs as they 
have swimmed towards the salt water, and then by taking a 
part of them again A\ith the known mark, at the same place, at 
their return from the sea, which is usually about six months 
after ; and the like experiment hath been tried upon yoimg 
swallows, who have, after six months' absence, been observed to 
return to the same chimney, there to make their nests and 
habitations for the summer following : which has inclined many 
to think, that every Salmon usually returns to the same river 
in which it was bred, as young pigeons taken out of the same 
dovecot have also been observed to do. 

And you are yet to observe farther, that the he Salmon is 
usually bigger than the Spawner : and that he is more kipper, 
and less able to endure a -winter in the fresh water than the she 
is : yet she is, at that time of looking less kipper and better, as 
watery and as bad meat. 

And yet you are to observe, that as there is no general rule 
■without an exception, so there are some few rivers in this 
nation that have Trouts and Salmons in season in Avinter, as it 
is certain there be in the river Wye in Monmouthshire, where 
they be in season, as Camden observes, from September till 
April.* But, my scholar, the observation of this and many 
other things I must in manners omit, because they ^^'ill prove 
too large for our narrow compass of time, and, therefore, I shall 
next fall upon my direction how to fish for this Salmon. 

And, for that : First you shall observe, that usually be 
stays not long in a place, as Trouts will, but, as I said, covets 
still to go nearer the spring-head ; f and that he does not, as 
the Trout and many other fish, lie near the water-side, or bank, 
or roots of trees, but swims in the deep and broad parts of the 
water, and usually in the middle and near the ground, and that 
there you are to lish for him ; and that he is to be caught, as 
the Trout is, with a Worm, a Minnow (which some calla Penk,) 
or with a Fly. 

And you are to observe, that he is very seldom observed to 
bite at a Minnow, yet sometimes he ^^^il, and not usually at 
a Fly, but more usually at a Worm, and then most usuallv at a 
Lob, or Garden Worm, which should be well scoured, that is to 

* In the River Lea, which runs into the sea at the Cove of Cork, Salmon 
are likewise in season the whole year round, as I can myself testify, having 
resided at Cork the jj^reater part of a year. — J. R. 

t The Salmon delights in large rapid rivers, especially snch as have 
pebbly, gravelly, and "sometimes weedy bottoms. 



128 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

say, kept seven or eight days in moss before you fish with them : 
and if you double your time of eight into sixteen, twenty, or 
more days, it is still the better ; for the worms will still be 
clearer, tougher, and more lively, and continue so longer upon 
your hook. And they may be kept longer by keeping them 
cool, and in fresh moss; and some advise to put camphor 
into it.* 

Note also, that many use to fish for a Salmon with a ring 
of wire on the top of their rod, through which the line may run 
to as great a length as is needful, when he is hooked. And to 
that end some use a wheel about the middle of their rod, or 
near their hand, which is to be observed better by seeing one of 
them, than by a large demonstration of Avords. 

And now I shall tell you that which may be called a secret. 
I have been a-fishing with old Oliver Henley, now with God, a 
noted fisher both for Trout and Salmon ; and have observed, 
that he would usually take three or four worms out of his bag, 
and put them into a little box in his pocket, where he would 
usually let them continue half an hour or more, before he would 
bait his hook with them. I have asked him his reason, and he 
has replied, " He did but pick the best out to be in readiness 
against he baited his hook the next time : " but he has been 
observed, both by others and myself, to catch more fish than I, 
or any other body that has ever gone a-fishing with him could 
do, and especially Salmons. And I have been told lately, by 
one of his most intimate and secret friends, that the box in 
which he put those worms was anointed with a drop, or two or 
three, of the oil of ivy -berries, made by expression or infusion ; 
and told, that by the worms remaining in that box an hour, or a 
like time, they had incorporated a kind of smell that was irre- 
sistibly attractive, enough to force any fish within the smell of 
them to bite. This I heard not long since from a friend, but 
have not tried it ; yet I grant it probable, and refer my reader 
to Sir Francis Bacon's Natural History, where he proves fishes 
may hear, and, doubtless, can more probably smell ; and I am 
certain Gesner says, the Otter can smell in the w^ater ; and I 
know not but that fish may do so too. It is left for a lover of 



* Baits for Salmon are : Lob-worms, for the ground ; smaller Worms and 
Bobs, cad bait, and, indeed, most of the baits taken by the Trout, at tlie 
top of the water. And as to Flies, remember to make them of the most 
jTHudy colours, and very large. There is a Fly called the Horse-leech fly, 
whicli he is very fond of: they are of various colours, have great heads, 
lar^e bodies, very long tails, and two pairs of wings, placed behind each 
other. In imitatingthis Fly, behind each pair of wings whip the body about 
with erold or silver twist, or both ; and do the same by the head. Fish with 
it at length, as for Trout and Grayling. If you dib, do it with two or three 
Butterflies of different colours, or with some of the most glaring small Flies 
you can find. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 129 

angling, or any that desires to improve that art, to try this con- 
chision. 

I shall also impart two other experiments (but not tried by 
myself,) which I will deliver in the same words that they v.ere 
given me, by an excellent angler and a very friend, in writing : 
he told me the latter was too good to be told but in a learned 
language, lest it should be made common, 

" Take the stinking oil drawn out of the polypody of the oak 
by a retort, mixed with turpentine and hive honey, and anoint 
your bait therewith, and it will doubtless draw the fish to it." 

The other is this : " Vidnera hederte grandissimoe inflieta 
sudunt balsamum oleo gelato, albicantique persimile, odoris 
vero longe suanssimi." 

" It is supremely sweet to any fish, and yet asafoetida may 
do the like."* 

But in these I have no great faith ; yet grant it probable ; and 
have had from some chemical men (namely, from Sir George 
Hastings and others) an affirmation of them to be very advan- 
tageous. But no more of these : especially not in this place. f 

I might here, before I take my leave of the Salmon, tell you, 
that there is more than one sort of them, as namely, a Tecon, and 
another called in some places a Samlet, or by some a Skegger, 
(but these, and others which I forbear to name, may be fish 
of another kind, and differ as we know a Herring and a Pilchard 
do ;) J which, I think, are as different as the rivers in which they 

* There is extant, though I have never been able to pet a sight of it, a 
book, entitled, the Secrets of Angling, by J. D[avors] ; at the end of which 
is the following- mystical recipe of " R. R." who possibly may be the " R. 
Roe " mentioned in the Preface to Walton : 

To bless thy bait, and make the fish to bite, 

Lo ! here 's" a means, if thou canst hit it right : 

Take g:um of life, well beat and laid to soak 

In oil well drawn from that * which kills the oak. 

Fish where thou wilt, thou shalt have sport thy fill ; 

When others fail, thou shalt be sure to kill. 
f The following melancholy catastrophe should operate as a general- 
caution against iisi;;g, in the composition of baits, any ingredient prejudi- 
cial to the humrai constitution : " Newcastle, June l(i, 1788. Last week, 
in Lancashire, two young men having caught a large quantity of Trout by 
mixing the water in a small brook \A'ith lime, ate heartily of the Trout at 
dinner the next day ; they were seized, at midnight, with violent pains iu 
the intestines ; and though medical assistance was immediately procured, 
they expired before noon in the greatest agonies." 

t There is a fi<h in many rivers, of the Salmon kind, which, though very 
small, is thought by some curious persons to be of the same species; and 
this, I take it, is the fish known by the diti'erent names of Salmon-pink, 
Shedders, Skeggers, Last-springs, and Gravel Last.springs. But there is 
another small lish very much resembling these in shape and colour, called 
the Gravel Last-spring, found only in the rivers Wye and Severn, which is, 
undoubtedly, a distinct species. These spawn about the beginning of 
September : and in the Wye I hnve taken them with an Ant-fly as fast as 
I could throw. Perhaps this is what Walton calls the Tecon. 

* Ivy 

1 



130 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

breed, and must, by me, be left to the disquisitions of men of 
more leisure and of greater abilities than I profess myself to 
have.* 

And lastly, I am to borrow so much of your promised patience 
as to tell you, that the Trout, or Salmon, being in season, have, 
at their first taking out of the water, (which continues during 
life,) their bodies adorned, the one with such red spots, and the 
other with such black or blackish spots,, as give them such an 
addition of natural beauty, as I think was never given to any 
woman by the artificial paint or patches in which they so much 
pride themselves in this age. And so I shall leave them both ; 
and proceed to some observations on the Pike. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE LUCE, OR PIKE, WITH DIRECTIONS HOW 
TO FISH FOR HIM. 




The Pike — Esox Lucius. — Linnmus. 

Plscator. The mighty Luce, or Pike, is taken to be the tyrant, 
as the Salmon is the king, of the fresh waters. It is not to be 
doubted, but that they are bred, some by generation, and some 
not; as namely, of a weed, called pickerel weed, unless learned 
Gesner be much mistaken ; for he says, this weed and other 
glutinous matter, with the help of the sun's heat, in some 
particular months, and some ponds apted for it by Nature, do 
become Pikes. t But, doubtless, divers Pikes are bred after this 
manner, or are brought into some ponds some such other ways 
as are past man's finding out, of which we have daily testimonies. 

* It does not appear to me that Walton liad much, if any, personal 
experience in Salmon ang-liner, particularly with the fly, which is undoubt- 
edly by far the be-^t sport of this kind —J. R 

t It is surely not needful here to tell the reader that this is unfounded 
fancy ; yet have similar doctrines of spontaneous g-^neration been main- 
tjained in our times by such men as Lamarck, Baron Cnvier, and Blumen- 
bach. 1 once asked a disciple of the school, if he thoug-lit an Elephant could 
be so produced ? " No," he said. " A mite, then i"' — he hesitated, but 
thought it might.— J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 131 

Sir Francis Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, observes 
the Pike to be the longest lived of any fresh water fish ; and 
yet he computes it to be not usually above forty years : and 
others think it to be not above ten years : and yet Gesner 
mentions a Pike taken in Swedeland, in the year 1446, mth a 
ring about his neck, declaring he was put into that pond by 
Frederick the Second, more than two hundred years before he 
was last taken, as by the inscription in that ring, being Greek, 
was interpreted by the then Bishop of Worms.* But of this 
no more ; but that it is observed, that the old or very great 
Pikes have in them more of state than goodness ; the smaller 
or middle-sized Pikes being, by the most and choicest palates, 
observed to be the best meat : and, contrary, the Eel is observed 
to be the better for age and bigness. 

All Pikes that live long prove chargeable to their keepers, 
because their life is maintained by the death of so many other 
fish, even those of their own kind : which has made him by 
some writers to be called the tyrant of the rivers, or the fresh, 
water wolf, by reason of his bold, greedy, devouring disposition ; 
which is so keen, that, as Gesner relates, a man going to a 
pond, where it seems a Pike had devoured all the fish, to water 
his mule, had a Pike bit his mule by the hps ; to which the 
Pike hung- so fast that the mule drew him out of the water ; 
and by that accident, the owner of the mule angled out the 
Pike. And the same Gesner observes, that a maid in Poland 
had a Pike bit her by the foot, as she was washing clothes in 
a pond. And I have heard the like of a woman in Killing\vorth 
pond, not far from Coventry. But 1 have been assured by my 
friend Mr Seagrave, of whom I spake to you formerly, that 
keeps tame otters, that he hath kno\\Ti a Pike, in extreme 
hunger, fight with one of his otters for a Carp that the otter 
had caught, and was then bringing out of the water. I have 
told you who relate these things ; and tell you they are persons 
of credit ; and shall conclude this observation by telling you, 
what a wise man has observed, — " It is a hard thing to persuade 
the belly, because it has no ears."f 

* The story is told by Hake\A'ill, who, in his Apologie of the Potrer and 
Provide/ice of God, fol. Oxf. 1635, part i. p. 145, says, " I will close up this 
chapter \\ ith a relation of Gesner'-, in his epistle to the Emperor Ferdi- 
nand, prefixed before his booke De PiscHms, touchinar the long- life of a 
Pike w'lieh was cast into a pond, or poo!e, near Hailebrune in Snevia, 
with this inscription engraven upon a collar of brass fastened about his 
necke. ' Ego sum ille pisci^ huic stagno omnium primus impo>itus per 
mundi rectoris Frederici Secundi manus, 5 Ottobris, anno 1230.' 1 am that 
fish whiih was first of all cast into this poole liy the hand of Fredericke the 
Second, govcrnour of the world, the lift of October, in the year 1230. He 
was again taken up in the year 14t»7, and hy the inscription it appeared he 
had then lived there two hundred and sixty-seven yeares." 

t Bowlker, in his Art of Angling, before cited, page 9, gives the follo^ving 
instance of the exceeding voracity of this fish : " My father catched a Pike 



132 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

But if these relations be disbelieved, it is too evident to be 
doubted, that a Pike w^ill devour a fish of his own kind that 
shall be bigger than his belly or throat will receive, and swallow 
a part of him, and let the other part remain in his mouth till 
the swallowed part be digested, and then swallow that other 
part, that was in his mouth, and so put it over by degrees : 
which is not unlike the ox, and some other beasts, taking their 
meat, not out of their mouth immediately into their belly, but 
first into some place betwixt, and then chew it, or digest it by 
degrees after, which is called chevnng the cud. And, doubtless. 
Pikes will bite when they are not hungry ; but, as some think, 
even for very anger, when a tempting bait comes near to them. 

And it is observed that the Pike will eat venomous things, 
as some kind of frogs are,* and yet live without being harmed 

in Barn-Meer (a large standing' water in Cheshire) was an ell long, and 
weighed thirty-five pounds, which he brought to the Lord Cholmondeley : 
his lordship ordered it to be turned into a canal in the garden, wherein 
were abundance of several sorts of fish. About twelve months after, his 
lordship drawed the canal, and found that this overgrown Pike had de- 
voured all the fish, except one large Carp that weighed b<»tween nine and 
ten pounds, and that was bitten in several places. The Pike was then put 
into the canal again, together with abundance of fish with him to feed 
upon, all which he devoured in less than a year's time ; and was observed 
by the gardener and workmen there, to take the ducks, and other water, 
fowl, under water. Whereupon they shot magpies and crows, and threw 
them into the canal, which the Pike took before their eyes : of this they 
acquainted their lord, who, thereupon, ordered the slaughterman to fling 
in calves' bellies, chickens' guts, and such like garbage to him, to prey 
upon ; but being soon after neglected, he died, as supposed, for want of 
food." 

In Dr Plot's History of Staffordshire, 246, are sundry relations of Pike of 
great magnitude ; one in particular caught in the Thames, an ell and two 
inches long. 

The following story, containing farther evidence of the voracity of this 
fish, with the addition of a pleasant circumstance, I met with in Fuller's 
Worthies, Lincolnshire, page 144. 

" A cub Fox, drinking out of the river Arn\is in Italy, had his head 
seized on by a mighty Pike, so that neither could free themselves, but were 
ingrappled together. In this contest, a young man runs into the water, 
takes them out both alive, and carrieth them to the Duke of Florence, 
whose palace was hard by. The porter would not admit him, without a 
promise of sharing his full half in Avhat the duke should give him ; to which 
he, hopeless otherwise of entrance, condescended. The duke, highly 
affected with the rarity, wa,s about giving him a good reward, which the 
other refused, desiring his highness would appoint one of his guard to give 
him a hundred lashes, that so his porter might have fifty, according to his 
composition. And here my intelligence leaveth me how much farther the 
jest was followed " 

The same author relates, from a book entitled. Vox Piscii, printed in 
1626, that one Mr Anderson, a townsman and merchant of Newcastle, 
talking with a friend on Newcastle bridge, and fingering his ring, let it fall 
into the river; but it having been swallowed by a fish, and the fish after- 
ward taken, the ring was found and restored to him. — Worthies, Nor- 
thumberland, 310. A like"story is, by Herodotus, related of Polycrates 
king of Sam OS. 

* That either frogs or toads are poisonous is not quite correct, for though 
the secretion from the pustules of the toad is somewhat acrid, it cannot 
justly be called venomous. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 133 

by them ; for, as some say, he has in him a natural balsam, or 
antidote against all poison. And he has a strange heat that, 
though it appears to us to be cold, can yet digest or put over 
any fish-llesh, by degrees, without being sick. And others 
observe that he never eats the venomous frog till he have first 
killed her, and then, as ducks are observed to do to frogs in 
spawning time, at which time some frogs are observed to be 
venomous, so thoroughly washed her, by tumbling her up and 
down in the water, that he may devour her without danger.* 

And Gesner affirms, that a Polonian gentleman did faithfully 
assure him he had seen two young geese at one time in the belly 
of a Pike. And doubtless a Pike in his height of hunger will 
bite at and devour a dog that s^^ims in a pond ; and there have 
been examples of it, or the like ; for, as I told you, ' ' the belly 
has no ears when hunger comes upon it." 

The Pike is also observed to be a solitary, melancholy, and 
a bold fish : melancholy, because he always swims or rests 
himself alone, and" never swims in shoals or with company, as 
Roach and Dace, and most other fish do : and bold, because he 
fears not a shadow, or to see or be seen of any body, as the 
Trout, and Chub, and all other fish do. 

And it.is observed by Gesner, that the jaw-bones and hearts, 
and galls of Pikes are very medicinable for several diseases, or 
to stop blood, to abate fevers, to cure agues, to oppose or expel 
the infection of the plague, and to be many ways medicinable 
and useful for the good of mankind if but he observes, that the 
biting of a Pike is venomous, and hard to be cured. 

And it is observed, that the Pike is a fish that breeds but 
once a year ; and that other fish, as, namely, Loaches, do breed 
oftener : as we are certain tame Pigeons do almost every month ; 
and yet the Hawk, a bird of prey, as the Pike is of fish, breeds 
but once in twelve months. And you are to note, that his time 
of breeding, or spawning, is usually about the end of February, 
or somewhat later, in March, as the weather proves colder or 
warmer : and to note, that his manner of breeding is thus : a he 
and a she Pike will usually go together out of a river into some 
ditch or creek ; and that there the spawner casts her eggs, and 
the melter hovers over her all that time that she is casting her 
spawn, but touches her not. 

I might say more of this, but it might be thought curiosity or 
worse, and shall therefore forbear it ; and take up so much of 
your attention as to tell you, that the best of Pikes are noted 
to be in rivers ; next, those in great ponds or meres ; and the 
worst in small ponds. 

* Tliis is obviously quite fanciful. — J. R. 

f All this nonsense has been long exploded. — J. R. 



134 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

But before I proceed farther, I am to tell you, that there is 
a great antipathy betwixt the Pike and some frogs ; and this 
may appear to the reader of Dubravius, a bishop in Bohemia,* 
who, in his book Of Fish and Fish-ponds, relates what he says 
he saw with his own eyes, and could not forbear to tell the 
reader ; which was : 

" As he and the Bishop Thurzo were walking by a large 
pond in Bohemia, they saw a frog, when the Pike lay very 
sleepily and quiet by the shore side, leap upon his head ; and 
the frog having expressed malice or anger by his swoln cheeks 
and staring eyes, did stretch out his legs and embraced the 
Pike's head, and presently reached them to his eyes, tearing, 
with them and his teeth, those tender parts : the Pike, moved 
with anguish, moves up and down the water, and rubs himself 
against weeds and whatever he thought might quit him of his 
enemy ; but all in vain, for the frog did continue to ride 
triumphantly, and to bite and torment the Pike till his strength 
failed ; and then the frog sunk with the Pike to the bottom of the 
water : then presently the frog appeared again at the top, and 
croaked, and seemed to rejoice like a conqueror, after which he 
presently retired to his secret hole. The bishop, that had 
beheld the battle, called his fisherman to fetch his nets, and by 
all means to get the Pike, that they might declare what had 
happened : and the Pike was drawn forth, and both his eyes 
eaten out, at which when they began to wonder, the fisherman 
wished them to forbear, and assured them he was certain that 
Pikes were often so served." 

I told this, which is to be read in the sixth chapter of the 
[first] book of Dubravius, unto a friend, who replied, " It was 
as improbable as to have the mouse scratch out the cat's eyes." 
But he did not consider, that there be fishing frogs, Avhich the 
Dalmatians call the Water-devil, of which I might tell you as 
wonderful a story : but I shall tell you that it is not to be 
doubted but that there be some frogs so fearful of the water 
snake, that when they swim in a place in which they fear to 
meet with him, they then get a reed across into their mouths ; 
which, if they two meet by accident, secures the frog from the 
strength and malice of the snake; and note, that the frog 
usually swims the fastest of the two. 

And let me tell you, that as there be water and land frogs, 

* JaTius Dubravius Srala, bishop of Olmutz, in Moravia, in the sixteenth 
century, was born at Pilsen, in Bohemia. His book On Fish and Fish, 
ponds, in which are many jleasant relations, was, in 1599, transhit( d into 
English, and publishetl in quarto, by George Churehey, fellow of Lion's 
Inn, with the title of A ne7i' Book of good Husbandry ,rery Pleasant and of great 
Profit both for Gentlemen and Yeomen, co?itaim7ig the Order and Manner of 
Meting of Fish-ponds, Sfc. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 135 

SO there be land and water snakes.* Concerning which, take 
this observation, that the land snake breeds and hatches her 
eggs, which become young snakes, in some old dunghill, or a 
like hot place : but the water snake, which is not venomous, 
and, as I have been assured by a great observer of such secrets, 
does not hatch, but breed her young alive, which she does not 
then forsake, but bides with them, and in case of danger will 
take them all into her mouth and smm away from any appre- 
hended danger, and then let them out again when she thinks all 
danger to be passed : these be accidents that we anglers some- 
times see, and often talk of. 

But whither am I going ? I had almost lost myself, by 
remembering the discourse of Dubravius. I wdll therefore stop 
here ; and tell you, according to my promise, how to catch the 
Pike. 

His feeding is usually of fish or frogs; and sometimes a 
weed of his o^^TJ, called pickerel-weed, of which I told you 
some think Pikes are bred ; for they have observed, that where 
none have been put into ponds, yet they have there found many ; 
and that there has been plenty of that weed in those ponds, and 
[they think] that that weed both breeds and feeds them : but 
whether those Pikes so bred will ever breed by generation as 
the others do, I shall leave to the disquisitions of men of more 
curiosity and leisure than I profess myself to have ; f and shall 
proceed to tell you, that you may fish for a Pike, either with a 
ledger or a walking bait ; and you are to note, that I call that a 
ledger bait, which is fixed or made to rest in one certain place 
when you shall be absent from it ; and I call that a walking bait, 
which you take with you, and have ever in motion. Concern- 
ing which two, I shall give you this direction ; that your ledger 
bait is best to be a living bait, (though a dead one may catch,) 
whether it be a fish or a frog : and that you may make them 
live the longer, you may, or indeed you must take this course : 

First, for your live bait : of fish, a Roach or Dace is, I 
think, best and most tempting, and a Perch is the longest 
lived on a hook ; and, having cut off his fin on his back, which 
may be done without hurting him, you must take your knife, 
w^hich cannot be too sharp, and betwixt the head and the fin on 
the back cut or make an incision, or such a scar as you may 
put the arming wire of your hook into it, with as little bruising 
or hurting the fish as art and diligence will enable you to do ; 

* This is a pross mistnke. It may as correctly be maintained that there 
are land and water ducks, or land and air skylarks. — J. R. 

t We should not infer, that because we see the house spider, for the 
most part, in the cobweb, it was generated by the cobweb, though this 
reasoning would be as good as the one in the text. It is the same loose 
kind of observation that ascribes the production of insects to blighting 
winds J. R, 



136 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

and so carrying your arming wire along his back, unto or near 
the tail of your fish, betwixt the skin and the body of it, draw 
^ out that wire or arming of your hook at another scar near to 
his tail : then tie him about it with thread, but no harder than 
of necessity to prevent hurting the fish; and the better to avoid 
hiirting the fish, some have a kind of probe to open the way for 
the more easy entrance and passage of your wire or arming : but 
as for these, time and a little experience will teach you better 
than I can by words. Therefore I will for the present say no 
more of this ; but come next to give you some directions how 
to bait your hook with a Frog. 

Venator. But, good master, did you not say even now, that 
some frogs were venomous ; and is it not dangerous to touch 
them ? 

Piscator. Yes, but I \^dll give you some rules or cautions 
concerning them. And first you are to note, that there are two 
kinds of frogs, that is to say, if I may so express myself, a flesh 
and a fish frog.* By flesh frogs, I mean frogs that breed and 
live on the land ; and of these there be several sorts also, 
and of several colours, some being speckled, some greenish, 
some blackish or bro\\'Ti : the Green Frog, which is a small 
one, is by Topsel taken to be venomous : and the Paddock, 
or Frog-paddock, which usually keeps or breeds on the land, 
and is very large and bony and big, especially the she frog of 
that kind ; yet these will sometimes come into the water, but 
it is not often : and the land frogs are some of them observed 
by him to breed by laying eggs, and others to breed of the 
slime and dust of the earth, and that in winter they turn to 
slime again, and that the next summer that very slime returns 
to be a living creature ; this is the opinion of Pliny. And Car- 
danus f undertakes to give a reason for the raining of frogs J 
but if it were in my power, it should rain none but water 
frogs ; for those, I think, are not venomous, especially the right 
water frog, which, about February or March, breeds in ditches, 
by slime, and blackish eggs in that slime : about which time 
of breeding, the he and she frogs are observed to use divers 
summersaults, and to croak and make a noise, which the land 
frog or paddock frog never does. 

Now, of these water frogs, if you intend to fish with a frog 
for a Pike, you are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for 

» The whole of this paragraph is full of cross error. There are, indeed, 
two species of Enolish Frogs, the Common and the Natterjack, but it does 
not appear that Walton knew the latter. — J. R. 

f In his 19 hook, De Subtil ex. 

\ There are many well attested accounts of the raining of frogs ; hut 
Mr Ray rejects them as utterly false and ridiculous ; andoemonstratesthe 
impossibility of their production in any such manner.— Wisdom of God in 
the Creation, 310. See also Derhara's P/ii/sico-Theology, Mii, and Pennant's 
Zoology, quarto, Lond. 1776, vol. iv. p. 10. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 137 

that the Pike ever likes best. And thus use your frog, that he 
may continue long alive : 

Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from 
the middle of April till August ; and then the frog's mouth grows 
up, and he continues so for at least six months without eating, — 
but is sustained none but He whose name is Wonderful knows 
how : I say, put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through 
his mouth, and out at his gills ; and then with a fine needle and 
silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the 
arming wire of your hook ; or tie the frog's leg above the upper 
joint to the armed wire ; and, in so doing, use him as though 
you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possible 
that he may live the longer.* 

And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your 
ledger hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell 
you how your hook, thus baited, must or may be used ; and it is 
thus : having fastened your hook to a hue, which, if it be not 
fourteen yards long, should not be less than twelve, you are to 
fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or 
is likely to lie, or to have a haunt : and then wind your line on 
any forked stick, all your line except half a yard of it or rather 
more ; and spUt that forked stick, with such a nick, or notch, at 
one end of it as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling 
from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. And 
choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the 
fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water till 
the Pike bites ; and then the Pike having pulled the line forth 
of the cleft or nick of that stick in which it was gently fastened, 
he will have line enough to go to his hold and pouch the bait. 
And if you would have this ledger bait to keep at a fixed place, 
undisturbed by wind or other accidents which may drive it to 
the shore side (for you are to note, that it is likeliest to catch a 
Pike in the midst of the water,) then hang a small plummet of 
lead, a stone, or piece of tile, or a turf, in a string, and cast into 
the water with the forked stick to hang upon the ground, to be 
a kind of anchor to keep the forked stick from moving out of 
your intended place till the Pike come : this I take to be a very 
good way to use so many ledger baits, as you intend to make 
trial of. 

Or if you bait your hooks thus with live fish or frogs, and in 
a wdndy day, fasten them thus to a bough or bundle of straw, 
and by the help of that wind can get them to move across a pond 
or mere, you are like to stand still on the shore and see sport 
presently, if there be any store of Pikes. Or these live baits 

• It is upon this that Lord Byron founds his charare o*" cruelty against 
Waltcn, not altogether, I must confess, without plausible reason. — J. R« 



188 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

may make sport, being tied about the body or wings of a goose 
or duck, and she chased over a pond.* And the like may be 
done \vith turning three or four live baits thus fastened to blad- 
ders, or boughs, or bottles of hay or flags, to s\\Tm down a river, 
whilst you walk quietly alone on the shore, and are still in 
expectation of sport. The rest must be taught you by practice ; 
for time wall not allow me to say more of this kind of fishing 
with live baits. 

And for your dead bait for a Pike : for that you may be taught 
by one day's going a-fishing with me, or any other body that 
fishes for him ; for the baiting your hook with a dead Gudgeon 
or a Roach, and moving it up and down the water, is too easy a 
thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet 
because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling 
you that that was told me for a secret — it is this : 

Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and there \vith anoint 
your dead bait for a Pike : and then cast it in a likely place ; 
and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards 
the top of the water, and so up the stream : and it is more than 
likely that you have a Pike follow with more than common 
eagerness. 

And some affirm, that any bait anointed with the marrow of 
the thigh bone of a hern is a great temptation to any lish.f 

These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of 
note, that pretended to do me a courtesy. J But if this direc- 

* A rod tn^elve fpet long, and a ring- of wire, 
A winder and barrt-l, will holp thy desire 
In killing a Pike ; but thp forkt'd stick, 
With a slit and a bladder, and that other fine trick. 
Which our artists call snap, with a goose or a duck. 
Will kill two for one, if you have any Inck ; 
The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile, 
To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile. 
When a Pike suns himself, and a frogging doth go, 
The two inched hook is better, I know. 
Than the ordinary snaring. But still I must cry, 
«' When the Pike is at home, mind the cookery." 

Barki r's Art of Angling. 
f If this be so, it must arise, I think, from its fishy smell giving token 
of a goodly morsel of food, the undoubted cause of Salmon roe being so 
good a bait — J. R. 

* The Pike loves a still, shady, unfrequented water, and usually lies 
amongst or near weeds ; such as flags, bulrushes, candocks, reeds, or in 
the green fog that sometimes covers standing waters, though he will some- 
times shoot out into the dear stream. He is sometimes caught at the top, 
and in the middle; and often, especially in cold weather, at the bottom. 

Their time of spawning is about the end of February or the beginning 
of March ; and chief season, from the end of May to the beginning of 
February. 

Pikes are called Jacks till they become twenty-four inches long. 

The baits for Pike, besides those mentioned by Walton, are a small 

Trout ; the Loach and Miller's-thumb ; the head end of an Eel, with the 

skin taken ofl' below the fins ; a small Jack ; a Lob-worm ; and, in winter, 

the fat of bacon. And notwithstanding what Walton and others say * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 139 

tion to catch a Pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain this 
direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely good ; 

against baiting with a Perch, it is confidently asserted, that Pikes havs 
been taken with a small Pprch, when neither a Roach nor Bleak would 
tempt them. See the Angler's Sure Guide, 158. 

Observe that all your baits for Pike must be as fresh as possible. Living 
baits you may tnke with you in a tin kettle, changing the Avater often: 
and dead ones should be carried in fresh bran, which will dry up that 
moisture that otherwise would infect and rot them. — Venables. 

It is strange that Walton has said so little of trolling, a method of fishing 
for Pike which has been thought worthy of a distinct treatise ; for which 
method, and for the snap, take these directions — and first for trolling : 

And note, that in trolling, the head of the bait-fish must be at the bent 
of the hook ; whereas in fishing at the snap, the hook must come out at or 
near his tail. But the essential difference between these two methods is, 
that in the former the Pike is always suifered to pouch or swallow th« 
bait : but in the latter you are to strike as soon as he has taken it. 

The rod for trolling should be about three yards and a half long, with a 
ring at the top for the line to run through ; or you may fit a troUing-top 
to your fly rod, which need only be stronger than the common fly-top. 

Let your line be of green or sky-coloured silk, thirty yards in length, 
which will make it necessary to use the winch, as is before directed, with 
a swivel at the end. 

The common trolling-hook for a living bait consists of two large hooks, 
with one common shank, made of one piece of wire, of about three 
quarters of an inch long, placed back to back, so that the points may not 
stand in a right 'line, but incline so much inwards as that they with the 
shank may form an angle little less than equilateral. At the top of the 
shank is a loop, left in the bending the wire to make the hook double* 
through which is put a strong twisted brass wire, of about six inches long ; 
and to this is looped another such link, but both so loose that the hook and 
lower link may have room to play. To the end of the line fasten a steel 
swivel. 

To bait the hook, observe the directions given by Walton. 

But there is a sort of trolling-hook, different from that already described, 
and to which it is thought preferable, which will require another 
management : this is no more than two single hooks tied back to back 
with a strong piece of gimp between the shanks. In the whipping the 
hooks and the gimp together, make a small loop ; and take into it two 
links of chain, of about an eight of an inch diameter, and into the lower 
link, by means of a small staple of wire, fasten by the greater end a bit of 
lead of a conical figure, and somewhat sharp at the point. These hooks 
are to be had at the fishing tackle shops ready fitted up. 

The latter kind of hook is to be thus ordered ; namely, put the lead into 
the mouth of the bait-fish, and sew it up ; the fi<h will live some time ; and 
though the weight of the lead will keep his head down, he will swim with 
near the same ease as if at liberty. 

But if you will troll with a dead bait, as some do, for a reason which the 
angler will be gl d to know, namely, that a living bait makes too great a 
slaughter among the fish, do it with a hook, of which the following 
paragraph contains a description : 

Let the shank be about six inches long, and leaded from the middle a« 
low as the bent of the hook, to which a piece of very strong gimp must be 
fastened by a staple, and two links of chain ; the shank must he barbed 
like a dart, and the lead a quarter of an inch square : the barb of the shank 
must stand like the fluke of an anchor, which is placed in a contrary 
direction to that of the ?tock. Let the gimp be about a foot long ; and to 
the end thereof fix a swivel. To bait it thrust the barb of the shank into 
the mouth of the bait-fish, and bring it out at his side near the tail : when 
the barb is thus brought through, it cannot return, and the fish will lie 
perfectly straight, a circumstance that renders the trouble of tying the 
tail unnecessary. 

There is yet another sort of trolling hook, which is, indeed, no otb«r 



140 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

for I have tried it, and it is somewhat the better for not being 
common. But with my direction you must take this caution, 

than what most writers on this subject have mentioned ; whereas the 
others here described are late improvements : and this is a hook, either 
single or double, with a hng shank, leaded about three inches up the 
wire with a piece of lead about a quarter of an inch square at the greater 
or lower end : fix to the shank an armed wire about eight inches long. 
To bait this hook thrust your wire into the mouth of the fish, quite 
through his belly, and out at his tail ; placing the vv^ire so that the point of 
the hook may be even with the belly of the bait-fish ; and then tie the tail 
of the fish with strong thread to the wire : some fasten it with a needle and 
thread, which is a neat way. 

Both with the troll and at the snap, cut away one of the fins of the bait- 
fish close at the gills, and another behind the vent on the contrary side ; 
which will make it play the better. 

The bait being thus fixed, is to be thrown in, and kept in constant 
motion in the water, sometimes suffered to sink, then gradually raised : 
now drawn with the stream, then against it ; so as to counterfeit the 
motion of a small fish in swimming. If a Pike is near, he mistakes the bait 
for a living fish, seizes it with prodigious greediness, goes off with it to his 
hole, and in about ten minutes pouches it. When he has thus swallowed 
the bait, you will see the line move, which is the signal for striking him ; 
do this with two lusty jerks, and then play him. 

The other way of taking Pike, namely, with the snap, is as follows : — 

Let the rod be twelve feet long, very strong and taper, with a strong 
loop at thf top to fasten your line to. Your line must be about a foot 
shorter tiian the rod, and much stronger than the trolling line. 

And here it is necessary to be remembered, that there are two ways of 
snapping for Pike, namely, with the live and with the dead snap. 

For the live snap, there is no kind of hook so proper as the double 
spring hook. To bait it, nothing more is necessary than to hang the 
bait-fish fast by the back fin to the middle hook, where he will live a long 
time. 

Of hooks for the dead snap, there are many kinds : but the one which, 
after repeated trials, has been found to excel all others hitherto known, 
we subjoin the description and use of as follows, namely, Whip two hooks, 
of about three-eighths of an inch in the bent, to a piece of gimp, in the 
manner directed for that troUing-hook. Then take a piece of lead, of the 
same size and figure as directed for the troUing-hook above mentioned; 
and drill a hole through it from end to end. To bait it, take a long needle 
or wire ; enter it in at the side, about half an inch above the tail, and with 
it pass the gimp between the skin and the ribs of the fish, bringing it out at 
his mouth : then put the lead over the gimp, draw it down into the fish's- 
throat, and press his mouth close, and then, having a swivel to your line, 
hang on the gimp. 

In throwing the bait, observe the rules given for trolling ; but 
remember, that the more you keep it in motion, the nearer it resembles a 
living fish. 

When you have a bite, strike immediately, the contrary way to that 
which the head of the Pike lies, or to which he goes with the bait ; if you 
cannot find which way h".s head lies, strike upright with two smart jerks, 
retiring backwards as fast as you can, till you have brought him to a 
landing place, and then do as before is directed. » 

There are various other methods, both of trolling and fishing at the 
snap, which, if the reader is desirous to know, he may find described in 
the Complete Trailer, by Ro. Nobbes, 12mo. 1682, and the Angler's Sure 
Guide, before mentioned. 

As the Pike spawns in March, and before that month rivers are seldom 
in order for fishing, it will hardly be worth while to begin trolling till 
April ; after that the weeds will be apt to be troublesome. But the prime 
month in the year for trolling is October ; when the Pike are fattened by 
their summer's feed, the weeds are rotted, and by the falling of the waters 
the harbours of the fish are easily found. ■* 



THE COjMPLETE ANGLER. 141 

that your Fike must not be a small one, that is, it must be 
more than half a yard, and should be bigger.* 

First, open your Pike at the gills, and, if need be, cut also a 
little sht towards the belly. Out of these take his guts ; and 
keep his hver, which you are to shred very small, with thyme, 
sweet marjoram, and a little winter savory ; to these put some 
pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three, both these 
last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not ; 
to these you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you 
are to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be 
well salted. If the Pike be more than a yard long, then you 
may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, 
then less butter will suffice : These, being thus mixed, with a 
blade or two of mace, must be put into the Pike's belly : and 
then his belly so sewed up as to keep all the butter in his bellv 
if it be possible ; if not, then as much as you possibly can. But 
take not off the scales. Then you are to thrust the spit through 
his mouth, out at his tail. And then take four or five, or 
six split sticks, or very thin laths, and a convenient quantity of 
tape or filleting ; these laths are to be tied round about the 
Pike's body, from his head to his tail, and the tape tied some- 
what thick, to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit. 
Let him be roasted very leisurely ; and often basted mth claret 
wine and anchovies and butter mixed together ; and also with 
what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have 
roasted him sufficiently, you are to hold under him, when you 
unA\dnd or cut the tape that ties him, such a dish as you purpose 
to eat him out of; and let him fall into it v.dth the sauce that is 

Choose to troll in clear, and not muddy water, and in windy weather, 
if the wind be not easterly. 

Some use in trolling and snapping- two or more swivels to their line, by 
means wher*'of the twisting of the line is prevented, the bait plays more 
freelv, and, though dead, is made to appear as if alive ; which in rivers is 
doubtless an excellent way : but thos,e who can like to fish in ponds or 
still waters, \^ill find very little occasion for more than one. 

The Pike is also to be caught with a Miunow ; for which method take 
the following directions : 

Get a single liook, slender, and long in the shank; let it resemble the 
shape of a shepherd's crook ; put lead upon it, as thick near the bent a^j 
will go into a .Minnow's mouth. Place the point of tlie hook directly up 
the face of the fish. Let the rod be as long as you can handsomely manage, 
with a line of the same length. Cast up and down, and manage it as when 
you troll with any other bait. If, when the Pike hath taken your bait, he 
run to the end of the line before he hiith gorged it, do not strike, but hold 
still only, and he will return back and swallow it. But if you use that bait 
with a troll, I rather prefer it before any bait that I know.— Vemitles. 

In landing a Pike, great caution is necessary ; for his bite is esteemed 
venomous. The best and safest hold you can take of him is by the head ; 
in doing which, place your thumb and finger in his eyes. 

* In the Royal Cookery, by P. Lamb, Esq. master cook to Queen Anne, 
I find fifteen ways of dressing Pike, most of them requiring wine either for 
sauce or for boiling. It reminds one of Lord Blayney's hams boih'd ia 
champaign. — J. II. 



142 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

roasted in his belly ; and by this means the Pike will be kept 
unbroken and complete. Then, to the sauce which was within, 
and also that sauce in the pan, you are to add a fit quantity of 
the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of three or four oranges. 
Lastly, you may either put into the Pike, with the oysters, 
two cloves of garlick, and take it whole out, when the Pike is 
cut off the spit ; or to give the sauce a haut gout, let the dish 
into which you let the Pike fall be rubbed with it ; the using or 
not using of this garlick is left to your discretion M. B. 

This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very 
honest men, and I trust you will prove both, and therefore I 
have trusted you with this secret. 

Let me next tell you, that Gesner tells us, there are no Pikes 
in Spain, and that the largest are in the lake Thrasimene in 
Italy ; and the next, if not equal to them, are the Pikes of 
England ; and that in England, Lincolnshire boasteth to have 
the biggest. Just so doth Sussex boast of four sorts of fish, 
namely, an Arundel Mullet, a Chichester Lobster, a Shelsey 
Cockle, and an Amerly Trout. 

But I will take up no more of your time with this relation, 
but proceed to give you some observations of the Carp, and how 
to angle for him ; and to dress him, — but not till he is caught. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE CARP ; WITH DIRECTIONS HOW 
TO FISH FOR HIM. 




The Carp — Cyprinus Ccirpio. — Linnjeus. 

Piscator. The Carp is the queen of rivers ; a stately, a good, 
and a) very subtle fish, that was not at first bred, nor hath been 
long in England, but is now naturalized. It is said they were^ 
brought hither by one Mr Mascal, a gentleman that then lived 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 143 

at Plumsted in Sussex, a county that abounds more with fish 
than any in this nation.* 

You may remember that I told you, Gesner says, there are 
no Pikes in Spain; and doubtless there was a time, about a 
hundred or a few more years ago, when there were no Carps in 
England, as may seem to be affirmed by Sir Richard Baker, in 
whose Chronicle you may find these verses : 

Hops and Turkeys, Carps and Beer 
Came into England all in a year.f 

And doubtless, as of sea fish the Herring dies soonest out of 
the water, and of fresh water fish the Trout, so, except the 
Eel, the Carp endures most hardness, and lives longest out of 
his own proper element. And, therefore, the report of the 
Carp's being brought out of a foreign country into this nation 
is the more probable. 

Carps and Loaches are observed to breed several months in one 
year, which Pikes and most other fish do not. And this is partly 
proved by tame and \\\\A Rabbits : as also by some Ducks, 
which \nll lay eggs nine of the twelve months, and yet there 
be other Ducks that lay no longer than about one month. And 
it is the rather to be believed, because you shall scarce or never 
take a male Carp \Wthout a melt, or a female without a roe, or 
spawn, and for the most part very much, and especially all the 
summer season. And it is observed, that they breed more 
naturally in ponds than in running waters, if they breed there 
at all ; and that those that live in rivers are taken by men of 
the best palates to be much the better meat. 

And it is observed, that in some ponds Carps will not breed, 
especially in cold ponds ; but where they will breed, they breed 
innumerably ; Aristotle and Pliny say, six times in a year, if there 

* For proof of this fact, we have the testimony of the author of the Book 
of Fishing ■irith Hooke and Line, quarto, Lond. 1590, already mentioned in 
the Life of Walton, who, though the initials only of his name are g^iven in 
the title, appt^ars to have been Leonard MasraU the transhitorof a book 
of Planting and Graffing, quarto, 1589, 1599, and the author of a book On 
Cattef, quarto, 1596. Fuller, in his Worthies, Sussex, 113, seems to have 
roufounded these two persons ; the lat'er of whom, in the tract first above- 
mentioned, speaks of the former by report only ; besides whicli, thev lived 
at the distance of seventy years from each other, and the author of the book 
Of Fishing is conjectured to be a Hampshire man. 

■f- See in the Life of Walton, hereto prefixed, a passage extracted from 
the book of Dame Juliana Barnes, whereby it appeirs that, in her time, 
there were Carps, though but few, in England. It seems, therefore, that 
Mr Mascal, of Plumsted, did not first bring hither Carps ; but, as the 
curious in gardening do by exotic plnnts, he naturalized this species offish, 
and that about the era mentioned in the above distich," Hops and Turkeys," 
&c. which elsewhere is read thus : 

Hops, Reformation, Turkeys, Carps, and Beer, 
Came into England all in one year. 



144 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

be no Pikes nor Perch to devour their spawn, when it is cast 
upon grass, or flags, or weeds, where it Hes ten or twelve days 
before it be enlivened. 

The Carp, if he have water room and good feed, will grow to 
a very great bigness and length ; I have heard, to be much above 
a yard long.* It is said by Jovius,t who hath writ of fishes, 
that in the lake Lurian, in Italy, Carps have thriven to be more 
than fifty pounds weight : which is the more probable, for as 
the bear is conceived and born suddenly, and being born is but 
short-hved ; so, on the contrary, the elephant is said to be two 
years in his dam's belly, some think he is ten years in it, and 
being born, grows in bigness twenty years ; and it is observed, 
too, that he lives to the age of a hundred years. And it is also 
observed, that the Crocodile is very long-lived ; and more than 
that, that all that long life he thrives in bigness ; and so I think 
some Carps do, especially in some places, though I never saw 
one above twenty-three inches, which was a great and a goodly 
fish ; but have been assured there are of a far greater size, and 
in England too. J 

Now, as the increase of Carps is wonderful for their number, 
so there is not a reason found out, I think, by any, why they 
should breed in some ponds, and not in others, of the same 
nature for soil and all other circumstances. And as their 
breeding, so are their decays also very mysterious : I have both 
read it, and been told by a gentleman of tried honesty, that he 
has known sixty or more large Carps put into several ponds 
near to a house, where, by reason of the stakes in the ponds, 
and the owner's constant being near to them, it was impossible 
they should be stolen away from him ; and that when he has, 
after three or four years, emptied the pond, and expected an 
increase from them by breeding young ones, (for that they 
might do so he had, as the rule is, put in three melters for one 
spawner,) he has, I say, after three or four years, found neither 
a young nor old Carp remaining. And the like I have known 
of one that had almost watched the pond, and at a like distance 
of time, at the fishing of a pond, found, of seventy or eighty 
large Carps, not above five or six : and that he had forborne 
longer to fish the said pond, but that he saw, in a hot day in 
summer, a large Carp swim near the top of the water with a 

* The widow of the late Mr David Garrick, of Drury Lane theatre, once 
told me, that in her native country, Germany, she had seen the head of a 
Carp served up at table, liig enou'jh to fill a large dish. 

+ Paulus Jovius, an Italian historian of very doubtfuJ authority. He lived 
in the sixteenth century, and wrote a small tract, De Romanis Fiscibm. 
He died at Florence, 1552. 

t The author of the Angler's Sure Guide says, that he has taken Carp 
above twenty-six inches lonjr, in rivers ; and adds, that they are often seen 
in England above thirty inches long. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 145 

frog upon his head ; and that he, upon that occasion, caused 
his pond to be let dry : and I say, of seventy or eighty Carps, 
only found five or six in the said pond, and those very sick and 
lean, and with every one a frog sticking so fast on the head of 
the said Carps, that the frog w^ould not be got off Avithout 
extreme force, or killing. And the gentleman that did affirm 
this to me, told me he saw it ; and did declare his belief to be, 
and I also believe the same, that he thought the other Carps, 
that were so strangely lost, were so killed by frogs, and then 
devoured.* 

And a person of honour, now living in Worcestershire, f 
assured me he had seen a necklace, or collar, of tadpoles, hang 
like a chain, or necklace of beads, about a Pike's neck, and to 
kill him : whether it were for meat or malice, must be, to me, 
a question. 

But I am fallen into this discourse by accident, of which I 
might say more, but it has proved longer than I intended, and 
possibly may not to you be considerable : I shall therefore give 
you three or four more short observations of the Carp, and then 
fall upon some directions how you shall fish for him. 

The age of Carps is, by Sir Francis Bacon, in his History of 
Life and Death, observed to be but ten years ; yet others think 
they live longer. Gesner says, " A Carp has been kno^vn to 
live in the Palatinate above a hundred years. "J But most 
conclude, that, contrary to the Pike, or Luce, all Carps are the 
better for age and bigness. The tongues of Carps are noted to 
be choice and costly meat, especially to them that buy them : 
but Gesner says, " Carps have no tongue like other fish, but a 
piece of flesh -like fish in their mouth, like to a tongue, and 
should be called a palate :" § but it is certain it is choicely good, 
and that the Carp is to be reckoned amongst those leather- 
mouthed fish which, I told you, have their teeth in their throat ; 
and for that reason he is very seldom lost by breaking his hold, 
if your hook be once stuck into his chaps. 

I told you that Sir Francis Bacon thinks that the Carp lives 
but ten years : but Janus Dubravius has writ a book Of Fish 
arid Fish Ponds, J) in which he says, that ' ' Carps begin to 

* It would be wrong to deny such direct testimony, but it appears 
improliable that frogs could, if tliey were so inclined, succeed in killing 
Carp. — J. I{. 

t Mr. Fr. Ru. 

t Lately, namely, in one of the daily papers for the month of August, 
1782, an article appeared, purporting, that in the basin at Emanuel 
College, Cambridge, a Carp was then living that had been in the water 
thirty-six years, which, though it had lost one eye, knew, and would 
constantly approach its feeder. 

^ Gesner is wrong in this ; for the " piece of flesh-like fish " is undoubt- 
edly the tongue, and not the palate of the fish. —J. R. 

II Vide, ante. p. 154, &c 

K 



]46 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

spawn at the age of three years, and continue to do so till 
thirty : " he says also, that in the time of their breeding, 
which is in summer, when the sun hath warmed both the earth 
and water, and so apted them also for generation, that then 
three or four male Carps will follow a female ; and that then, 
she putting on a seeming coyness, they force her through weeds 
and flags, where she lets fall her eggs, or spa-woi, which sticks 
fast to the weeds ; and then they let fall their melt upon it, and 
go it becomes in a short time to be a living fish : and, as I told 
you, it is thought that the Carp does this several months in the 
year. And most believe, that most fish breed after this manner, 
except the Eel. And it has been observed, that when the 
spawner has weakened herself by doing that natural office, that 
two or three melters have helped her from oiF the weeds, by 
bearing her up on both sides, and guarding her into the deep. 
And you may note, that though this may seem a curiosity not 
worth observing, yet others have judged it worth their time and 
cost to make glass hives, and order them in such a manner as to 
see how bees have bred and made their honeycombs, and how 
they have obeyed their king, and governed their commonwealth. * 
But it is thought that all Carps are not bred by generation ; 
but that some breed other ways, as some Pikes do. 

The physicians make the galls and stones in the heads of 
Carps to be very medicinable. But it is not to be doubted but 
that in Italy they make great profit of the spawn of Carps, by 
selling it to the Jews, who make it into red caviare ; the Jews 
not being by their law admitted to eat of caviare made of the 
Sturgeon, that being a fish that wants scales, and (as may 
appear in Levit. xi.) by them reputed to be unclean. 

Much more might be said out of him, and out of Aristotle, 
which Dubravius often quotes in his Discourse of Fishes : but it 
might rather perplex than satisfy you ; and, therefore, I shall 
rather choose to direct you how to catch, than spend m.ore 
time in discoursing either of the nature or the breeding of this 
fish, or of anymore circumstances concerning him . But yet 
I shall remember you of what I told you before, that he is a 
very subtle fish, and hard to be caught. 

And my first direction is, that if you ^vill fish for a Carp, 
you must put on a very large measure of patience, especially to 
fish for a river Carp : I have known a very good fisher angle 
difigently four or six hours in a day, for three or four days 
together, for a river Carp, and not have a bite. And you are 
to note, that, in some ponds, it is as hard to catch a Carp as in 

* Bees have what is termed a queen, not a king ; but so far from obeyingr 
her, as here asserted, she is kept a dose prisoner, and must obey her sub- 
jects — J, R. . 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 1-^ 

a river ; that is to say, where they have store of feed, and the 
water is of a clayish colour. But you are to remember that I 
have told you there is no rule v\dthout an exception ; and, 
therefore, being possessed wdth that hope and patience which I 
wish to all fishers, especially to the Carp angler, I shall tell 
you with what bait to fish for him. But first you are to know, 
that it must be either early or late ; and let me tell you, that in 
hot weather (for he will seldom bite in cold) you cannot be too 
early or too late at it. And some have been so curious as to 
say, the 10th of April is a fatal day for Carps. 

The Carp bites either at worms or at paste : and of Avorms I 
think the bluish marsh or meadow- worm is best ; but possibly 
another worm, not too big, may do as well, and so may a green 
gentle; and as for pastes, there are almost as many sorts as 
there are medicines for the toothach ; but doubtless sweet 
pastes are best ; I mean pastes made with honey or with sugar, 
which, that you may the better beguile this crafty fish, should 
be thrown into the pond or place in which you fish for him, 
some hours, or longer, before you undertake your trial of skill 
with the angle-rod ; and doubtless, if it be thro\ATi into the 
water a day or two before, at several times, and in small pellets, 
you are the likelier, when you fish for the Carp, to obtain your 
desired sport. Or, in a large pond, to draw them to any certain 
place, that they may the better and with more hope be fislied 
for, you are to throw into it, in some certain place, either 
grains, or blood mixed AAdth cow-dung, or %\dth bran, or any 
garbage, as chicken's guts, or the like ; and then some of your 
small sweet pellets with which you purpose to angle : and these 
small pellets being a few of them also thrown in as you are 
angling, will be the better. 

And your paste must be thus made : Take the flesh of a rabbit 
or cat cut small,* and bean-flour ; and if that may not be easily 
got, get other flour ; and then mix these together, and put to 
them either sugar, or honey, which I think better ; and then 
beat these together in a mortar, or sometimes work them in 
your hands, your hands being veiy clean ; and then make it 
into a ball, or two or three, as you like best, for your use : but 
you must work or pound it so long in the mortar, as to make it 
so tough as to hang upon your hook without M'ashing from it, 
yet not too hard : or, that you may the better keep it on your 
hook, you may knead A\ith your paste a little, and not much, 
white or yellowish wool. 

And if you would have this paste keep all the year, for any 
other fish, then mix with, it virgin wax and clarified honev, and 



* The sort of flesh does rot seem to be of any importance ; though the 
whiter it be perhaps the better, and therefore veal or pork is good. — J. R, 



148 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

work them together with your hands before the fire ; then 
make these into balls, and they will keep all the year. 

And if you fish for a Carp with gentles, then put upon your 
hook a small piece of scarlet, the sixth of an inch square, it 
being soaked in, or anointed with, oil of petre, called by some, 
oil of the rock : and if your gentles be put, two or three days 
before, into a box or horn anointed with honey, and so put upon 
your hook as to preserve them to be living, you are as like to 
kill this crafty fish this Avay as any other ; but still, as you are 
fishing, chew a little white or brown bread in your mouth, and 
cast it into the pond about the place where your float swims. 
Other baits there be ; but these, with diligence and patient 
watchfulness, will do it better than any that I have ever 
practised or heard of. And yet I shall tell you, that the crumbs 
of wliite bread and honey made into a paste is a good bait for a 
Carp ; and you know, it is more easily made. And having 
said thus much of the Carp,* my next discourse shall be of the 
Bream, which shall not prove so tedious; and therefore I 
desire the continuance of your attention. 

But, first, I will tell you how to make this Carp, that is so 
curious to be caught, so curious a dish of meat as shall make 
him worth all your labour and patience. And though it is not 
without some trouble and charges, yet it will recompense both. 

Take a Carp (alive if possible;) scour him, and rub him 
clean with water and salt, but scale him not ; then open him, 
and put him, with his blood and his liver, which you must save 
when you open him, into a small pot, or kettle ; then take sweet 
marjoram, thyme, and parsley, of each half a handful ; a sprig 
of rosemary, and another of savory ; bind them into two or 

* The haunts of the river Carp are, in the winter months, the broadest 
and most quiet parts of the river ; but in summer, they lie in deep holes, 
nooks, and reaches, near some scour, and under roots of trees, hollow 
banks, and, till they are near rotting, amongst or near great beds of weed, 
flags, &c. 

Pond Carp cannot, with propriety, be said to have any haunts ; only it 
is to be noted, that they love a fat rich soil, and never thrive in a cold 
hungry water. 

They breed three or four times a-year ; but their first spa^vning time is 
the beginning of May. 

Baits for the Carp are all sorts of earth and dunghill worms, flag worms, 
gr.osshoppers, though not at top, oxbrains, the pith of an ox's backbone, 
green peas, and red or black cherries, with the stones taken out 

Fish with strong tackle, very near the bottom, and with a fine grass or 
gut next the hook ; and use a goose quill float. Never attempt to angle 
for the Carp in a boat ; for they will not come near it. 

It is said there are many Carp in the Thames, westward of London ; 
and that about February they retire to the creeks in that river ; in some 
of which, many above two feet long have been taken with an angle. — 
Angler's Sure Guide, p. 179. 

Carp live the longest out of the Avater of any fish. It is a common prac- 
tice in Holland to keep them alive for three weeks or a month, by hanging 
them in a cool place, with wet moss, in a net, and feeding them with bread 
and milk. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 149 

three small bundles, and put them to your Carp, with four or 
five whole onions, twenty pickled oysters, and three anchovies. 
Then pour upon your Carp as much claret wine as will only 
cover him ; and season your claret well with salt, cloves, and 
mace, and the rinds of oranges and lemons. That done, cover 
your pot and set it on a quick fire, till it be sufficiently boiled. 
Then take out the Carp, and lay it, with the broth, into the 
dish, and pour upon it a quarter of a pound of the best fresh 
butter, melted, and beaten with half a dozen spoonfuls of the 
broth, the yolks of two or three eggs, and some of the herbs 
shred : garnish your dish with lemons, and so serve it up. 
And much good do you.* Dr T. 



CHAPTER X. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE BREAM, AND DIRECTIONS TO CATCH 
HIM. 




The Bream — Cyprinus Brama — Lin^^^us. 

Piscator. The Bream, being at a full growth, is a large and 
stately fish. He will breed both in rivers and ponds ; but loves 
best to live in ponds, and where, if he likes the water and air, 
he will grow not only to be very large, but as fat as a hog. He 
is by Gesner taken to be more pleasant, or sweet, than whole- 
some. This fish is long in growing, but breeds exceedingly in 

* Lamb directs Carps to be cut in pieces, and stewed with white wine or 
claret, seasoning them with salt, pepper, onions shred small, and capers, 
together with some crusts of bread. It is done enough when the sauca 
becomes thick.— J. R. 



150 THE COMPLETE ANGLER, 

a water that pleases him ; yea, in many ponds so fast, as to 
overstore them, and starve the other fish. 

He is very broad, with a forked tail, and his scales set in 
excellent order ; he hath large eyes, and a narrow sucking 
mouth; he hath two sets of teeth, and a lozenge-like bone — 
a bone to help his grinding.* The melter is observed to have 
two large melts, and the female two large bags of eggs, or 
spavra. 

Gesner reports, that in Poland a certain and a great number 
of large Breams were put into a pond, which in the next fol- 
lowing winter were frozen up into one entire ice, and not one 
drop of water remaining, nor one of these fish to be found, 
though they were diligently searched for ; and yet the next 
spring, when the ice was thawed, and the weather warm, and 
fresh water got into the pond, he affirms they all appeared 
again. This Gesner affirms ; and I quote my author, because 
it seems almost as incredible as the resurrection to an atheist : 
but it may \dn something in point of believing it, to him that 
considers the breeding or renovation of the Silk-worm, and of 
many insects. A)id that is considerable, which Sir Francis Bacon 
observes in liis History of Life and Death, fol. 20, that there 
be some herbs that die and spring every year, and some endure 
longer. 

But though some do not, yet the French esteem this fish 
highly; and to that end have this proverb, " He that hath 
Breams in his pond is able to bid his friend welcome." And it 
is noted, that the best part of a Bream is his belly and head.f 

Some say that Breams and Roaches will mix their eggs and 
melt together ; and so there is in many places a bastard breed 
of Breams, that never come to be either large or good, but very 
numerous. 

The baits good to catch this are many. First, paste made of 
brown bread and honey ; gentles, or the brood of wasps that be 
young, and then not unlike gentles, and should be hardened in 
an oven, or dried on a tile before the fire to make them tough. 
Or, there is, at the root of docks, or flags, or rushes in watery 
places, a worm not unlike a maggot, at which Tench [Bream] 
will bite freely. Or he will bite at a grasshopper with his legs 
nipped off, in June and July ; or, at several flies, under water, 

* This must be a mistake ; for no fish grinds, or chews, his food, like land 
animals, but swallows it whole. — J. R. 

f The Bream, according to Sir William Dugdale, appears to have been 
considered a great luxury in England, for in the 7th of Henry V. it was 
valued at 20d. ; and he also states, that, in 1454., " A pie of four of them, in 
the expenses of two men employed for three days in taking them, in baking 
them, in flour, in spices, and conveying it from Sutton in Warwickshire, 
to the Earl of Warwick, at Mydlam in the North Country, cost xvjs. ijd." 
— Hist. Warw. p. 668. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 151 

which may be found on flags that grow near to the vrater side. 
I doubt not but that there may be many other baits that are 
good ; but I will turn them all into this most excellent one, 
either for a Carp or Bream, in any river or mere :* it was given 
to me by a most honest and excellent angler ; and hoping yoa 
wll prove both, I mil impart it to you. 

1 . Let your bait be as big a red worm as you can find, without 
a knot ; get a pint, or quart, of them in an evening in garden 
walks, or chalky commons, after a shower of rain ; f and put 
them, Avdth clean moss, well washed and picked, and the water 
squeezed out of the moss as dry as you can, into an earthen pot, 
pr pipkin, set dry ; and change the moss fresh every three or 
four days, for three weeks or a month together ; then your bait 
%vill be at the best, for it will be clear and lively. 

2. Having thus prepared your baits, get your tackling ready 
and fitted for this sport. Take three long angling rods ; and as 
many and more silk, or silk and hair lines ; and as many large 
swan or goose quill floats. Then take a piece of lead made after 
the manner of a carpenter's plummet, and fasten them to the low 
ends of your lines : then fasten your link-hook also to the lead, 
and let there be about a foot or ten inches between the lead and 
the hook : but be sure the lead be heavy enough to sink the 
float, or quill, a little under the water ; and not the quill to bear» 
up the lead, for the lead must lie on the giound. Note, that 
yoiu" link next the hook may be smaller than the rest of your 
line, if you dare adventure, for fear of taking the Pike or Perch, 
who wiU assuredly visit your hooks, till they be taken out, as I 
will shew you afterward, before either Carp or Bream will come 
near to bite. Note also, that when the worm is well baited, it 
will crawl up and dowm as far as the lead will give leave, which 
much enticeth the fish to bite without suspicion. 

3. Having thus prepared your baits, and fitted your tackling, 
repair to the river, where you have seen them to s\vim in skulls or 
shoals, in the summer time, in a hot afternoon, about three or 
four of the clock ; and watch their going forth of their deep holes, 
and returning, which you may well discern, for they return 
about four of the clock, most of them seeking food at the bottom, 
yet one or two will lie on the top of the water roUing and 
tumbling themselves, whilst the rest are under him at the bot- 
tom ; and so you shall perceive him to keep sentinel ; then mark 
where he plays most and stays longest, which commonly is in 
the broadest and deepest place of the river ; and there, or near 

» Mere is old English for a lake, and is still retained for several of our 
lakes, as Buttermere, Grassmere, — J. R. 

t As the knot is the sexual swelling of the worm, and as worms do not 
Appear at nierht except for purveying, I think Walton's directions imprac> 
ticable. —JR. 



]52 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

thereabouts, at a clear bottom and a convenient landing place, 
take one of your angles, ready fitted, as aforesaid, and sound the 
bottom, which should be about eight or ten feet deep — two 
yards from the bank is the best. Then consider with yourself, 
whether that water will rise or fall by the next morning, by reason 
of any watermills near ; and, according to your discretion, take 
the depth of the place, where you mean after to cast your 
ground-bait, and to fish to half an inch ; that the lead lying on 
or near the ground-bait, the top of the float may only appear 
upright half an inch above the water. 

Thus you having found and fitted for the place and depth 
thereof, then go home and prepare your ground-bait, which is, 
next to the fruit of your labours, to be regarded. 

THE GROUND-BAIT. 

You shall take a peck, or a peck and a half — according to the 
greatness of the stream and deepness of the water, where you 
mean to angle — of sweet gross ground barley malt, and boil it in 
a kettle, (one or two warms is enough ;) then strain it through 
a bag into a tub — the liquor whereof hath often done my horse 
much good — and when the bag and malt is near cold, take it 
down to the water side, about eight or nine of the clock in the 
evening, and not before, cast in two parts of your ground-bait, 
squeezed hard between both your hands ; it will sink presently 
to the bottom ; and be sure it may rest in the very place where 
you mean to angle : if the stream run hard, or move a little, 
cast your malt in handfuls a little higher, upwards the stream. 
You may, between your hands, close the malt so fast in hand- 
fuls, that the water will hardly part it with the fall. 

Your ground thus baited, and tackling fitted, leave your bag, 
with the rest of your tackling and ground-bait, near the sport- 
ing place all night ; and in the morning, about three or four of 
the clock, visit the water side, but not too near, for they have 
a cunning watchman, and are watchful themselves too. 

Then gently take one of your three rods, and bait your hook, 
casting it over your ground-bait, and gently and secretly draw 
it to you till the lead rests about the middle of the ground-bait. 

Then take a second rod, and cast in about a yard above, and your 
third a yard below the first rod ; and stay the rods in the ground : 
but go yourself so far from the water side, that you perceive 
nothing but the top of the floats, which you must watch most 
diligently. Then when you have a bite, you shall perceive the 
top of the float to sink suddenly into the water ; yet, neverthe- 
less, be not too hasty to run to your rods, until you see that the 
line goes clear away, then creep to the water side, and give as 
much line as possibly you can : if it be a good Carp or Bream,* 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. ]53 

they %\'ill go to the farther side of the river : then strike gently, 
and hold your rod at a bent, a little while ; but if you both pull 
together, you are sure to lose your game, for either your line, or 
hook, or hold, wiU break ; and after you have overcome them, 
they viill make noble sport, and are very shy to be landed. The 
Carp is far stronger and more mettlesome than the Bream. 

Much more is to be observed in this kind of fish and fishing, 
but it is far fitter for experience and discourse than paper. Only, 
thus much is necessary for you to know, and to be mindful and 
careful of, that if the Pike or Perch do breed in that river, they 
will be sure to bite first, and must first be taken. And for ths 
most part they are very large, and will repair to your ground- 
bait, not that they wall eat of it, but will feed and sport them- 
selves amongst the young fry that gather about and hover over 
the bait. 

The way to discern the Pike and take him, if you mistrust 
your Bream hook — for I have taken a Pike a yard long several 
times at my Bream hooks, and sometimes he hath had the luck 
to share my line — may be thus : 

Take a small Bleak, or Roach, or Gudgeon, and bait [with] it : 
and set it, alive, among your rods, two feet deep from the cork, 
■with a little red worm on the point of the hook : then take a 
few crumbs of white bread, or some of the ground-bait, and 
sprinkle it gently amongst your rods. If Mr Pike be there, 
then the little fish will skip out of the water at his appearance, 
but the live set bait is sure to be taken. 

Thus continue your sport from four in the morning till eight, 
and if it be a gloomy windy day, they will bite all day long : 
but this is too long to stand to your rods at one place ; and it 
will spoil your evening sport that day, which is this : 

About four of the clock in the afternoon, repair to your baited 
place ; and as soon as you come to the water side, cast in one 
half of the rest of your ground bait, and stand off; then, whilst 
the fish are gathering together, (for there they will most certainly 
come for their supper,) you may take a pipe of tobacco ; and 
then, in with your three rods, as in the morning. You will 
find excellent sport that evening, till eight of the clock : then 
cast in the residue of your ground-bait, and next morning, by 
four of the clock, visit them again for four hours, which is the 
best sport of all ; and after that, let them rest till you and your 
friends have a mind to more sport. 

From St James's-tide until Bartholomew's-tide* is the best ; 
when they have had all the summer's food, they are the fattest. 

Observe, lastly, that after three or four days fishing together, 

» St James's tide is the 25th of July j St Bartholomew's tide is the 24th 
of August. — J. R, 



154 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

your game will be very shy and waiy, and you shall hardly get 
above a bite or two at a baiting : then your only way is to 
desist from your sport about two or three days ; and, in the 
meantime, (on the place you late baited, and again intend to 
bait,) you shall take a turf of green, but short grass, as big or 
bigger than a round trencher ; to the top of this turf, on the 
green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten, 
one by one, as many little red worms as will near cover all the 
turf : then take a round board or trencher, make a hole in the 
middle thereof, and through the turf, placed on the board or 
trencher, wnth a string or cord as long as is fitting, tied to a 
pole, let it down to the bottom of the water, for the fish to feed 
upon without disturbance about two or three days ; and after 
that you hare drawn it away, you may fall to, and enjoy your 
former recreation.* — B. A. 



CHAPTER XL 

OSSERVATIONS OF THE TENCH, AND ADVICE HOW TO ANGLE 
FOR HIM. 




The Tench — Cyprinus Tinea. — Linn^us. 

Piscator. The Tench, the physician of fishes, is observed to 
love ponds better than rivers, and to love pits better than 

* The haunts of the Bream, a fish which the ano^lcr seldom meets with, 
are the deepest and broadest parts of gentle soft streams, with sandy, 
clayey bottoms ; and the broadest and most quiet places of ponds, and 
where there are weeds. 

They spawn about the beginniner of July; a little before which time they 
are best in season, though some think them best in September. 

The baits for the Bream are red- worms, small lob or marsh-wonrfS, 
gentles, and grasshoppers. 

In general, they are to be fished for as Carp. 



.THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 155 

either : yet Camden observes, there is a river in Dorsetshire 
that abounds with Tenches, but doubtless they retire to the 
most deep and quiet places in it. 

This fish hath very large fins, very small and smooth scales, 
a red circle about his eyes, which are big and of a gold colour, 
and from either angle of his mouth there hangs do\ATi a little 
barb. In every Tench's head there are two little stones which 
foreign physicians make great use of, but he is not commended 
for wholesome meat, though there be very much use made of 
them for outward applications. Rondeletius says, that at hig 
being at Rome, he saw a great cure done by applying a Tench 
to the feet of a very sick man. This, he says, was done after 
an unusual manner, by certain Jews. And it is observed that 
many of those people have many secrets yet unkno%ATi to 
Christians ; secrets that have never yet been ^ATitten, but have 
been, since the days of their Solomon, who knew the nature 
of all things, even from the cedar to the shrub, delivered by 
tradition, from the father to the son, and so from generation 
to generation, ^\dthout Avriting ; or, unless it were casually, 
without the least communicating them to any other nation or 
tribe ; for to do that they account a profanation. And, yet, it 
is thought that they, or some spirit worse than they, first told 
us that lice swallowed alive were a certain cure for the yellow 
jaundice. This, and many other medicines, were discovered by 
them, or by revelation; for, doubtless, we attained them not by 
study.* 

Well, this fish, besides his eating, is very useful, both dead 
and alive, for the good of mankind. But I will meddle no 
more ^vith that — my honest humble art teaches no such bold- 
ness : there are too many foolish meddlers in physic and 
divinity that think themselves fit to meddle with hidden secrets, 
and so bring destruction to their followers. But I'll not 
meddle -with them any farther than to \vdsh them ^^'ise^ ; and 
shall tell you next, (for I hope I may be so bold,) that the 
Tench is the physician of fishes, for the Pike especially ; and 
that the Pike being either sick or hurt, is cured by the touch of 
the Tench. t And it is observed that the tyrant Pike will not 
be a wolf to his physician, but forbears to devour him, though 
he be never so hungry. 

This fish, that carries a natural balsam in him to cure 
both himself and others, loves yet to feed in very foul water, 
and amongst weeds. And yet, I am sure, he eats pleasantly, 
and, doubtless, you vnW think so too, if you taste him. And 
I shall therefore proceed to give you some few, and but a few, 

t This must be quite a fancy. — J. R. 



156 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

directions how to catch this fish, of which I have given yon 
these observations. 

He will bite at a paste made of brown bread and honey, or at 
a Marsh- worm or a Lob- worm ; he inclines very much to any 
paste with which tar is mixed, and he will bite also at a smaller 
worm, with his head nipped off, and a Cod- worm put on the 
hook before that worm. And I doubt not but that he will 
also, in the three hot months, (for in the nine colder he stirs 
not much,) bite at a Flag- worm, or at a green Gentle ; but can 
positively say no more of the Tench,* he being a fish that I 
have not often angled for ; but I wish my honest scholar may, 
and be ever fortunate, when he fishes. 



CHAPTER Xn. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE PERCH, AND DIRECTIONS HOW TO 
FISH FOR HIM. 




Piscator. The Perch is a very good, and a very bold biting 
fish. He is one of the fishes of prey that, like the Pike and 

* The haunts of the Tench are nearly the same with those of the Carp. 
They delight more in ponds than in rivers, and lie under weeds, near 
sluices, and at pond heads. 

They spawn about tlie beginning of July, and are best in season from 
the beginning of September to the end of May. They will bite all the hot 
months, but are taken best in April and May. * 

There are no better baits for this fi^h than a middle sized lob-worm, or 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 157 

Trout, carries his teeth in his mouth, which is very large : and 
he dare venture to kill and devour several other lands of fish. 
He has a hooked, or hog back, which is armed vrith sharp and 
stiff bristles, and all his skin armed or covered over with thick 
dry hard scales, and hath, which few other fish have, two 
fins on his back. He is so bold that he will invade one of his 
Gvm kind, which the Pike \vi\\ not do so willingly ; * and you 
may therefore easily believe him to be a bold biter. 

'"' The Perch is of great esteem in Italy," saith Aldrovandua : 
" and especially the least are there esteemed a dainty dish." 
And Gesner prefers the Perch and Pike above the Trout, or 
any fresh water fish : he says the Germans have this proverb, 
" More wholesome than a Perch of Rhine :" and he says the 
river Perch is so wholesome that physicians allow him to be 
eaten by wounded men, or by men in fevers, or by women in 
childbed. 

He spawns but once a-year ; and is, by physicians, held very 
nutritive ; yet, by many, to be hard of digestion. " They 
abound more in the river Po, and in England," says Rondele- 
tius, " than other parts; and have in their brain a stone, which 
is, in foreign parts, sold by apothecaries, being there noted to 
be very medicinable against the stone in the reins, f These 
be a part of the commendations which some philosophical brains 
have bestowed upon the fresh water Perch : yet they commend 
the sea Perch, which is kno\vn by having but one fin on his 
back, (of wliich they say we English see but a few,) to be a 
much better fish. 

The Perch grows slowly, yet -will grow, as I have been 
credibly informed, to be almost two feet long ; for an honest 
informer told me, such a one was not long since taken by Sir 
Abraham Williams, a gentleman of worth, and a brother of 
the angle, that yet lives, and I A^-ish he may : this was a deep- 
bodied fish, and doubtless durst have devoured a Pike of half 
his o\\m length. For I have told you, he is a bold fish ; such 
a one as, but for extreme hunger, the Pike ■v^'ill not devour. 
For to affright the Pike, and save himself, the Perch vnU set 

red-worm, well scoured, a g-entle, a young wasp grub boiled, or a green- 
worm shook from the boughs of trees. 

Use a strong grass, or gut, and a goose-quill float without a cork, except 
in rivers, where tie cork is always to be preferred. 

Fish very near the ground. And if you bait with gentles, throw in a 
few at the taking every fish, which will draw them to your liook, and keep 
them together. 

* This 1 think is extremely doubtful ; for all voracious fishes, like the 
Pike, seem to make no distinction between their own species and others, 
devouring all alike. — J. R. 

f This fancy must have originated in resemblances, by which the yellow 
hark of barberry was prescribed for jaundice, and the roots of the little 
ct'landiue for piles. — J. K. 



158 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

up his fins, much like as a turkey cock will sometimes set up 
his tdl. 

But, my scholar, the Perch is not only valiant to defend 
himself, but he is, as I said, a bold biting fish : yet he will not 
bite at all seasons of the year ; he is very abstemious in winter^ 
yet will bite then in the midst of the day, if it be warm : and 
note, that all fish bite best about the midst of a warm day in 
winter. And he hath been observed, by some, not usually to 
bite till the mulberry tree buds ; that is to say, tiU extreme 
frosts be past the spring ; for, when the mulberry tree blossoms, 
many gardeners observe their forward fruit to be past the 
danger of frosts ; and some have made the like observations of 
the Perch's biting. 

But bite the Perch mil, and that very boldly. And, as one 
has wttily observed, if there be twenty or forty in a hole, they 
may be, at one standing, all catched one after another ; they 
being, as he says, like the wicked of the Avorld, not afraid, 
though their fellows and companions perish in their sight. And 
you may observe, that they are not like the soHtary Pike, but 
love to accompany one another, and march together in troops. 

And the baits for this bold fish are not many : I mean, he wiil 
bite as well at some, or at any of these three, as at any or all 
others whatsoever, — a worm, a minnow, or a little frog, (of 
which you may find many in hay time.) And of worms, the 
dunghill worm called a brandling I take to be best, being well 
scoured in moss and fennel ; or he will bite at a worm that lies 
under cow dung, with a bluish head. And if you rove for a 
Perch v\dth a minnow, then it is best to be alive, you sticking 
your hook through Ifis back fin ; or a minnow with the hook 
in his upper lip, and letting him swdm up and down, about mid- 
water, or a little lower, and you still keeping him to about that 
depth by a cork, which ought not to be a very little one. And 
the like way you are to fish for the Perch with a small frog, 
your hook being fastened through the skin of his leg, towards 
the upper part of it : and lastly, I will give you but this advice, 
that }-ou give the Perch time enough when he bites ; for there 
was scarce ever any angler that has given him too much.* And 

* Although Perch, like Trout, delight in clear swift rivers, with pebbly, 
gravelly bottoms, they are often found in sandy, clayey soils : they love a 
moderately deep water, and frequent holes by the sides of or near little 
streams, and the hollows under banks. 

The Perch spawns about the beginning of March : the best time of the 
year to angle for him is from the beginning of Mav till the end of June, 
yet you may continue to fish for him till the end of "September ; he is best 
taken in cloudy windy weather, and, as some say, from seven to ten in the 
forenoon, and from two to seven in the afternoon. 

Other baits for the Perch are loaches, miller's thumbs, sticklebacks, 
small lob and marsh and red-worms, well scoured; horse beans boiled, 
cad-bait, oak-worms, bobs, and gentles. 

JVIany.of these fish are are taken in the rivers about Oxford j and the 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



15^ 



now I think best to rest myself, for I have ahnost spent my 
spirits -svith talking so long. 

Venator. Nay, good master, one fish more! for you see it 
rains still ; and you know our angles are like money put to 
usury, — they may thrive, though we sit still, and do nothing 
but talk and enjoy one another. Come, come, the other fish, 
good master ! 

Piscator. But, scholar, have you nothing to mix with this 
discourse, which now grows most tedious and tiresome ? Shall 
I have nothing from you, that seem to have both a good memory 
and a cheerful spirit ? 

Venator. Yes, master ! I uill speak you a copy of verses that 
were made by Doctor Donne, and made to shew the world 
that he could make soft and smooth verses, when he thought 
smoothness worth his labour; and I love them the better,, 
because they allude to rivers, and fish, and fishing. They be 
these : — 

Come, live with me, and be my love, 
And we will some new pleasures prove. 
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, 
With silken lines, and silver hooks. 

There will the river whispering run, 
Warm'd by thy eyes more than the sun ; 
And there the enamell'd fij-h will stay. 
Begging themselves they may betray. 

"V^Tien thou wilt swim in that live bath, 
Each fish, which every channel hath. 
Most amorously to thee will swim. 
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him. 

If thou to be so seen beest loth, 
By sun or moon, thou darkenest both ; 
And if mine eyes have leave to see, 
I need not their light, having thee. 

author of the " Angler's Sure Guide " says, he once saw tlie figure of a 
Perch, drawn with a pencil on tho door of a house near that city, wliich 
was twenty-nine inches long^ ; and was informed it was the true dimen- 
sions of a livin^if Perch. — A)tgler's Sure Guide, p. 155. 

The larg-est Perch are taken with a minnow, hooked with a pood hold 
through the back fin, or rather through the upper lip; for the Perch, by 
reason of the figure of his mouth, cannot take the bait crosswise, as the 
Pike will. When you fish thus, use a large cork float, and lead your line 
about nine inches from the bottom, otherwise the minnow will come to the 
top of the w^ater ; but in the ordinary way of fishing, let your bait hang 
within about six inches from the ground. 



160 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Let others freeze with angling reeds, 
And cut their legs with shells and weeds, 
Or treacherously poor fish beset 
With strangling snare or windovvy net ; 

Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest, 
The bedded fish in banks outwrest ; 
Let curious traitors sleave silk flies, 
To 'witch poor wandering fishes' eyes : 

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, 
For thou thyself art thine own bait : 
That fish that is not catch'd thereby 
Is wiser far, alas, than I. 

PiscatoT. Well remembered, honest scholar. I thank you 
for these choice verses, which I have heard formerly, but had 
quite forgot, till they were recovered by your happy memory. 
Well, being I have now rested myself a little, I will make you 
some requital, by telling you some observations of the Eel, for 
it rains still ; and because, as you say, our angles* are as money 
put to use, that thrives when we play, therefore we '11 sit still, 
and enjoy ourselves a little longer under this honeysuckle 
hedge. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE EEL, AND OTHER FISH THAT WANT 
SCALES, AND HOW TO FISH FOR THEM. 




Eel — Anguilla vulgaris. — Linnmvs, 

Piscator. It is agreed by most men, that the Eel is a most 
dainty fish : the Romans have esteemed her the Helena of their 
feasts, and some the queen of palate pleasure. But most men 

* " Angles" literally mean hooks, but here the word seems to imply th« 
whole fishing tackle J. R, 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 161 

differ about their breeding: some say they breed by generation, 
as other fish do ; and others, that they breed, as some worms 
do, of mud; as rats and mir-e, and many other living creatures, 
are bred in Egypt, by the sun's heat, when it shines upon the 
overflo^ving of the river Nilus ; or out of the putrefaction of the 
earth, and diveis other ways.* Those that deny them to breed 
by generation, as other fish do, ask, If any man ever saw an 
Eel to have a spawn or melt ? And they are answered, that 
they may be as certain of their breeding as if they had seen them 
spaA\Ti ; for they say, that they are certain that Eels have all 
parts fit for generation, Hke other fish,f but so small as not to be 
easily discerned, by reason of their fatness ; but that discerned 
they may be ; and that the he and the she Eel may be distin- 
guished by their fins. And Rondeletius says, he has seen Eels 
cling together like dew- worms. 

And others say that Eels, growing old, breed other Eels out 
of the corruption of their own age, which, Sir Francis Bacon 
says, exceeds not ten years. And others say, that as pearls 
are made of glutinous dew-drops, which are condensed by the 
sun's heat in those countries, so Eels are bred of a particular 
dew, falling in the months of May or June on the banks of some 
particular ponds or rivers, apted by nature for that end, which 
in a few days are, by the sun's heat, turned into Eels ; and 
some of the ancients have called the Eels that are thus bred the 
oflfspring of Jove. I have seen, in the beginning of July, in a 
river not far f'"om Canterbury, some parts of it covered over 
wiih young Eels, about the thickness of a straw, and these Eels 
did lie on the top of that water, as thick as motes are said to be 
in the sun ; and 1 have heard the like of other rivers, as namely, 
in Severn, where they are called Yelvers ; and in a pond, or 
mere, near unto Staifordshire, where, about a set time in 
summer, such small Eels abound so much, that many of the 
poorer sort of people that inhabit near to it, take such Eels out 
of this mere with sieves or sheets, and make a kind of Eel-cake 
of them, and eat it like as bread. And Gesner quotes venerable 
Bede, to say, that in England there is an island called Ely, by 
reason of the innumerable number of Eels that breed in it. 
But that Eels may be bred as some worms, and some kind of 
bees and wasps are, either of dew, or out of the corruption of 
the earth, seems to be made probable by the barnacles and 
young goslings bred by the sun's heat and the rotten planks of 
an old ship, and hatched of trees ; both which are related for 



♦ This absurdity appears to have been implicitly believed by Walton. 
— J. R. 

+ That fishes are furnished with parts fit for generation cannot be 
doubted, since it is a common practice to castrate them. .See the method 
of doing- it in Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlviii. part ii. for the year 
17&4. page 870. 

L 



162 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

truths by Du Bartas and Lobel, and also by our learned Cam- 
den, and laborious Gerard, in liis Herbal.* 

It is said by Rondeletius, that those Eels that are bred in 
rivers that relate to, or be nearer to the sea, never return to tha 
fresh water, (as the Salmon does always desire to do,) when 
they have once tasted the salt water ; and I do the more easily 
believe this, because I am certain that powdered beef is a most 
excellent bait to catch an Eel. And though Sir Francis Bacon 
will allow the Eel's life to be but ten years, yet he, in his 
Tlistoiy of Life and Death, mentions a Lamprey, belonging to 
the Roman emperor, to be made tame, and so kept for almost 
threescore years ; and that such useful and pleasant observations 
were made of this Lamprey, that Crassus the orator, who kept 
her, lamented her death. And we read in Dr Hakewill, that 
Hortensius was seen to weep at the death of a Lamprey that he 
had kept long, and loved exceedingly, f 

It is granted by all, or most men, that Eels, for about six 
months — that is to say, the six cold months of the year — stir 
not up and down, neither in the rivers, nor in the pools in which 
they usually are, but get into the soft earth, or mud ; and there 
many of them together bed themselves, and live without feeding 
upon any thing, as I have told you some swallows have been 
observed to do in hollow trees, for those cold six months. J 

* All thh, thoug-h.-jccordingto thcbpliof ofthatac-p.isutterlyimpossible 
and absurd. The controversy, howevvr, about the breeding- of the Eel 
seems scarcely vet settled, Sir E. Home maintaining that they are herma- 
I)hrod;te, like tlie eRrth-worm; and M. Bony, that they are like serpents, 
male arid female. — J. R. 

f The author has previously cited from Pliny r.n instance of the 
fondness of Antonia, a woman, for a tame Lamprey, which the tenderness 
of her sex might perhaps excuse; but the sagacity find docility of these 
creatures seem l-ss wonderful than the weakness of such men ajs Crassus 
and Hortensius, in becoming mourners for the death of an Eel. 

The former of these two persons was, for this his pusillanimity, reproached 
in the senate of Rome by Domitius, in these words: " Foolish Crassus! 
you wept for your Murena," [or Lamprey.] " That is more," retorted 
Crassus, " than you did for your two wives. "—Lord Bacon's Apophthegms. 

t It is now well ascertained that swallows do not, and cannot, live under 
water amon"-st mTid ; and though Eels could so live, they prefer wintering 
in the sea. This is so well known in famous Eel rivers, such as the Ban, 
wMch flov^'s out of Loch Neagh into the sea, near Coleraine, that there is 
a highly lucrative fishery established to take the Eels in their autumnal 
run to the sea. There they breed, and the young Eels come up the river 
from the sea early in summer. 

I once myself witnessed this return of the young Eel?, on the 13th of 
May. The river Clyde was embro%i'ned at the time in consequence of 
a recent fall of rain, which may have partly induced them to continue 
running after sunrise. Their line of march, if I may cr.ll it so, was about 
afoot or more from the edge of the bank, with which they kept nearly 
parallel, and their column might be about six inches broad. The Eels 
themselves were all of one size, about as thick as a crow quill, and sbout 
three inches long. They kept so closely together, that there might be, I 
should suppose, some hundreds in a foot's length of the column. What 
was no less singular, the column itself appeared, in ita whole extent, to be 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 163 

And this the Eel and Swallow do, as not being ahle to endure 
winter weather; for Gesner quotes Albertus to say, " That in 
the year 1125, (that year's winter being more cold than usually,) 
Eels did, by nature's instinct, get out of the water into a stack 
of hay in a meadow upon dry ground,* and there bedded them- 
selves ; but yet, at last, a frost killed them." And our 
Camden relates, that, in Lancashire, lishes were digged out of 
the earth Mith spades, where no water was near to the place. f 
I shall say little more of the Etl, but that, as it is observed he 
is impatient of cold, so it hath been observed that, in warm 
weather, an Eel has been knovai to live live days out of the 
water. 

And lastly, let me tell you, that some curious searchers into 
the natures of fish observe, that there be several sorts, or kinds 
of Eels ; as the silver Eel, and green, or greenish Eel, A^th 
which the river of Thames abounds, and those are called Grigs ; 
and a blackish Eel, whose head is more flat and bigger than 
ordinary Eels ; and also an Eel whose fins are reddish, and but 
seldom taken in this nation, and yet taken sometimes. These 
several kinds of Eels are, say sdrie, diversely bred : as, namely, 
out of the corruption of the earth, and some by dew, and other 
wavs, as I have said to you : and yet it is affirmed by some for 
a certain, that the silver Eel is bred by generation, but not by 
spawTiing, as other fish do ; but that her brood come alive from 
her, being then little live Eels, no bigger nor longer than a pin ; 
and I have had too many testiaionies of this, to doubt the truth 
of it myself ; and if I thought it needful, I might prove it, but 
I tliink it is needless. 

And this Eel, of v^'hich I have said so much to you, may be 
caught ^nth divers kinds of baits : as, namely, with powdered 
beef; with a lob or garden Avorm ; v.ith a minnow ; or gxit of 
a hen, chicken, or the guts of any fish ; or with almost any 
thing, for he is a greedy fish. J But the Eel may be caught, 

of unifonn breadth, as if it had bpen regulated by the parallel lines of a 
mathematician. The length of this column I had no means of ascertairJng, 
but it must have been considerable, ;is I tracovi it for more than half a niile ; 
and during- several hours which I obse'vo'? it, the run continued undirni- 
nished, and proceeded at a velocity, as ntirly as I could estimate bv the 
eye, of half a mile or more in the hour. Ihe whole column must liave 
consisted of countless millions of Eels. — J. R. 

« l)r Plot, in his Histoid; of Sti/Jford.r.'nre, pF.g!> 242, mentions certiiin 
waters, and a pool, that were stocked by E-ls that had from waters tliey 
likpd not travelled " in arido," or over dry land, to these other. 

f Camden's relntionis to this eftect, v^z. " That, at a place called Sefton, 
in the above county, upon turning up the turf, meu fiud ;» black dea(li>h 
water with small fishes therein." Britannia, Lancfukire. Fuller, who alao 
reports this strange fact, humorously says, " That the men of this place 
i'o a-tishing with spades and mattocks ; adding, that fi.-hcs are thus found 
hi the country about Heraclea and Tius, in Vonlws.'" —Vi'orthiet, in Lavuxu 
shire, 107. 

X To this truth I myself can bear witness. When I dwelt at Tvvirkcn- 
haxn, a large canal adjoined to my house, which I stocked with fiilu 1 had 



164 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

especially, with a little, a very little Lamprey, which some call 
a Pride, and may, in the hot months, be found many of them in 
the river Thames, and in many mud heaps in other rivers ; yea, 
almost as usually as one finds worms in a dunghill. 

Next note, that the Eel seldom stirs in the day, but then 
hides himself ; and, therefore, he is usually caught by night, 
with one of these baits of which I have spoken ; and may be 
then caught by laying hooks, which you are to fasten to the bank, 
or twigs of a tree ; or by throwing a string across the stream, 
with many hooks at it, and those baited Avith the aforesaid baits ; 
and a clod, or plummet, or stone, thrown into the river vvdth 
this line, that so you may in the morning find it near to some 
fixed place ; and then take it up with a drag-hook, or otherwise.* 
But these things are, indeed, too common to be spoken of; and 
an hour's fishing with any angler will teach you better, both for 
these and many other common things in the practical part of 
angling, than a week's discourse. I shall therefore conclude 
this direction for taking the Eel, by telling you, that in a warm 
day in summer I have taken many a good Eel by snigling, and 
have been much pleased with that sport. 

And because you, that are but a young angler, know not 
what snigling is, I will now teach it to you. You remember, 
1 told you, that Eels do not usually stir in the day time ; for 
then they hide themselves under some covert ; or under boards, 
or planks, about floodgates, or weirs, or mills ; or in holes on 
the river banks : so that you, observing your time in a warm 
day, when the water is lowest, may take a strong small hook, 
tied to a strong line, or to a string about a yard long ; and then 
into one of these holes, or between any boards about a mill, or 
imder any great stone, or plank, or any place where you think 
an Eel may hide, or shelter herself, you may, mth the help of 
a short stick, put in your bait, but leisurely, and as far as you 
may conveniently ; and it is scarce to be doubted, but if there' 
be an Eel within the sight of it, the Eel wall bite instantly, and 
as certainly gorge it ; and you need not doubt to have him if 
you pull him not out of the hole too quickly, but pull him out 
by degrees ; for he, lying folded double in his hole, will, with 
the help of his tail, break all, unless you give him time to be 

from time to time broods of ducks, which, with their young- ones, took to 
the water. One dry summer, when the canal was very low, we missed 
msiny young ducks, but could not find out how they went. Resolring to 
take advantage of the lowness of the water to clean the canal, a work 
^vhich had not been done for thirty years before, I drained and emptied it, 
and found in the mud a great number of large Eels. Some of them I 
reserved for the use of my family ; which being opened by the cook sur- 
prised us all ; for in the stomachs of several of them were found, 
undigested, the necks and heads of young ducks, which, doubtless, were 
those of the ducks we had missed. 

« This method will succeed with Trout and other fish besides Eels^; bilt 
the genuine angler will not hold this to be good sport. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER- 165 

wearied with pulling ; and so get him out by degrees, not 
pulHng too hard. 

And to commute for your patient hearing this long direction, 
I shall next tell you how to make this Eel a most excellent dish 
of meat. 

First, wash him in water and salt ; then pull off his skin 
below his vent, or navel, and not much farther : having done 
that, take out his guts as clean as you can, but wash him not ; 
then give him three or four scotches wth a knife ; and then 
put into his belly and those scotches sweet herbs, an anchovy, 
and a little nutmeg, grated or cut very small ; and your herbs 
and anchovies must also be cut very small, and mixed \\'ith 
good butter and salt : having done this, then pull his skin over 
him, all but his head, which you are to cut off, to the end you 
may tie his skin about that part where his head grew, and it 
must be so tied as to keep all his moisture \\'ithin his skin : and 
ha\dng done this, tie him Math tape, or packthread, to a spit, 
and roast him leisurely ; and baste him vdih water and salt till 
his skin breaks, and then ^^•ith butter ; and having roasted him 
enough, let what was put into his belly, and what he diips, be 
his sauce.* S. F. 

Wlien I go to dress an Eel thus, I ^^^sh he were as long and 
big as that which was caught in Peterborough river, in the 
year 1667, which was a yard and three quarters long. If you 
will not believe me, then go and see at one of the coffeehouses 
in King Street, in Westminster. 

But now let me tell you, that though the Eel, thus dressed, 
be not only excellent good, but more harmless than any other 
way, yet it is certain that physicians account the Eel dangerous 
meat ; I will advdse you, therefore, as Solomon says of honey, 
Prov. XXV. " Hast thou found it, eat no more than is sufficient, 
lest thou surfeit ; for it is not good to eat much honey." And 
let me add this, that the uncharitable Italian bids us " give Eels, 
and no ^^"ine to our enemies." 

And I ^^ill beg a little more of your attention, to tell you, 
that Aldrovandus, and divers physicians, commend the Eel very 
much for medicine, though not for meat. But let me tell you 
one observation, that the Eel is never out of season, as Trouts, 
and most other fish are at set times ; at least, most Eels are 
not.f 

* In the north of Ireland, they roast Eels as the English cottager roast? 
his mutton, by hanging it to a stout well-twisted worsted thread, so as to 
turn before the fire. — J. R. 

t The haunts of the Eel are, weeds, under roots, stumps of trees, holes, 
and clefts of the earth, both in the banks and at the bottom, and in the 
plain mud, where they lie with only their heads out, watching for prey. 
They are also found "under great stones, old timber, about flood-gates, 
weirs, bridges, and old mills. They delight in still waters, and in those 



166 THE COxMPLETE ANGLER. 

I might here speak of many other fish, whose shape and 
nature are much like the Eel, and frequent both the sea and 

that are foul and muddy ; though the smaller Eels are to be met with in all 
sorts of rivers and soils. 

Although the manner in which Eels, and indeed all fish, are generated, 
is sufficiently settled, as appears by the foregoing notes, tlere yet remains 
a question undecided by naturalists ; and that is, Whether the Eel be an 
oviparous or a vivipa7-ous fish ? Walton inclines to the later opininn. 
The following relation from Bowlker may go near to detennine the ques- 
tion : — 

"Being acquainted with an elderly woman, who had been wife to a 
miller near fifty years, and much employed in dressing of Pels, I a-ked her 
if she had ever found any spawn or eggs in those Eels she opened? 
She said she had never observed any ; but that she had sometimes found 
living Eels in them, about the bigness of a small needle ; and particularly, 
that she once took out ten or twelve, and put them upon the table, and 
found them to be alive, which was confirmed to me by the rest of the 
family. The time of the year when this happened was, as tbey informed 
me, about a fortnight or three weeks after Michaelmas ; Avhich makes me 
of opinion that they go down to the sea, or salt water, to prepare them- 
selves for the work of propagating and producing their young. To this I 
must add another observation of the same nature, that was made by a 
gentleman of fortune, not far from Ludlow, and in the commission of the 
peace for the county of Salop ; who g'oing to visit a gentleman, his friend, 
was shewn a very fine large Eel that was going to be dressed, about whose 
sides and belly he observed a parcel of little creeping things, which at first 
made him suspect it had been kept too long; but, upon nearer inspection, 
they were found to be perfect little Eils, or Elvers: upon this, it was 
immediately opened in the sight of several other gentlemen, and in the belly 
of it they found a lump about as big as a nutmeg, consisting of an infinite 
number of those little creatures, closely wrapt up together, which, being 
put into a ba>in of water, soon separated, and swam about the basin. 
This he has often told to several gentlemen of credit in his neighbourhood, 
from some of whom I first received this account : but 1 have lately had the 
satisfaction of having it from his own mouth ; and therefore I think this 
may serve to put the matter out of all doubt, and may be sufficient to prove 
that Eels are of the viviparous kind." 

Taking it for granted, then, that Eels do not spawn, all we have to s.ny 
in this place is, tiiat though, as our author tells us, they are never out of 
season, yet as some say, they are best in winter, and worst in May. And 
it is to be noted of Eels, that the longer they live, the better they are. — 
Angler's Sure Guide, p. 164. 

Of baits for the Eel, the best are lob- worms, loach. Minnows, small Pope, 
or Perch, with the fins cutoff; pieces of any fish, especially Bleak, as being 
very lucid ; with which I have taken very large ones. 

As the angling for Eels is no very pleasant amusement, and is always 
attended with great trouble and the risk of tackle ; many, while they 
angle for other fish, lay lines for the Eel, which they tie to weeds, flags, 
&c. with marks to find them by. Or, you may take a long packthread line, 
with a leaden weight at the end, and hooks looped on at a yard distance 
from each other : fasten one end to the flags, or on the shore, and throw 
the lead out, and let the line lie some time. And in this way yon may 
probably take a Pike. 

The river Kennet in Berkshire, the Stour in Dorsetshire, Irk in Lanca- 
shire, and Ankham in Lincolnshire, are famed for producing excellent 
Eels ; the latter to so great a degree, as to give rise to the following pro- 
verbial rhyme : 



But it is said, there are no Eels superior in goodness to those taken in 
the head of the New River near Islington ; and I myself have seen Eels 
caught there with a rod and line, of a very large size. _ * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 167 

fresh rivers ; as, namely, the Lamprel, the Lamprey, and the 
Lamperne ; as also of the mighty Conger, taken often in 
Severn, about Gloucester : and might also tell in what high 
esteem many of them are for the curiosity of their taste. But 
these are not so proper to be talked of by me, because they 
make us anglers no sport ; therefore I will let them alone, as 
the Jews do, to whom they are forbidden by their law. 

And, scholar, there is also a Flounder, a sea-fish which will 
wander very far into fresh rivers, and there lose himself and 
dwell, and thrive to a hand's breadth, and almost tuice so long ; 
a fish without scales, and most excellent meat, and a fish tb^at 
alFords much sport to the angler, with any small worm, but 
especially a little bluish worm, gotten out of marsh ground or 
meadows, which should be well scoured.* But this, though it 
be most excellent meat, yet it wants scales, and is, as 1 told 
you, therefore an abomination to the Jews. 

But, scholar, there is a fish that they in Lancashire boast 
very much of, called a Char ; taken there, (and I think there 
only,t) in a mere called Winander JMere ; "a mere," says 
Camden, •' that is the largest in this nation, being ten miles in 
length, and, some say, as smooth in the bottom, as if it were 
paved with polished marble." 




This fish never exceeds fifteen or sixteen inches ia length, 
and is spotted like a Trout, and 1 as scarce a bone but on the 

* The taking Flounders with a rod and line is a thin? so accidental, that 
it is hardly worth the mention. The same may he said of Smelts, which, 
in the Thames, and other great rivers, are caught with a bit of any small 
fish, but chiefly of their own species. In the month of August, about the 
year 17:^0, such vast quantities of Smelts came up the 1 hames, that women, 
and even children, became anglers for them ; and, as I have been told by 
persons who well remember it, in one day, between Loudon Bridge anil 
Greenwich, not fewer than two thousand persons were thus employed. 

f This is not correct ; for the Char, of wliich there are two species, is 
found in several of our lakes. I have dined delicioutly on those caught iu 
Butterraere in Cumberland. — J. R. 



168 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

back. But this, tliougli I do not know whether it make the 
angler sport, yet I would have you take notice of it, because it 
is a rarity, and of so high esteem with persons of great note. 

Nor would I have you ignorant of a rare fish called a Guiniad, 
of which I shall tell you what Camden and others speak. The 
river Dee, which runs by Chester, springs in Merionethshire ; 
and, as it runs toward Chester, it runs through Pemble-Mere, 
which is a large water : and it is observed, that though the 
river Dee abounds with Salmon, and Pemble-Mere Vvdth the 
Guiniad, yet there is never any Salmon caught in the mere, nor 
a Guiniad in the river.* And now my next observation shall 
be of the Barbel. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OBSEP^VATIONS OF THE BARBEL, AND DIRECTIONS HOW TO 
FISH FOR HIM. 




Barbel. — , Cyprhius Barhus. — Linnaeus. 

^ Piscator. The Barbel is so called, says Gesner, by reason of 
his barb, or wattles, at his mouth, which are under his nose, or 
chaps. He is one of those leather-mouthed fishes that I told 
you of, that does very seldom break his l]old if he be once 
hooked ; but he is so strong, that he will often break both rod 
and line, if he proves to be a big one. 

But the Barbel, though he be of a fine shape, and looks big, 
yet he is not accounted the best fish to eat, neither for his 
wholesomeness nor his taste ; but the male is reputed much 
better than the female, whose spawn is very hurtful, as I will 
presently declare to you. 

They flock together like sheep, and are at the worst in April, 
about which time they spawn ; but quickly grow to be in 

* This, though generally true, does not hold always. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. ]69 

season. He is able to live in the strongest swifts of the water ; 
and in summer, they love the shallowest and sharpest streams ; 
and love to lurk under weeds, and to feed on gravel, against a 
rising ground, and will root and dig in the sands with his nose like 
a hog, and there nests himself ; yet sometimes he retires to deep 
andsVi'ift bridges, or floodgates, or weirs, where he x^ill nest him- 
self amongst piles, or hollow places ; and take such hold of moss 
or weeds, that be the water never so swift, it is not able to 
force him from the place that he contends for. This is his 
constant custom in summer, when he and most living creatures 
sport themselves in the sun : but at the approach of Avinter, 
tien he forsakes the swift streams and shallow waters, and by 
degrees retires to those parts of the river that are quiet and 
deeper, in which places, and I think about that time, he 
spawns ; and, as I have formerly told you, with the help of the 
melter, hides his spaA^Ti, or eggs, in holes, vrhich they both dig 
in the gravel : and then they mutually labour to cover it -wnth 
the same sand, to prevent it from being devoured by other fish. 

There be such store of this fish in the river Danube, that 
Rondeletius says, they may, in some places of it, and in some 
months of the year, be taken by those who dwell near to the 
river, \nth their hands, eight or ten load at a time. He sa\-s 
they begin to be good in May, and that they cease to be so in 
August : but it is found to be otherwise in this nation. But 
thus far we agree with him, that the spawn of a Barbel, if it be 
not poison, as he says, yet that it is dangerous meat, and espe- 
cially in the month of May ; which is so certain, that Gesner 
and Gasius declare it had an ill effect upon them, even to the 
endangering of their lives.* 

This fish is of a fine cast and handsome shape, with small 
scales, which are placed after a most exact and curious manner ; 
and, as I told you, may be rather said not to be ill, than to be 
good meat. The Chub and he have, I think, both lost part 
of their credit by ill cookery, they being reputed the worst, or 
coarsest, of fresh water fish. But the Barbel aflords an angler 
choice sport, being a lusty and a cunning fish — so lusty and 
cunning as to endanger the breaking of the angler's line, by 
running his head forcibly towards any covert, or hole, or bank, 

« Though the spawn of the Barbel is known to be of a poisonous nature, 
yet it is often taken by country people medicinally, who find it at once a 
most powerful emetic and cathartic. And, notwitlistanding- what is said 
of the wholesomeness of the flesh, with some constitutions it prodiices the 
same effects as the spawn. About the month of September, in the year 
1754, a servant of mine, who had eaten part of a Barbel, though, as Ihad 
cautioned him, he abstained from the spawn, was seized with such a violent 
purging and vomiting, as had like to have cost him his life. — H. 

The same is true of most tish, more particularly sea fish, which are at 
times found to become poisonous j but the cause has never been dis. 
covered. — J. R. 



170 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

and then striking at the line, to break it cfi', with his tail, a? is 
observed by Plutarch in his book, De iadustria Ayumalium ; 
and also so cunning, to nibble and suck off your worm close to 
the hook, and yet avoid the letting the hook come into his 
mouth. 

The Barbel is also curious for his baits ; that is to say, that 
they be clean and sweet ; that is to say, to have your worms 
w^ell scoured, and not kept in sour and musty moss, for he is a 
curious feeder : but at a well scoured lob-worm he will bite as 
boldly as at any bait, and especially if, the night or two before 
you fish for him, you shall bait the places where you intend to 
fish for him, with big worms cut into pieces.* And note, that 
none did ever over-bait the place, nor fish too early or too late 
for a Barbel. And the Barbel will bite also at gentles, which, 
not being too much scoured, but green, are a choice bait for 
him : and so is cheese, which is not to be too hard, but kept a 
day or two in a vet linen cloth, to make it tough: with this 
you may also bait the Avater a day or two before you fish for 
the Barbel, and be much the hkelier to catch store ; and if the 
cheese Avere laid in clarified honey a short time before, as 
namely, an hour or two, you were still the likelier to catch 
fish. Some have directed to cut the cheese into thin pieces, 
and toast it, and then tie it on the hook with fine silk. And 
some advise to fish for the Barbel with sheep's tallow and 
soft choese, beaten or worked into a paste ; and that it is choicely 
good in August ; and I believe it. But, doubtless, the lob- 
worm well scoured, and the gentle not too much scoured, and 
cheese ordered as I have directed, are baits enough, and I think 
will serve in any month ; though I shall commend any angler 
that tries conclusions, and is industrious to improve the art. 
An.d now, my honest scholar, the long shower, and my tedious 
discourse are both ended together : and I shall give you but 
tills observation, that when yon fish for a Barbel, your rod and 
line be both long and of good strength ; for, as I told you, you 
will find him a heavy and a dogged fish to be dealt withal ; yet 
he seldom or never breaks his hold, if he be once strucken. 
And if you would know more of fishing for the Umber, or 
Barbel, f get into favour with Dr Sheldon, whose skill is above 

* Graves, (which are the sediment of tallow melted for the making- 
of candles,) cut into pieces, are an excellent ground-bait for Barbel, 
Gudgeons, Koach, and many other fish, if thrown in the night before 30U 
angle. 

t Of the haunts of the Barbel, the author has spoke suflBciently. Barbel 
spawn about the middle of April, and grow in season about a month after. 

Baits for Barbel, other than what Walton has mentioned, are the young 
brood of wasps, hornets, and humble bees. 

In fishing for him, use a very strong rod, and a silk line with a shot and 
a bullet, as directed for the Trout. Some use a cork float, which, if you. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 171 

Others; and of that, the poor that dwell about him have a com- 
fortable experience. 

And now let 's go and see what interest the Trouts will pay 
us for letting our angle-rods lie so long and so quietly in the 
water for their use. Come, scholar, which ^vill you take up ? 

Venator. Which you think fit, master. 

Piscator. Why, you shall take up that ; for I am certain, by 
viev-ing the line, it has a fish at it. Look you, scholar ! well 
done ! Come, now, take up the other too : well, now you may 
tell my brother Peter, at night, that you have caught a leash of 

do, be ?iire to fish as close to the bottom as possible, so as the bait does not 
touch the Gfround. 

In angling- for lesser fish, the angler will sometimes find it a misfortune 
to hook a Barbel ; a fish so siillm that, with fine tackle, it is scarcely 
possible to land one twelve inches long. 

A lover of angling told me the following story : — He was fishing in the 
river Lea, at the ferry called Jeremy's, and had hooked a large fish at tl»e 
time when some Londoners, with their horses, were passing : they con- 
gratulated him' on his success, and got out of the ferry-boat ; but, finding 
the fish not likely to yield, mounted their horses and rode off. The fact 
was, that angling for small fish, his bait had been taken by a Barbel too 
big for the fisher to manage. Not caring to risk his tackle, by attempting 
to raise him, he hoped to tire him, and, to that end, suffered himself to be 
led (to use his own expression) as a blind man is by his dog, several yards 
up, and as many down the bank of the river, in short, for so many hours, 
that the horsemen above mentioned (who had been at Walthamstow, and 
dined) were returned ; who, seeing him thus occupied, cried out, " What, 
master I another large fish?" — " No," says Piscator, "it is the very 
same." — " Nay," says one of them, " that can never be; for it is fiv* 
hours since we crossed the river." And not believing him, they rode on 
their way. At length our angler determined to do that which a less 
patient one would have done long before : he made one vigorous effort to 
land his fish, broke his tackle, and lost him. 

Fishing for Barbel is, at best, but a dull recreation. They are a sullen 
fish, and'bite but slowly. The angler drops in his bait ; t!ie "bullet, at the 
bottom of the line, fixes it to one spot of the river. Tired with waiting 
for a bite, he gener;il!v lays down his rod, and, exercising the patience of 
a setting d( g, waits till he sees the top of the rod move ; then begins a 
struggle between him and the fish, which he calls his sport ; and that being 
over, ne lar.ds his prize, fresh baits his hook, and lays in for another. 

Living, some years ago, in a village on the banks of the Thames, I m-p.s 
used, in the summer months, to be much in a boat on the river. It chanced 
that, at Shepperton, where I had been for a few days, I frequently passed 
an elderly gentleman in his boat, who appeared to be fishing, at diflferent 
stations, for Barbel. After a few salutations had passed between us, and 
VTe were become a little acquaiutid, I took occasion to inquire of him what 
diversion he had met with ? " Sir," ^ays he, " I have had but bad luck 
to-day, for I fish for Barbel, and you know they are not to be caught like 
Gudgeons." — '« It is very true," answered I ; " but what you want in 
tale, I suppose you make up by weight." — " Why, sir," says he, " that is 
just as it happens : it is true I like the sport, and love to catch fish, but my 

freat delight is in going after them. I '11 tell you what, sir," continued 
e ; " I am a man in years, and have used the sea all my life," (he had 
been an India captain,) " but I mean to go no more ; and have bought that 
little house which you see there," (pointing to it,) " for the sake of fishing. 
I get into this boat," rwhich he w;.s then mopping,) " on a Monday 
morning, and fish on till ^"aturday night, for Barbel, as I told you, for that 
is ray delight ; and this I have done for a month together, and in all thut 
wliile ha\ e not had one bite." 



172 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Troiits this day. And now let 's move towards our lodging, and 
drink a draught of red cow's milk as we go ; and give pretty 
Maudlin and her honest mother a brace of Trouts for their 
supper. 

Venator. Master, I like your motion very well ; and I think 
it is now about milking-time ; and yonder they be at it. 

Piscator. God speed you, good woman ! I thank you both 
for our songs last night : I and my companion have had such 
fortune a-fishing this day, that we resolve to give you and 
]Maudlin a brace of Trouts for supper ; and we will now taste 
a draught of your red cow's milk. 

Milk-woman. Marry, and that you shall, with all my heart ; 
and I will be still your debtor when you come this way. If you 
will but speak the word, I will make you a good syllabub of 
new verjuice ; and then you may sit do^vn in a haycock and eat 
it ; and Maudlin shall sit by and sing you the good old song of 
the Hunting in Chevy Chase, or some other good ballad, for she 
hath good store of them. Maudlin, my honest Maudlin, hath 
a notable memory, and she thinks nothing too good for you, 
because you be such honest men. 

Venator. We thank you ; and intend, once in a month, to 
call upon you again, and give you a little warning ; and so, 
good night — ^good night, Maudlin. And now, good master, 
let 's lose no time : but tell me somewhat more of fishing ; and 
if you please, first, something of fishing for a Gudgeon. 

Piscator. I will, honest scholar. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OBSERVATIONS OF THE GUDGEON', THE RUFFE, AND THE ELEAK;' 
AND HOW TO FISH FOR THilM. 




Gudgeon — Cyprinus Gohio. — Linnjeus. 

Piscator. The Gudgeon is reputed a fish of excellent tastet 
and to be very wholesome. He is of a fine shape, of a silver 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 173 

colour, and beautified with black spots both on his body and 
tail. He breeds two or three times in the year ; and always in 
summer. He is commended for a fish of excellent nourishment. 
The Germans call him Groundling, by reason of his feeding on 
the ground ; and he there feasts himself, in sharp streams, and 
on the gravel. He and the Barbel both feed so : and do not 
hunt for flies at any time, as most other fishes do. He is an 
excellent fish to enter a young angler, being easy to be taken 
with a small red worm, on or very near to the ground. He is one 
of those leather-mouthed fish that has his teeth in his throat, and 
A\il] hardly be lost from off the hook if he be once strucken. 

They be usually scattered up and do^^^l every river in the 
shallows, in the heat of summer : but in autumn, when the 
weeds begin to grow sour or rot, and the weather colder, then 
they gather together, and get into the deeper parts of the water ; 
and' are to be fished for there, with your hook always touching 
the ground, if you fish for him with a float, or with a cork. 
But many will fish for the Gudgeon by hand, ^\•ith a running 
line upon the ground, without a cork, as a Trout is fished for ; 
and it is an excellent way, if you have a gentle rod, and as 
srentle a hand.* 




RL'Fff.-Perch — Perca Coriiua. — Linn^us. 

''" There is also another fish called a Pope, and by some a 
Ruffe ; a fish that is not known to be in some rivers : he is 
much like the Perch for his shape, and taken to be better than 
the Perch ; but will not grow to be bigger than a Gudgeon. 
He is an excellent fish ; no fish that s\nms is of a pleasanter 
taste. And he is also excellent to enter a young angler, for he 
is a greedy biter; and they will usually lie, abundance of them 
together, in one reserved place, where the water is deep, and 

* In'fi^hiiifr for Gudpeons, have a rake; and every quarter of an hour 
rake thebottom of the river, and the fish will flock thither in shoals. 



174 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

rims quietly ; and an easy angler, if he has found where they 
lie, may catch forty or fifty, or sometimes twice so many, at a 
standing. 

You must fish for him with a small red worm ; and if you 
bait the ground with earth, it is excellent. 




Blkak — Ci/priaus Alhv.rmis. — Ltxn^us. 

There is also a Bleak, or fresh water Sprat, a fish that is 
ever in motion, and therefore called by some the River Swallow ; 
for just as you shall observe the swallow to be, most evenings 
in summer, ever in motion, making short and quick turns when 
he flies to catch flies, in the air, by which he lives ; so does the 
Bleak at tlie top of the water. Ausonius would have him 
called Bleak, from his whitish colour ; his back is of a pleasant 
sad or sea- water green ; his belly, white and shining as the 
mountain snow. And doubtless, though he have the fortune, 
which virtue has in poor people, to be neglected, yet the Bleak 
ought to be much valued, though we want Allamot salt, and 
tlie skill that the Italians have, to turn them into anchovies. 
This fish may be caught with a Pater-noster line ; * that is, six 
or eight very small hooks tied along the line, one half a foot 
above the other : I have seen five caught thus at one time, and - 
the bait has been gentles, than which none is better. 

Or this fish may be caught ^\•ith a fine small artificial fly, 
which is to be of a very sad brown colour, and very small, and 
the hook answerable. There is no better sport than whipping 
for Bleaks in a boat, or on a bank, in the swift water, in a 
sutnmer's evening, with a hazel top about five or six foot 
long, and a line twice the length of the rod. I have heard 
Sir Henry Wotton say, that there be many that in Italy will 
catch swallows so, or especially martins ; t this bird-angler 
standing on the top of a steeple to do it, and with a line twice 

* A rosary, or string of beads, is u?ed by the Roman Catholic dpvoteps, 
to assist tliem in numbering their pnter-nosters, or prayers ; a line with 
many hooks, at small distances from each other, though it littlo resembles 
a strin? of b"ads, is thence called a paler-noster line. , 

t This is a common practice in England also. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 175 

SO long as I have spoken of. And let me tell you, scLolar, that 
both martins and Bleaks be most excellent meat. 

And let me tell you, that I have known a Hem, that did 
constantly frequent one place, caught ^\^th a hook baited with 
a big Minnow or a small Gudgeon. The line and hook must 
be strong : and tied to some loose staff, so big as she cannot 
fly away with it : a line not exceeding two yards. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

IS OF NOTHING ; OR, THAT WHICH IS NOTHING WORTH. 

Piscator. My purpose v\-as to give you some directions con- 
cerning Roach and Dace, and so:ne other inferior fish which 
make the angler excellent sport ; for you know there is more 
pleasure in hunting the hare than in eating her : but I will 
forbear, at -this time, to say any more, because you see yonder 
come, our brother Peter and honest Coridon. But I will promise 
you, that as you and I fish and walk to-morrow towards 
I^ondon, if I laave now forgotten any tiling that I can then 
remember, I will not keep it from you. 

Well met, gentlemen ; this is lucky that we meet so just 
together at this very door. Come, hostess, where are you ? 
i« supper ready? Come, first give us drink ; and be as quick as 
}oa can, for I believe we are all very hungry. Well, brother 
Peter and Coridon, to you both! Come, drink ; and then tell 
me what luck of fish : we two have caught but ten Trouts, of 
which u-'V scholar caught three : look ! here 's eight ; and a brace 
w'o gave away. We have had a most pleasant day for fishing 
and talking, and are returned home both weary and hungry ; 
and nov.^ meat and rest will be pleasant. 

Jrctcr. And Coridon and I have not had an U7ipleasant df;y : 
aiid yet I have caught but five Trouts ; for, indeed, we went to 
a good honest alehouse, and tlicre we played at shovel-board 
half the day ; all the time that it rtuned we were there, and as 
merry as they that fi_shed. And I am glad we are now with a 
dry house over our heads ; for, hark ! how it rains and blo\vs. 
Come, hostess, give u« more ale, and our supper with what 
ha^te you may : and when we have supped, let us have vour 
song, Piscator ; and the ce.tch that your scholar pi'oiiiised us ; 
or eUe Coridon will be dogged. 

Piscator. Nay, I will not be worse than my word ; you shall 
not want my song, and I hope I shall be perfect in it. 

Venator. And I hope the like for my catch, v>hich I have 
ready too : and therefore let 's go merrily to supper, and then 



176 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

have a gentle touch at singing and drinking ; but the last uith 
moderation. 

Coridon. Come, now for your song ; for we have fed heartily. 
Come, hostess, lay a few more sticks on the fire. And now, 
sing when you will. 

Plscator. Well then, here's to you, Coridon ; and now for 
my song : 

Oh, the gallant fisher's life, 

It is the best of any ; 
■'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife. 
And 'tis beloved by many ; 
Other joys 

Are but toys ; ■• 

Only this 
Lawful is ; 
For our skill 
Breeds no ill, 
But content and pleasure. 

In a morning up we rise. 
Ere Aurora 's peeping, • 
Drink a cup to wash our eyes. 
Leave the sluggard sleeping : 
Then we go 
To and fro 
With our knacks 
At our backs, 
To such streams 
As the Thames, 
If we have the leisure. 

When we please to walk abroad 

For our recreation. 

In the fields is our abode, 

Full of delectation : 

Where, in a brook, 
With a hook, 
Or a lake. 
Fish we take : 
There we sit, 
For a bit. 
Till we fish entangle. 

We have gentles in a horn, 

We have paste and worms too ; 
We can watch both night and morn, 
Suffer rain and storms too : 
None do here 
Use to swear : * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 177 

Oaths do fray 
Fish away : 
We sit still, 
And watch our quill ; 
Fishers must not wrangle. 

If the sun's excessive heat 

Make our bodies swelter. 
To an osier hedge we get 
For a friendly shelter ; 
Where in a dike, 
Perch or Pike, 
Roach or Dace, 
We do chase ; 
Bleak or Gudgeon, 
Without grudging ; 
We are still contented. 

Or we sometimes pass an hour 

Under a green willow, 
That defends us from a shower, 
Making earth our pillow : 
Where we may 
Think and pray 
Before death 
Stops our breath : 
Other joys 
Are but toys. 
And to be lamented.* 

Jo. Chalkhill. 

* This, in its kind, is a good song'. The following-, taken from Cotton's 
Poerns, 8vo. 1689, is to the same purpose, and well deserves a place here ; 

Away to the brook. 

All your tackle out-look, 
Here's a day that is worth a year's wishing. 

See that all things be right, 

For 'twould be a spite 
To want tools when a man goes a-fishing. 

Your rod with tops two. 

For the same will not do, 
If your manner of angling you vary ; 

And full well may you think. 

If you troll with a pink, 
One too weak will be apt to miscarry. 

Then basket, neat made 

By a master in 's trade. 
In a belt at your shoulders must dangle ; 

For none e'er was so vain 

To wear this to disdain 
Who a true brother was of the a.ngle. 

Next pouch must not fail, 

Stuff 'd as full as a mail, 
With wax, crewels, silks, hair, furs, and feerthers. 

To make several flies. 

For the several skies. 
That shall kill in despite of all weathers. 



178 THE COMPLETE ANGLEK. 

Venator. Well sung, master ! this day's fortune and pleasure* 
and this night's company and song, do all make me more 
more and more in love with angling. Gentlemen, my master 



The boxes and books 

For your lines and your hooks ; 
And, though not for strict need notwithstanding. 

Your scissars and hone 

To adjust your points on, 
With a net to be sure of your landing. 

All these being on, 

'Tis high time we were gone, 
Down and upward, that all may have pleasure, 

Till, here meeting at night. 

We shall have the delight 
To discourse of our fortunes at leisure. 

The day 's not too bright. 

And the wind hits us right 
And all nature does seem to invite us 

We have all things at will 

For to second our skill, 
As they All did conspire to delight us. 

On stMam now, or still, 

A lar^ pannier we '11 fill. 
Trout and Grayling to rise are so willing ; 

I dare venture to say, 

'Twill be a bloody day. 
And we all shall be weary of killing. 

Away, then, away. 

We lose sport bydelay ; 
But first, leave our sorrows behind us : 

If Miss Fortune should come. 

We are all gone from home. 
And a-fishing she never can find us. 

The angler is free 

From the cares that degree 
Finds itself with, so often, tormented ; 

And although we should slay 

Each a hundred a-day, 
'Tis a slaughter needs ne'er be repented. 

And though we display 

All our arts to betray 
What were made for man's pleasure and diet. 

Yet both princes and states 

May for all our quaint baits. 
Rule themselves and their people in quiet. 

We scratch not our pates, 

Nor repine at the rates 
Our superiors impose on our living ; 

But do frankly submit. 

Knowing they have more wit 
In demanding than we have in giving. 

While quiet we sit, 

We conclude all things fit, 
Acquiescing with hearty submission : 

For, though simple, we know 

That soft murmurs will grow 
At the last, unto downright sedition. 

We care not who says, 

And intends it dispraise, 
That an angler to a fool is next neighbour : 

Let him prate — what care we ? ' 

We 're as honest as he ; 
And so let him take that for his labour 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 179 

left me alone for an hour this day; and I verily believe he 
retired himself from talking with me that he might be so perfect 
in this song : was it not, master ? 

Piscator. Yes, indeed, for it is many years since I learned 
it ; and ha\dng forgotten a part of it, I was forced to patch it up 
by the help of mine own invention, who am not excellent at 
poetry, as my part of the song may testify : but of that I Avill 
say no more, lest you should think I mean, by discommending 
it, to beg your commendations of it. And therefore, without 
replications, let 's hear your catch, scholar ; which I hope uill 
be a good one, for you are both musical, and have a good fancy 
to boot. 

Venator. Marry, and that you shall ; and as freely as I would 
have my honest master tell me some m^ore secrets of fish and 
fishing, as we walk and fish towards London to-morrow. But, 
master, first let me tell you, that very hour which you were 
absent from me, I sat down under a -willow tree by the water- 
side, and considered what you had told me of the owner of that 
pleasant meadow in Avhich you then left me : that he had a 
plentiful estate, and not a heart to think so ; that he had at this 
time many lawsuits depending ; and that they both damped his 
mirth, and took up so m.uch of his time and thoughts, that he 
himself had not leisure to take the sweet content that I, who 
pretended no title to them, took in his fields : for I could 
there sit quietly ; and, looking on the water, see some fishes 
sport themselves in the silver streams, others leaping at flies of 
several shapes and colours ; looking on the hills, I could behold 
them spotted with woods and groves ; looking dovrn the 
meadows, could see, here a boy gathering liHes and ladysmocks, 
and there a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make 
garlands suitable to this present month of May : these, and many 
other field flowers, so perfumed the air,- that I thought that 
very meadow like that field in Sicily, of which Diodorus speaks, 
where the perfumes arising from the place make all dogs that 
hunt in it to fall off, and to lose their hottest scent. I say, as 
I thus sat, joying in my o\^^l happy condition, and pitying' this 
poor rich man that owned this and many other pleasant groves 
and meadows about me, I did thankfully remember what my 

We covet no wealth, 

But the blessing of health, 
And that ?r''ater, pood conscience within us. 

Such devotion we bring^ 

To our God and our Kin?, 
That from either no offers can win us. 

While we sit and fish, 

M'e pray as we wish 
For long life to our kinfr, James the Second : 

Honest anglers then may, 

Or they 've very foul play. 
With the best of good subjects be recken'd. 



180 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Saviour said, tliat the meek possess the earth ; or rather, they 
enjoy what the others possess and enjoy not: for anglers and 
meek, quiet-spirited men are free from those high, those restless 
thoughts, which corrode the sweets of life ; and they, and they 
only, can say, as the poet has happily expressed it : 

Hail ! bless'd estate of lowliness ! 

Happy enjoyments of such minds 
As, rich in self contentedness, 

Can, like the reeds, in roughest winds, 
By yielding make that blow but small, 
At which proud oaks and cedars fall. 

There came also into my mind at that time, certain verses in 
praise of a mean estate and an humble mind : they were written 
by Phineas Fletcher, * an excellent divine, and an excellent 
angler ; and the author of excellent Piscatory Eclogues, in which 
you shall see the picture of this good man's mind ; and I wish 
mine to be like it. 

* Phineas Fletcher was fellow of King^'s Colleg-e, Camhridg-e, and the 
author of a fine allegorical poem, entitled the Purple Island, printed at 
Cambridge, with other of his poems, in 4to. 1633, 

The iniioceiice of angling, the delightful scenes with which it is conver- 
sant, and its associated pleasures of ease, retirement, and meditation, have 
been a motive to the introduction of a new species of eclogue, where 
fishers are actors, as shepherds are in the pastoral. 

Of those who have attempted this kind of poetry, the above mentioned 
Mr Fletcher is one ; and in the same volume with the Purple Island are 
several poems, which he calls Piscatory Eclogues, from whence the follow- 
ing passage is extracted : — 

Ah ! would thou knew'st how much it better were 

To bide among the simple fisher swains ! 
No shrielcing owl, no night-crow lodgeth here, 
Nor is our simple pleasure mix'd with pains :. 
Our sports begin with the beginning year. 
In calms to pull the leaping fish to land ; 
In roughs to sing, and dance along the golden sand. 

I have a pipe which once thou lovedst well, 

(Was never pipe that gave a better sound ,) 
Which oft to hear, fair Thetis, from her cell — 

Thetis, the queen of seas, attended round 
With hundred nymphs, and many powers that dwell) 
In th' ocean's rocky walls — came up to hear. 
And gave me gifts, which still for thee lie hoarded here. 

Here, with sweet bays, the lovely myrtles grow. 

Where the ocean's fair-cheek 'd maidens oft repair ; 
Here, to my pipe, they danced on a row, 

No other swain may come to note they're fair ; 
Yet my Amyntas there with me shall go. 
Proteus himself pipes to his flocks hereby. 
Whom thou shalt hear, ne'er seen by any jealous eye. — Ec. I. 

And besides Mr Phineas Fletcher, a gentleman now living, (1784,) the 
Reverend Mr IMoses Browne, has obliged the world with Piscatory 
Eclogues, which I would recommend to all lovers of poetry and angling; 
and I am much mistaken if the fifth of them, entitled RennocK's Despair, 
is not by far the best imitation of Milton's Lyddas that has ever yet 
appeared. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 181 

No empty hopes, no courtly fears liim fright, 
No begging wants his middle fortune bite, 
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite. 

His certain life, that never can deceive him, 
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content ; 

The smooth leaved beeches in the field receive him, 
With coolest shade, till noontide's heat be spent ; 

His life is neither toss'd in boisterous seas 

Or the vexatious vvorld, or lost in slothful ease : 
Pleased and full bkss'd he lives, when he his God can please. 

His bed, more safe than soft, yields quiet sleeps, 
Wbile by his side his faithful spouse hath place ; 

His little son into his bosom creeps. 
The lively picture of his father's face ; 

His humble house or poor state ne'er torment him — . 

Less he could like, if less his God had lent him, 
And when he dies, green turfs do for a tomb content him. 

Gentlemen, these were a part of the thoughts that then 
possessed me. And I here made a conversion of a piece of an 
old catch,* and added more to it, fitting them to be sung by us 
anglers. Come, master, you can sing well : you must sing a 
part of it, as it is in this paper. 

Peter. I marry, sir, this is music indeed : this has cheered 
my heart, and made me to remember six verses in praise of 
music, which I will speak to you instantly : 

Music ! miraculous rhetoric, that speak'st sense 

Without a tongue, excelling eloquence ; 

With what ease might thy errors be excused, 

Wert thou as truly loved as thou 'rt abused ! 

But though dull souls neglect, and some reprove thee, 

I cannot hate thee, 'cause the angels love thee. 

* The song- here sung can in no sense of the word be termed a catch. It 
was probably set to music at the request of Walton, and is to be found in 
a book, entitled Select Ayres and Dialogues for one, tico, and three Voyces ; 
to the Theorbo-lute, and Basse Viol. By John AVilson and Charles Coleman, 
doctors of music, Henry Lawes, and others, fol. London, 1659. It occurs 
in the first edition of Walton's book, published in 1653. 

At the time when Waltnn wrote, and long before, music was so gene* 
rally well understood, that a man who had any voice or ear, was always 
supposed to be able to sing his part in a niadrigal or song, at sight. 
Pearham requires of his gentleman, only to be able " tosing his part sure, 
and at the first sight ; and withal, to play the same on the viol or lute." — 
Compleat Gentleman, 100. And Philomathes, in Morley's excellent Intro, 
duction to Practical Music, in folio, London 1597, thus complains, (at the 
banquet of master Sophobulus,) "Supper being ended, and music books, 
according to custom, being brought to table, the mistress of the house 
presented me with a part, earnestly requesting me to sing. But when, 
after many excuses, I protested unfeigut'dly that I could not, every one 
began to wonder ; yea, some whispered to others, demantiing how 1 was 
brought up. So that, upon shame of mine ignorance, I go nowe to seek 
out mine olde friend master Guorimus, to make myself his scholar." 



182 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Venator. And the repetition of these last verses of music has 
called to my memory what Mr Edward Waller, a lover of the 
angle,* says of love and music : 

While I listen to thy voice, 
Chloris, I feel my life decay ; 
That powerful noise 
. Calls my fleeting soul away : 
Oh ! suppress that magic sound, 
Which destroys without a wound. 

Peace, Chloris, peace, or singing die. 
That together you and I 

To heaven may go ; 

For all we know 
Of what the blessed do above. 
Is, that they sing, and that they love. 

Piseator. Well remembered, brother Peter : these verses 
came seasonably, and we thank you heartily. Come, we mil 
all join together, my host and all, and sing my scholar's catoh 
over again ; and then each man drink the other cup, and to bed ; 

and thank God we have a dry house over our heads Well, 

now good night to every body. 

Peter. And so say I. 

Venator. And so say I. 

Coridon. Good night to you all ; and I thank you. 

Piseator. Good morrow, brother Peter ; and the like to you, 
honest Coridon. Come, my hostess says there is seven shillings 

* As the autlior's concern for the honour of ansfling- induced him to 
enumerate such persons of note as were lovers of that recreation, the 
reader will allow me to add Mr John Gay to the number. Any one who 
reads the first canto'of his Georgic, entitled R^iral Sports, and observes' 
how beautifully aud accurately he treats the subject of fly-fishing-, would 
conclude the author a proficient : but that it was his chief amusement, I 
have been assured by an intimate friend of mine, who has frequently fished 
with himintha river Kennet, at Amesbury,in Wilts, the seat of his grace 
the Duke of Queensbury. 

The reader will excuse the following addition to this note, for the sake 
of a beautiful description of the materials used in fly-making, which is 
quoted from the above mentioned poem. 

To frame the little animal, provide 

All the gay hues that wait on female pride : 

Let nature guide thee ; sometimes golden wire 

The shining bellies of the fly require ; 

The peacock's plumes thy tackle must not fail, 

Nor the dear purchase of the sable's tail ; 

Each gaudy bird some slender tribute brings, 

And lends the growing insect proper wings ; 

Silks of all colours must their aid impart, 

And every fur promote the fisher's art : 

So the gay lady, with expensive care, 

Borrows the pride of land, of sea, of air ; 

Furs, pearls, and plumes, the glittering thing displays, ♦ 

Dazzles our eyas, and easy hearts betrays. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 183 

to pay : let 's each man drink a pot for his morning's draught, 
and lay doAvn his two shillings, that so my hostess may not have 
occasion to repent herself of being so diligent, and using us so 
kindly. 

Peter. The motion is liked by every body, and so, hostess, 
here' s your money ; we anglers are all beholden to you ; it will 
not be long ere I '11 see you again. And now, brother Piscator, 
I wish you, and my brother, your scholar, a fair day and good 
fortune. Come, Coridon, this is our way. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OF ROACH AND DACE, AND HOW TO FISH FOR THEM : AND OF 
CADIS. 




Roach — Cyprinus Rutilus. — JLinnjeus. 

Venator. Good master, as we go now towards London, be 
•itill so courteous as to give me more instructions : for I have 
several boxes in my memory, in Avhich 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 Roacli is so called from rutilus, which they say 
signifies red fins. He is a fish of no great reputation for his 
dainty taste ; and hi? spawn is accounted much better than any 
other part of him. And you may take notice, that as the Carp is 



184 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

accounted the water-fox, for his cunning, so the Roach is 
accounted the water-sheep, for his simplicity, or foohshness. 
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 
tlie 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, f The Roach is 

* The Rud (Barbus orfus) is quite a different species from either the 
Roach or the Bream. It is found in the northern and midland counties, 
and affords good sport to the angler. — J. R. 

f I know not what Roaches are caught below bridge ; but above, I am 
sore they are very large ; for, on the 15th of September, 1754, at Hampton, 
I caught one that was fourteen inches and an eighth from eye to fork, and 
in weight wanted but an ounce of two pounds. 

The season for fishing for Roach in the Thames begins about the latter 
end of August, and continues much longer than it is either pleasant or 
safe to fish. It requires some skill to hit the time of taking them exactly j 
for all the summer long they live on the weed, which they do not forsake, 
for the deeps, till it becomes putrid, and that is sooner or later, according 
as the season is wet or dry ; for you are to know, that much rain hastens 
the rotting of the weeA. I say it requires some skill to hit the time ; for 
the fishermen who live in all the towns along the river, from Chiswick to 
Staines, are, about this time, nightly upon the watch, as soon as the fish 
come out, to sweep them away with the drag-net ; and our poor patient 
angler is left, baiting the ground and adjusting his tackle, to catch those 
Tery fish which, perhaps, the night before had been carried to Billingsgate. - 

The Thames, as well above as below London bridge, was formerly much 
resorted to by London anglers ; and, which is strange to tliink on, con. 
sidering the unpleasantness of the station, they were used to fish near the 
starlings of the bridge. This will account for the many fishing tackle 
shops that were formerly in Crooked Lane, which leads to the bridge. In 
the memory of a person not long since living, a waterman that plied 
at Essex stairs, his name John Reeves, got a comfortable living by attend, 
ing anglers with his boat : his method was, to watch when the shoals of 
Roach came down from the country, and when he had found them, to go 
round to his customers and give them notice. Sometimes they settled 
opposite the Temple ; at others, at Blackfriars or Queenhithe ; but most 
frequently about the Chalk hills, near London bridge. His hire was two 
shillings a tide. A certain number of persons, who were accustomed thus 
to employ him, raised a sum sufiicient to buy him a waterman's coat and 
silver badge, the impress whereof Avas, Himself, with mi Angler, in his 
boat, and he had annually a new coat, to the time of his death, which 
might be about the year 1730. 

Shepperton and Hampton are the places chiefly resorted to by the Lon- 
doners, who angle there in boats : at each there is a large deep, to which 
Roach are attracted by constant baiting. That at Hampton is opposite 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 1S5 

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, \^ith worms or cadis ; in the 
very hot months, Avith little white snails ; or \\dth 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 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 to the very top of the water, and gaze on 
it there, and run at it, and take it, lest the fly shoidd 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 betmxt your hands, till it 
be both soft and tough too : a very little water, and time, and 
labour, and clean hands, ■\\'ill make it a most excellent paste. 
But when you fish vnih it, you must have a small hook, a quick 

the churchyard ; and in that cemetery lies an angler, upon whose grave- 
stone is an inscription, now nearly effaced, consisting of these homely 
lines : 

In memory of Mr Thomas Tombs, goldsmith, of London, 
who departed tliis life Aug. 12th 1758, aged 53 years. 

Each brother Bob, that sportive passes here, 
Pause at this stone, and drop the silent tear 
For him who loved your hannless sport, 
Who to this pitch* did oft resort. 
Who in free converse oft would please, 
With native humour, mirth, and ease, 
His actions form'd upon so just a plan : 
He lived a worthy, died an honest man. 

Before I dismiss the subject of Tlmmes fishing, I will let the reader 
know, that formerly the fishermen inhabiting the'villages on the banks of 
the Thames were used to enclose certain parts of the river with what they 
called stops, but which were in effect weirs or kidels, by stakes driven 
into the bed thereof; and to these they tied wheels, creating thereby a 
current, which drove the fish into those traps. Tliis practice, though it 
may sound oddly to say so, is against Magna Charta, and is expressly 
prohibited by the 23d chapter of that statute. In the year 1757, the lord 
mayor, Dickenson, sent the water bailiff up the Thames, in a barge well 
manned, and furnished with proper implements, who destroyed all those 
enclosures on this side Staines, by pulling up the stakes and setting them 
adrift 

* A particular spot, called a Pitch, from the act of pitching or fastening the boat there. 



186 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

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 : 




Dace — Cyprinvs Lenciscns. ■ — Li.WNMcrs. 

for they be much of a kind, in matter 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 ; con- 
cerning Avliicb, take this direction, fo)- 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 Jidy, 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 with- 
out bruising will live there a month or more, and be always in 
a 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.t 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. 



* The ant-fly is the male or female ant, which can never certainly be g-ot 
in a mole-hill, but occurs from midsummer till September. —J. R. 

t They will not live so long with their wings on ; for tho female arjt 
strips orf'her wings as soon as she is comfortably settled, and the male does 
aot live long. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I87 

I shall next tell you a winter bait for a Roach, a Dace, or 
Chub ; and it is choicely good. About Allhallontide, (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 wiU be very watchful and follow the plough very 
close : it is all soft, and fuU of whitish guts ;* a worm that is, in 
Norfolk and some other counties, called a ,grub ;t and is bred of 
the spa-wn, or eggs, of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she 
digs in the ground under cow or horse-dimg, and there rests all 
winter, and in March or April comes to be first a red, and then 
a black beetle. f Gather a thousand or two of these, and put 
them, ■v\ith a peck or two of their omi 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 %\'ith 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 wHintcr, 
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 Avith 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 ViiW fall into the barrel and scour them- 
se ves, 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 ^nth all tlie year, then 
get a dead cat, or a kite, and let it be fly-blowTi; and' when the 
gentles begin to be alive and to stir, then bury it a]:d 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 
wall 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 Avater ; and then wash and rub it 
betAvixt 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 fuiger and thumb ; and 

* This is the too common grrub of that destructive insect, the cock- 
chaffer, or May bug', (Melalontha vulgaris,) which takes two years to 
become full grown. Anelers term it the «arth bob. — J. R. 

f This is the grub of the dung beetle, {Gestrupes stercoraria.) — 3, R. 

t This strange transformation from red to black is of course fabuloiis. 
-J.R. 



188 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

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 
marred ; 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 ; espe- 
cially 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 tMck blood of sheep, being 
half dried on a trencher, that so you may cut it 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 received, and 
nsed ^vith 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 fittle belief 
in such things as many men talk of. Not but that I think 
fishes both smell and hear, (as I have expressed 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 Rosicru- 
cians, vnU not yet reveal it. But let me, nevertheless, tell 
you, that camphor, put with moss into your worm-bag with 
\vith 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 

* Roach delight in gravelly or sandy bottoms ; their haunts, especially 
as winter approaches, are clear, deep, and still waters ; and at other times, 
they lie in and near the weeds, and under the shade of boughs. 

They spawn about the latter end of May, when they are scabby and un- 
wholeBome ; but they are again in order in about three weeks. The 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 189 

you are to prepare your tackling : concerning which, I will, for 
sport sake, give you an old rhyme out of an old fish-book, 

largest are taken after Michaelmas, and their prime season is in February 
or March. 

The baits for Roachnot already mentioned, are cad-bait and oak-worms, 
for the spring- ; in May, ant's eggs, and paste made of the crumb of a new- 
roll, both white, and tinged with red, which is done by putting- vermilion 
into the water, wherewith you moisten it : this paste will do for the 
winter also. 

The largest Roach in this kingdom are taken in the Thames, where 
many have been caught of two pounds and a half weight: but Roach of 
any size are hardly to be come at without a boat. 

The haunts of Dace are gravelly, sandy, and clayey bottoms ; deep holes 
that are shaded ; water-lily leaves ; and under the foam caused by an 
eddy : in hot weather they are to be found on the shallows, and are then 
best taken -with an artificial fly, grasshoppers, or gentles, as hereafter 
directed. 

Dace spawn about the latter end of March: and are in season about 
three weeks after : they are not very good till about Michaelmas, and are 
best in February. 

Baits for Dace, other than those mentioned by Walton, are the oak- 
worm, red-Avorm, brandling, gilt tail ; and indeed any worm, bred on 
trees or bushes, that is not too big for his mouth ; almost all kinds of flies 
and caterpillars. 

Though Dace are often caught with a float, as Roach, yet they are not 
so properly float-fish : for they are to be taken with an artificial gnat, or 
ant-fly, or indeed almost any other small fly in its season ; but in the 
'Thames, above Richmond, the largest are caught with a natural green or 
dun grasshopper, and sometimes with gentles; with both which you are 
to fish as with an artificial fly. They are not to be come at till about 
September, when the weeds begin to rot; but when you have found 
where they lie, which, in a warm day, is generally on the shallows, it is 
incredible what havoc you may make : pinch ofl:" the first joint of the grass- 
hopper's legs, put the point of the hook in at the head, and bring it out at 
the tail ; and in this way of fishing you will catch Chub, especially if you 
tlirow under the boughs. 

But this can be done only in a boat ; for the management whereof, be 
provided with a stalT, and a" heavy stone fastened to a strong rope of four 
or five yards in length : fasten the rope to the head of the boat, which, 
whether it be a punt or a wherry, is equally fit for this purpose, and so 
drive down with the stream : when you come to a shallow, or other place 
where the fish are likely to lie, drop the stone, and, standing in the stern, 
throw right down the stream, and a little to the right and left; after 
trying about a quarter of an hour in a place, with the staft' push the boat 
about five yards down, and so throw again. Use a common fly-line, about 
ten yards long, with a strong single liair next the hook. 

It is true, there is less certainty of catching in this way than with afloat 
or ground-bait : for which reason I would recommend it only to those 
who live near the banks of that delightful river, between Windsor and 
Isleworth, who have or can command a boat for that purpose, and can 
take advantage of a still, warm, gloomy day; and to such it will aflFord 
much more diversion than the ordinary inartificial method of fishing in the 
deeps for Roach and Dace. 

In fishing at bottom f()r Roach and Dace, use for ground-bait bread 
.soaked about an hour in water, and an equal quantity of bran ; knead 
them to a tough consistence, and make them up into balls, with a small 
pebble in the middle, and throw these balls in where you fish ; but be 
sure to throw them up the stream, for otherwise they will draw the fish 
beyond the reach of your line. 

Fish for Roach within six, and for Dace, -within three, inches of the 
bottom. 

Having enumerated the baits proper for every kind of fish in their 



190 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

which will prove a part, and but a part, of what you are to 
provide : 

My rod and ray hne, my float and my lead. 

My hook and my plummet, my whetstone and knife, 

I^Iy basket, my baits, both hving and dead, 
My net, and my meat, for that is the chief : 

respective places, it may not be amiss here to mention one which many 
authors speak of as excellent for almost all fish ; and that is the spawn of 
Salmon, or large Trout. Barker, who sptMns to have been the first that 
discovered it, recommends it to his patron in the following terms : 

" Noble Lord, — I have found an experience of late, which you may 
ang^le with, and take great store of tliis kind of fish. First, it is the best 
bait for a Trout that I have seen in all my time ; and will take great store, 
and not fail, if they be there. Secondly, it is a special bait for Dace or 
Dare, good for Chub, or Bottlin, or Grayling. The bait is, the roe of a 
Salmon or Trout. If it be a large Trout, that the spawns be any thing 

freat, you may angle for the Trout with this bait as you angle with the 
randling ; taking a pair of scissars, and cut so much as a large hazel nut, 
and bait your hook ; so fall to your sport, there is no doubt of pleasure. 
If I had known it but twenty years ago, I would have gained a hundred 
pounds only with that bait. I am bound in duty to divulge it to your 
nonour, and not to carry it to my grave with me. I do desire that men 
of quality should have it, that delight in that pleasure. The greedy angler 
will murmur at me, but for that I care not. 

" For the angling for the Scale-fish : They must angle either with cork 
or quill, plumming their ground ; and with feeding with the same bait, 
taking them [the spawns] as under, that they may spread abroad, that the. 
fish may feed, and come to your place : there is no doubt of pleasure, 
angling with fine tackle, as single hair lines, at least five or six length 
long ; a small hook, with two or three spawns. The bait will hold one 
week ; if you keep it on any longer, you must hang it up to dry a little : 
when you go to your pleasure again, put the bait in a little water, it will 
come in kind again." 

Others, to preserve Salmon spawn, sprinkle it with a little salt, and lay 
it upon wool in a pot, one layer of wool and another of spawn. It is said 
to be a lovely bait for the winter or spring; especially where Salmon are 

used to spawn ; for thither the fish gather, and there expect it Angler's 

Fade Mecum, 53. 

To know at any time what bait fish are apt to take, open the belly 
of the first you catch, and take out his stomach very tenderly; open it, 

■with a sharp penknife, and you will discover what he then feeds on ' 

Ve7iables, 91. 

The people who live in the fishing-to^vns along the banks of the Thames 
have a method of dressing large Roach and Dace, which, as it is said, 
renders them very pleasant and savoury food ; it is as follows : Without 
scaling the fish, lay him on a gridiron, over a slow fire, and strew on him 
a little flour ; when he begins to grow brown, make a slit, not more than 
skin deep, in his back, from head to tail, and lay him on agaia : when he 
is broiled enough, the skin, scales and all, will peel oft', and leave the flesh, 
which will have become very fiLrm, perfectly clean; then open the belly, 
and take out the inside, and use anchovy and butter for sauce. 

Having promised the reader Mr Barker's recipe for anointing boots and 
shoes, (and having no farther occasion to make use of his authority,) it is 
here given in his own words. 

" Take a pint of linseed oil, with half a pound of mutton suet, six or 
eight ounces of bees' wax, and half a penny worth of rosin ; boil all tliis 
in a pipkin together ; so let it cool till it be milk warm : then take a little 
hair brush, and lay it on your new boots ; but it is lest that this stuft'be 
laid on before the bootmaker makes the boots ; then brush them once over 
after they come from him ; as for old boots, you must lay it on when yoiyr 
boots be dry." 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. l&L 

Then I must have thread, and hairs green and sraai], 
With mine angling purse — and so you have all. 

But you must have all these tackling, and twice so ma^iy 
more,* with which, if you mean to be a fisher, you must store 

* If you go any great distance from home, you will find it necessary to 
carry with you many more things than are here enumerated, most of which 
may be very well contained in a wicker panier of about twelve inches 
wide, and eight high, of the form and put into a hawking-bag. The 
following is a list of the most material : a rod with a spare top ; lines 
coiled up, and neatly laid in round flat boxes ; spare links, single hairs, 
waxed thread and silk ; plummets of various sizes ; floats of all kinds, and 
spare caps ; worm-bags, and a gentle-box ; hooks of all sizes, some whipped 
to single hairs ; shot ; shoemakers' wax, in a very small gallipot covered 
with a bit of leather ; a clearing-ring, tied to about six yards of strong 
cord ; the use of this is to disengage your hook when it has caught a weed, 
&c. in which case take oif the butt of your red, and slip the ring over the 
remaining joints, and, holding it by the cord, let it gently fall ; a landing 
net, the hoop whereof must be of iron, and made with joints to fold, and 
a socket to hold a stafl' ; take with you also such baits as you intend to use. 
That, you may keep your fish alive be provided with a small hoop net, to 
draw close to the top. And never be without a sharp knife, and a pair of 
scissars. And if you mean to use the artificial fly, have your fly-book 
always ^vith you. 

And for the more convenient keeping and carriage of lines, links, single 
hairs, &c. take a piece of parchment, or vellum, seven inches by ten ; on 
the longer sides, set ofi:" four inches, and then fold it cross-wise, so as to 
leave a flap of two inches, of which hereafter ; then take eight or ten 
pieces of parchment, of seven inches by four ; put them into the parch- 
ment, or vellum, so folded, and sew up the ends : then cut the flap rounding, 
and fold it down like a pocket-book : lastly, you may, if you please, bind 
along the ends, and round the flap, with red tape. 

Into this case, put lines coiled up, spare links, single hairs, and hooks 
ready whipped and looped. 

And having several of these cases, you may fill them with lines, &c. 
proper for every kind of fishing ; always remembering to put into each of 
them a gorger, or small piece of cane, of five inches long, and a quarter of 
an inch wide, with a notch at each end ; with this, when a fish has gorged 
your hook, you may, by putting it down his throat till you feel the hook, 
and holding the line tight while you press it down, easily disengage it. 

And if you should chance to break your top, or any other part of your 
rod, take the following directions for mending it: Cut the two broken 
ends with a long slope, so that they may fit neatly together ; then spread 
some wax, very thin, on each slope ; and, with waxed thread, or silk, 
according as the size of the broken part requires, bind them very neatly 
together. To fasten ofl, lay the forefinger of yoiu- left hand over the 
binding, and, with your right, make four turns of the thread over it ; then 
pass the end of your thread between the under side of your finger and the 
rod, and draw your finger away ; lastly, with the forefinger and thumb of 
your right hand, take hold of the first of the turns, and, gathering as much 
of it as you can, bind on till the three cemaining turns are wound ofl', and 
then take hold of the end which you had before brought through, and then 
draw close. 

For whipping on a hook, take the following directions : Place the hook 
betwixt the forefinger and thumb of your left hand, and with your right 
give the waxed silk three or four turns round the shank of the hook ; then 
lay the end of the hair on the inside of the shank, and with your right hand 
whip down ; when you are within about four turns of the bent of the 
hook, take the shank between the forefinger and thumb of the left hand, 
and place the silk close by it, holding them both tight, and leaving the 
end to hang down ; then draw the other part of the silk into a large 
leop ; and, with your right hand turning backwards, continue the whipping- 



192 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

yourself ; * and to that purpose I will go with you, either te 
Mr Margrave, who dwells amongst the booksellers in St Paul's 
Church Yard, or to Mr John Stubbs, near to the Swan in 
Golding Lane : they be both honest men, and will fit an angler 
with what tackling he lacks. f 

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 '11 want nothing 
that a fisher should be furnished with. 

Piscator. Well, and I'll not fail yo\i, 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 wiE. make you some 
reqmtal of your pains, by repeating as choice a copy of verses 
as any we have heard since we met together j 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 

for foiu- turns, and draw the end of the silk (which has all this while 
hung down under the root of your left thumb) close, and twitch it off. 

To tie a water knot : — Lay the end of one of your hairs, about five inches 
or less, over that of the other ; and, through the loop which you would 
make to tie them in the common way, pass the long and the short end of 
the hairs, which will lie to the right of the loop, twice ; and, wetting the 
knot with your tongue, draw it close, and cut off the spare hair. 

* I have heard that the tackling hath been prized at fifty pounds, in the 
inventory of an angler. 

f In some former editions of this book, the author has, in this place, 
mentioned " Charles Kirby " as a maker of excellent hooks j of whom take 
the following account : He was famous for the neatness and form of his 
hooks ; when being introduced to Prince Rupert, whose name frequently 
occurs in the history of King Charles the First's reign, the prince com- 
municated to him a method of tempering them, which has been continued 
in the family to this time ; there being a lineal descendant of the above- 
named Charles Kirby now (1760) living in Crowther's-well Alley, near 
Aldergate Street ; whose hooks, for their shape and temper, exceed all 
others.* This story is the more likely to be true, as it is well knovm that 
the German nobility, in the last century, were much addicted to chemistry, 
and that to this Prince Rupert the world is indebted for the invention 
of scraping in mezzotinto. See a head of his scraping iu Evelju's 
Sculptura. f 

* Sir H. Davy prefers the Limerick hooks of O'Shaughnessy to every other ; while 
Carrol and others prefer the Kendal hooks. The London and the Birmingham hooks 
are bad, not because they cannot there make good hooks, but because they make cheap 
ones. — J. R. * 

+ The invention of this art is also ascribed to Sir Christopher Wren, but it was greatly 
improved by Prince Rupert. See Elme's Life of Sir Christopher Wren, Journals of thet 
Royal Society for October, 1662, &c. — S. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 193 

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 blackberries 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 friuts customarily 
dropped into it. And there be a hundred other baits, more 
than can well be named, which, by constant baiting the water, 
M'ill 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, and 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 twopence. These worms being 
kept three or four days in a woollen bag, \\n.th. 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-wonn, called a cock-spur, being 
in fashion like the spur of a cock, sh irp at one end ; and the 
case, or house, in which this dwehs, 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 
kingfisher'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. f 

There is also another cadis, called by some a straw-w^orm, 
and by some a ruff-coat, whose house, or case, is made of little 

» Walton here mistakes for a kingfisher's nest, the round crustaceous 
shell of the sea urchin (Echimm.) The kingfisher does net appear to make 
any nest, except the floorinjr of fish bones derived from his prey. — J. R. 

•f To preserve cadis, grasshoppeis, caterpillars, oak-worms, or natural 
flies, the following is an excellent method : Cut a round hough of fine green 
barked withy, about the thickness of one's aim ; and, taking ott the bark 
about a foot in length, turn both ends together, into the form of a hoop, 
and fasten them with a pack needle and thread ; then stop up the bottom 
with a bung-cork : and wiUi a red-hot wire bore the bark full of holes; 
into this put your baits : tie it over with a colewort leaf; and hv it in the 
erass every niglit. In this manner cadis may be kept till they tuin to flies. 
To grasshoppers you may put grass, 
N 



194 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

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 hedgehog. 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 these do early, so those have their time 
also of turning to be flies later in 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.* 

* The several sorts of Phryganecp, or cadews, in their nympha, or maggot 
state, thus house themselves : one sort in straws, called from thence straw- 
worms ; others, in two or more sticks, laid parallel to one another, creeping 
at the bottom of brooks ; others, with a small bundle of pieces of rushes, 
duck-weed, sticks, &c. glued together, wherewith they float on the top, 
and can row themselves therein about the waters with the help of their 
feet : both these are called cad-bait. Divers sorts there are, which the 
reader may see a summary of from Mr Willoughby, in Raii Method. Insect. 
p. 12. together with a good, though very brief, description of the fly that 
comes from the cad-bait cadew. It is a notable architectonic faculty, 
which all the variety of these animals have, to gather such bodies as are 
fittest for their purpose, and then to glue them together ; some to be heavier 
than water, that the animal may remain at bottom, whore its food is; 
(for which purpose they use stones, together with sticks, rushes, &c.) 
and some to be lighter than water, to float on the top, and g .ther its food 
from thence. These little houses look coarse, and shew no great artifice 
outwardly ; but are well tunnelled, and made within, with a hard tough 
paste, into which the hind part of the maggot is so fixed, that it can draw 
its cell after it any where, without danger of leaving it behind ; as also 
thrust out his body to reach what it wanteth, or withdraw it into its cell 
to guard it against harms. — Physico Theology, 234. 

Thus much of cadis in general, as an illustration of what our author has 
said on that subject. But to be more particular : 

That which Walton calls the piper cadis I have never seen ; but a very 
learned and ingenious friend of mine, who has for fifty years past been an 
angler, and a curious observer of aquatic productions, has furnished me 
with an account of that insect, which I shall give the reader in nearly his 
own words : 

" The piper cadis I take to be the largest of the tribe, and that it takes 
its name not from any sound, but figure. 1 never met with it but in rivers 
running upon beds of limestone, or large pebbles ; they are common iu 
northern and Welsh streams. The cadew itself is about an inch long, and in 
some above. The case is straig!4t and rough ; the outward surface covered 
w^ith gravel or sand ; the fistula, or pipe, in which it is contained, seems to 
be a small stick, of which the pith was quite decayed, before the insect, in 
its state immediately succeeding the egg, lodged itself. Advanced to an 
aurelia, which is generally in April, or the beginning of May, it leaves its 
case and last covering, a sort of thin skin resembling a fish's bladder, (and 
this is likewise the method of the whole genus, as far as I could ever observe,) 
and immediately paddles upon the top of the water with its many legs. 
It seldom flies, though it has four wings ; and of these wings it is to be 
observed, that in the infant state of tlie insect, namely, for a week or 
longer, they are shorter than the body, but afterward they grow to be full 
as long or longer. This is usully called by sportsmen, the stone-flyj iu 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 195 

I '11 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 \^ith 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 wdll 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 

Wales they name it the water cricket, the size and colour being like that 
insect." 

As to the cock-spur, Bovvlker expressly says, in his Art of Angling, 
p. 70, that it-produces the May-fly, or yellow cadew, which I have ever 
understood to be the green drake. 

That which Walton calls the straw-worm, or ruff-coat, though, by the 
way, he certainly errs in making these terms synonymous, as will here- 
after be made to appear, and which is described in Ray's Mefhodus hisec- 
torum, p. 12, is, I take it, the most common of any, and is found in the 
river Colne, near Uxbridge ; the New River, near London ; the Wandle, 
which runs through Carshalton in Surrey ; and in most other rivers. 
As to the straw-worm, I am assured, by my friend above mentioned, that 
it produces many and various flies; namely, that which is called, about 
London, the withy-fly, ash-coloured duns of several shapes and dimensions, 
as also light and dark browns, all of them affording great diversion in 
northern streams. 

It now remains to speak of the ruff-coat, which seems to answer so 
nearly to the description which Walton has given of the cock-spur, namely, 
" that the case, or house, in which it dwells is made of small husks, and 
gravel, and slime, most curiously;" that there is no accounting for his 
making the term synonymous with that of the straw- worm, which it does 
not iuthe least resemble : and yet, that the rufi-coat and the cock-spur 
produce different flies, notwithstanding their seeming resemblance, must 
be taken for granted, unless we will reject Bowlker's authority, when he 
says the cock-spur produces the May-fly, or yellow cadew, which 1 own 
I see no reason to do. 

But that I may not mislead the reader, I must inform hira, that I take 
the ruff-coat to be a species of cadis enclosed in a husk about an inch long, 
surrounded by bits of stone, flints, bits of tile, &c. very near equal iu their 
sizes, and most curiously compacted together, like mosaic. 

In the month of May, 1759, I took one of the insects last above described, 
which had been found in the river Wandle, in Surrey, and put it into a 
small box with sand at the bottom, and wetted it five or six times a-day, 
for five days ; at the end whereof, to my great amazement, it produced a 
lovely large fly, nearly of the shape of, but less than a common white 
butterfly, with two pair of cloak-wings, and of a light cinnamon colour. 
This flyj upon inquiry, I find is called^ in the north, the large light brown ; 
in Ireland, and some other places, it has the name of the "flame- coloured 
brown. And the method of making it is given in the Additional List of 
Flies, under September; (Appendix, No. 2.) where, from its smell, the 
reader will find it called the large fcetid light brown. 

And there are many other kinds of these wonderful creatures, as may 
be seen in Mons. de Reaumur's Memoircs pour servir a VHistoire dcs bu 
tectes, tome iii. See also the .Appendix, No. 1. 



198 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

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, v^dth a little stick in my hand, with which 
I might easily take these, and consider the curiosity of their 
composure : and if you shall 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 obser- 
vation, 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 

♦ Tlie author has now done describing' the several kinds of fish, excep- 
ting the few little ones that follow, with the methods of taking them ; but 
has said little or nothing of float-fishing ; it may therefore not be amiss 
here to lay down some rules about it. 

Let the rod be light and stiff, and withal so smart in the spring, as to 
strike at the tip of the whalebone. From fourteen to fifteen feet is a good 
length. 

In places where you sometimes meet with Barbel, as at Shepperton and 
Hampton in Middlesex, the fittest line is one of six or seven hairs at top, 
and so diminishing for two yards ; let the rest be strong Indian grass, to 
within about half a yard of the hook, which may be whipped to a fine grass 
or silk-worm gut. And this line will kill a fish of six pounds weight. 

But for mere Roach and Dace fishing, accustom yourself to a single hair 
line, with which an artist may kill a fish of a pound and a half weight. 

For your float . In slow streams a neat round goose quill is proper ; but 
for deep or rapid rivers, or in an eddy, the cork shaped like a pear, is 
indisputably the best, which should not in general exceed the size of a 
nutmeg ; let not the quill which you put through it be more than half .an 
inch above and below the cork : and this float, though some prefer a 
swan's quill, has great advantage over a bare quill, for the quill being 
defended from the water by the cork, does not soften ; and the cork 
enables you to lead your line so heavily, as that the hook sinks almost as 
soon as you put it into the water ; whereas, when you lead but lightly, it 
does not go to the bottom till it is near the end of your swim. And in 
leading your lines, be careful to balance them so nicely, that a very small 
touch will sink them : some use for this purpose lead shaped like a barley 
corn ; but there is nothing better to lead with than shot, which you must 
have ready cleft always with you ; remembering, that when you fish 
fine, it is better to have on your line a great number of small, than a few 
large shot. 

Whip the end of the quill round the plug with fine silk well waxed ; 
this will keep the water out of your float, and preserve it greatly. 

In fishing with a float, your line must be about a foot shorter than your 
rod j for, if it is longer, you cannot so well command your hook when you 
come to disengage your fish. 

Perch and Chub are caught with afloat, and also Gudgeons ; and some- 
times Barbel and Grayling. 

For Carp and Tench, which are seldom caught but in ponds, use a^^ery 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 197 

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 hiai, 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. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

OF THE MINNOW, OR PENK ; OF THE LOACH ; OF THE BULL-HEAD, 
OB, MILLEBS THUMB ; AND OF THE STICKLEBAG. 

Piscator. There be also three or four other little fish that I 
had almost forgot, that are all without scales, and may, for 
excellency of meat, be compared to any fish of greatest value 
and largest size. They be usually full of eggs, or spawn, all 
the months of summer ; for they breed often, as it is observed 
mice and- many of the smaller four-footed creatures of the earth 
do; and as those, so these come quickly to their full growth and 
perfection. And it is needful that they breed both often and 
numerously ; for they be, besides other accidents of ruin, both 
a prey and bails for other fish. And first I shall tell you of the 
Minnow, or Penk. 

The Minnow hath, when he is in perfect season and not 
sick, which is only presently after spawning, a kind of dappled, 
or waved colour, like to a panther, on his sides, inclining to a 
greenish and sky colour ; his belly being milk ^vhite ; and his 
back almost black, or blackish. He is a sharp biter at a small 
worm, and in hot weather makes excellent sport for young 
anglers, or boys, or women, that love that recreation. And 
in the spring they make of them excellent Minnow-tansies; for 
being washed well in salt, and their heads and tails cut oiF, and 
their guts taken out, and not washed after, they prove excellent 
for that use ; that is, being fried with yolks of eggs, the flowers 
of cowslips and of primroses, and a little tansy ; thus used, they 
make a dainty dish of meat. 

The Loach is, as I told you, a most dainty fish : he breeds 
and feeds in little and clear swift brooks, or rills, and lives 
there upon the gravel, and in the sharpest streams ; he grows 
not to be above a finger long, and no thicker than is suitable to 

small goose or a dnrk. quill float: and for ground bait throw in, every no\T 
and then, a bit of chewed bread. 

For Barbel, the pl;.ce should be baited the night before you fish, with 
graves, which are the sediment of melted tallow, and may be liad at the 
tallow chandler's. Use the same ground bait while you are fishing, as 
for Koach and Dace. 

In fishing with a float for Chub, in warm weather, fish at mid- water j 
la cool, lower J and in cold, at the ground. 



198 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

thatlength. This Loach is not unlike the shape of the Eel: hehas 
a beard, or wattles, like a Barbel. He has two fins at his sides, 
four at his belly, and one at his tail ; he is dappled with many 
black, or bro^vn spots ; his mouth is Barbel-like under his nose. 
This fish is usually full of eggs, or spawn ; and is by Gesner 
and other learned physicians, commended for great nourishment, 
and to be very grateful, both to the palate and stomach of sick 
persons. He is to be fished for with a very small worm, at the 
bottom ; for he very seldom, or never, rises above the gravel, 
on which I told you he usually gets his living. 

The Miller's-thumb, or Bull-head, is a fish of no pleasing 
shape. He is by Gesner compared to the sea Toadfish, for his 
simiUtude and shape. It has a head big and flat, much greater 
than suitable to his body ; a mouth very wide, and usually 
gaping; he is without teeth, but his lips are very rough, much 
like to a file. He hath two fins near to his giUs, which be 
roundish or crested ; two fins also under the belly, two on the 
back, one below the vent, and the fin of his tail is round. 
Nature hath painted the body of this fish with whitish, blackish, 
and brownish spots. They be usually fidl of eggs, or spa^vl^, 
all the summer, I mean the females ; and those eggs swell their 
vents almost into the form of a dug. They begin to spawn about 
April, and, as I told you, spawn several months in the summer. 
And in the winter, the Minnow, and Loach, and Bull-head, 
dwell in the mud, as the Eel doth ; or we know not where, no 
more than we know where the cuckoo and swallow, and other 
half-year birds, which first appear to us in April, spend their 
six cold, winter, melancholy months. This Bull-head does 
usually dwell, and hide himself, in holes, or amongst stones in 
clear water ; and in very hot days will lie a long time very still, 
and sun himself, and will be easy to be seen upon any flat stone, 
or any gravel ; at which time he will suffer an angler to put a 
hook, baited with a small worm, very near unto his very mouth : 
and he never refuses to bite, nor, indeed, to be caught with the 
worst of anglers. Matthiolus commends him much more for his 
taste and nourishment, than for his shape or beauty.* 

* Since Walton wrote, there has been brought into England, from Ger. 
many, a species of small fish, resembling Carp in shape and colour, called 
Crusians, with which many ponds are now plentifully stocked. 

There have also been brought hither from China, those beautiful 
creatures, gold and silver fish : the first are of an orange colour, with very 
shining scales, and finely variegated with black and dark brown ; the 
silver fish are of the colour of silver tissue, with scarlet fins, with which 
colour thev are curiously marked in several parts of the body. 

These fish are usually kept in ponds, basins, and small reservoirs of 
water, to which they are a delightful ornament. And it is now a very 
common practice to keep them in a large glass vessel like a punch bowl, 
with fine gravel strewed at the bottom, frequently changing the water, 
and feeding them with bread and gentles. Those who can take more 
pleasure in angling for, than in beholding them, which I confess I eoiild 
never do, may catch them with gentles; but though costly, they are but 
coarse food. , 



THE COMPLETE AXGLER. 199 

There is aiso a little fish called a Sticklebag, a fish \\ithout 
scales, but hath his body fenced ■\'\dth several prickles. I know 
not where he dwells in ^\'inter ; nor what he is good for in sum- 
mer, but only to make sport for boys and women anglers, and 
to feed other fish that be fish of prey, as Trouts in particular, 
who ^^•ill bite at him as at a Penk ; and better, if your hook be 
rightly baited \nth him ; for he may be so baited as, his tail 
turning like the sail of a windmill, \vill make him turn more 
quick than any Penk, or Minnow, can. For note, that the 
nimble turning of that, or the INIinnow, is the perfection of 
Minnow fishing. To which end, if you put your hook into his 
mouth, and out at his tail ; and then, having first tied him vnth 
white thread a little above his tail, and placed him after such a 
manner on your hook as he is hke to turn, then sew up his 
mouth to your line, and he is like to turn quick, and tempt any 
Trout : but if he do not turn quick, then turn his tail, a little 
more or less, towards the inner part, or towards the side of the 
hook ; or put the INIinnow or Sticklebag a little more crooked 
or more straight on your hook, until it ^^'ill turn both true and 
fast, and then doubt not but to tempt any great Trout that lies 
in a swih stream. * And the Loach, that I told you of, will do 
the like : no bait is more tempting, provided the Loach be not 
too big. 

And now, scholar, ^^•ith the help of this fine morning, and 
your patient attention, I have said all that my present memory 
vdU afford me, concerning most of the several fish that are 
usually fished for in fresh waters. 

Ve7iator. But, master, you have, by your former civility, 
made me hope that you will make good your promise, and say 
something of the several rivers that be of most note in this 
nation ; and also of fish-ponds, and the ordering of them : and 
do it, I pray, good master ; for I love any discourse of rivers, 
and fish, and fishing ; the time spent in such discourse passes 
away very pleasantly. 

* The Minnow, if used in this manner, is so tempting- a bait, that few- 
fish are able to resist it. The present Earl of told me, that in the 

month of June last, at Kimpton Hoc, near Welhvyn, in Hertfordshire, he 
caught (with a Minnow) a Rud, which, insomuch as the Rud is not 
reckoned, nor does the situation of his teeth, which are in his throat, 
bespeak him to be a fish (^f prey, is a fact more extraordinary than that 
related by Sir George Hastings, in chap. iv. of a Fordidge Trout, (of whicli 
kind offish none had be^n known to be taken with an angle,) which he 
caught, and supposed it bit for wantonness. 



200 THE COMPLETE ANGLEH. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

OF SEVERAL RIVERS, AND SOME OBSERVATIONS OF FISH. 

Piscator. Well, scholar, since the ways and weather do both 
favour us, and that yet we see not Tottenham- Cross, you shall see 
my willingness to satisfy your desire. And, first, for the rivers 
of this nation ; there be, as you may note out of Dr Heylin's 
Geography, and others, in number three hundred and twenty- 
five ; but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as 
foUoweth : 

The chief is Thamisis, compounded of two rivers, Thame and 
Isis ; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame, in 
Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Glouces- 
tershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire ; the 
issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamisis, or Thames ; 
hence it flieth betwixt Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, 
Surrey, Kent, and Essex; and so weddeth himself to the 
Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious 
river feeleth the violence and benefit of the sea more than any 
river in Europe ; ebbing and flowing, twice a-day, more than 
sixty miles ; about whose banks are so many fair towns and 
princely palaces, that a German poet thus truly spake : * — 

Tot campos, &c. 

We saw so many woods and princely bowers, 
Sweet fields, brave palaces, and stately towers, 
So many gardens dress'd with curious care, 
That Thames with royal Tiber may compare. 

2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn: it hath its 
beginning in Plynlimmon hill, in Montgomeryshire ; and his end 
seven miles from Bristol ; washing, in the mean space, the 
walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers 
other places and palaces of note. 

3. Trent, so called for thirty kind of fishes that are found 
in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers ; who, having 
its fountain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the counties of 
Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the 
turbulent current of Humber, the most violent stream of all 
the isle. This Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river 
having a spring-head of its own, but it is rather the mouth or 

* Who this German poet was I cannot find, but the verses, in the ori. 
^nal Latin, are in Heyiin's C< smopntphv, pagre 240, and are as follow : 

Tot campos sylvan, tot regia tccta, tot nortos, 

Artifici cxcultos dextra, tot vidimus arccs ; 

Ut nunc Ausonio, Thamisis, cum Tibride certet. » 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 201 

apstuarium of divers rivers here confluent and meeting together, 
namely, your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent ; and 
(as the Danow, having received into its channel the river Dravus, 
Savus, Tibiscus, and divers others) changeth his name into this 
of Humberabus, as the old geographers call it. 

4. Medway, a Kentish river, famous for harbouring the royal 
navy. 

5. Tweed, the north-east bound of England, on whose 
northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable to^^'n of 
Berwick. 

6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle and her inexhaustible coal 
pits. These, and the rest of principal note, are thus compre- 
hended in one of Mr Drayton's sonnets : — 

Our flood's queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd ; 

And stately Severn for her shore is praised ; 
The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd ; 

And Avon's fame to Albion's cliti's is raised. 

Carlegian Chester vaunts her holy Dee ; 

York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 
The Peak, her Dove, win se banks so fertile be. 

And Kent will say her ^Medway doth excel. 

Cotswold rommends her Isis to the Thame ; 

Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood; 
Our western p.irts extol their Willy's fame, 

And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood. * 

*" LEE flu. LYGAN, Saxon. Luy, Mar. [forsan Marcellinus.] Lea 
Polydoro. The name of the water A\hich (runnyn betweiie Ware and 
London,) devydethe, lor a great part of the way, Essex and Hertford- 
shire. It begynnethe near a ph. re called Whitchurche , and from thence, 
passinge by Hertford, Ware, and Waltham, openethe into the Thamiso 
at Ham in Essex ; wheare the phice is, at this day, called Lee Mouthe. It 
hathe, of longe tyme, borne vessels from Loudon, twenty miles tow.irde 
the head ; for, in tyme of Kinge Alfrede, the Danes entered Leymouthe, 
and fortified, at a place adjoyninge to this ryver, twenty myles from Lon- 
don, where, by fortune, Kinge Alfrede pa.-c-inge by. espied that the 
channel of the ryver might be in such sorte weakened, thiit they should 
want water to return ^^lthe their b-hippes : he caused therefore the water 
to be at ated Dy two greate trenches, and settinge the Londoners upon 
theim, he made thtira battcil ; wherein they lost four of their capitaine5, 
and a great number of their common souldiers, the reste flyinge into the 
castle whhh they had biiilte. Not longe after, they weare so pressed that 
they forsoke all, and hft their shippes as a pray to the Londoners ; which 
breakinge some, and burnins^e other, ccineyed the rest to London. This 
castle, for the distance, might ^^Hme Hertfo'rde ; but it was some other 
upon that banke, which had no longe continuance ; for Edward the elder, 
and son of this Alfrede, builded Hertforde not longe after." Vide Lam. 
barde's Dirtioriarium Topographicum, voce Lee. "Drayton's Polyolbion, 
Song the Twelfth, and the tirst note thereon. 

Other authors, \^ ho confirm this fact, also add, " That for the purpose 
aforesaid he opened the mouth of the river." See Sir William Dii";dale's 
History of the em' anking and diaitiing the Fern, and Sir John Spelman's 
Life of Alfred the Great, published by Hearne, in 8vo, 1709 ; the perusal of 
which last-named author will leave the reader in very little doubt but that 



202 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

These observations are out of learned Dr Heylin, and my old 
deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; and because you say you love 
such discourses as these, of rivers, and fish, and fishing, I love you 
the better, and love the more to impart them to you. Never- 
theless, scholar, if I should begin but to name the several sorts 
of strange fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers 
that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, 
or both : and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth con- 
cerning one lately dissected by Dr Wharton, a man of great 
learning and experience, and of equal freedom to communicate 
it; one that loves me and my art; one to whom I have been 
beholden for many of the choicest observations that I have 
imparted to you. This good man, that dares do any thing rather 
than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he had lately ^ssected 
one strange fish, and he thus described it to me : 

" The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length : 
his mouth wide enough to receive, or take into it, the head of a 
man ; his stomach, seven or eight inches broad. He is of a slow 
motion ; and usually lies or lurks close in the mud ; and has a 
moveable string on his head, about a span, or near unto a quarter 
of a yard long; by the moving of which, which is his natural bait, 
when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other fish 
so close to him, that he can suck them into his mouth, and so 
devours and digests them." 

And, scholar, do not wonder at this ; for besides the credit of 
the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes which are 
. of the like and more unusual shapes, are very often taken on the 
mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore. And tliis will be 
no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt, where 'tis known, 
the famous river Nilus uoes not only breed fishes that yet want 
names, but by the overflov\dng of that river, and the help of the 
sun's heat on the fat slime which that river leaves on the banks 
when it falls back into its natiu-al channel, such strange fish and 
beasts are also bred, that no man can give a name to ; as Grotius 
in his Sopham, and others, have observed. 

But whither am I strayed in this discourse ? I will end it by 
telling you, that at the mouth of some of these rivers of ours, 
Herrings are so plentiful, as namely, near to Yarmouth in Nor- 
folk, and in the west country, Pilchers so very plentiful, as you 
will wonder to read what our learned Camden relates of them 
in his Britannia, p. 178, 186. 

Well, scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what, by reading 
BJid conference, I have observed concerning fish-ponds. 

these trenches are the very same that now branch off from the river 
between Temple-Mills, and Old-Ford, and crossing the Stratford road, 
enter the Thames, together with the principal stream, a little below 
' Blackwall. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 203 

CHAPTER XX. 

OF FISH PONDS, AND HOW TO ORDER THEM. 

Doctor Lebault, the learned Frencliman, in his large dis- 
course of Maison Rustique, gives this direction for making of 
fish ponds. I shall refer you to him, to read it at large ; but I 
think I shall contract it, and yet make it as useful.* 

He adviseth, that when you have drained the ground, and 
made the earth firm where the head of the pond must be, that 
you must then, in that place, drive in two or three rows of oak 
or elm piles, which should be scorched in the fire, or half burnt, 
before they be driven into the earth ; for being thus used, it 
preserves them much longer from rotting. And having done so, 
lay faggots or bavins of smaller wood betwixt them ; and then 
earth betwixt and above them : and then, having first very well 
rammed them and the earth, use another pile in like manner as 
the first were ; and note, that the second pile is to be of or 
about the height that you intend to make your slidce or flood- 
gate, or the vent that you intend shall convey the overflowings 
of your pond in any flood that shall endanger the breaking of 
the pond dam. 

Then he advises, that you plant allows or owlers about it, 
or both ; and then cast in bavins in some places not far from the 
side, and in the most sandy places, for fish both to spawn upon, 
and to defend them and the young fry from the many fish, and 
also from vermin, that lie at watch to destroy them, especially 
the spawTi of the Carp and Tench, when it is left to the mercy 
of ducks or vermin. 

He, and Dubravius, and all others advise, that you make 
choice of such a place for your pond, that it may be refreshed 
^ith a little rill, or ^vith rain water, running or falling into it ; 
by which fish are more inclined both to breed, and are also 
refreshed and fed the better, and do prove to be of a much 
sweeter and more pleasant taste. 

To which end it is observed, that such pools as be large, and 
have most gravel, and shallows where fish may sport themselves, 
do afford fish of the purest taste. And note, that in all pools 
it is best for fish to have some retiring place ; as namely, hollow 
banks, or shelves, or roots of trees, to keep them from danger, 

* A translation of this work under the title of Maison Eustimte, or the 
Country Farme, compiled by Charles Steuens and John Liebault, Doctors 
of Physicke, and translated into Enelish by Richard Surflet, appeared in 
quarto, Lond. 1600; and a second edition, with large additions, by Gervase 
Markliam, foL Lond. 1616. 



204 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

and when they think fit, from the extreme heat of summer, as 
also from the extremity of cold in winter. And note, that if 
many trees be growing- about your pond, the leaves thereof 
falling into the water, make it nauseous to the fish, and the fish 
to be so to the eater of it. 

It is noted, that the Tench and Eel love mud ; and the Carp 
loves gravelly ground, and in the hot months to feed on grass. 
You are to cleanse your pond, if you intend either profit or 
pleasure, once every three or four years, (especially some ponds,) 
and then let it lie dry six or twelve months, both to kill the 
water weeds, as water lilies, candocks, reate, and bulrushes, 
that breed there ; and also that as these die for want of water, 
so grass may grow in the pond's bottom, which Carps will eat 
greedily in all the hot months, if the pond be clean. The 
letting your pond dry, and sowing oats in the bottom, is also 
good, for the fish feed the faster : and being some time let dry, 
you may observe what kind of fish either increases or thrives 
best in that water ; for they differ much, both in their breeding 
and feeding. 

Lebault also advises, that if your ponds be not very large and 
roomy, that you ofcen feed your fish by throwing into them 
chippings of bread, curds, grains, or the entrails of chickens, or 
of any fowl or beast that you kill to feed yourselves ; for these 
afford fish a great relief. He says, that frogs and ducks do 
much harm, and devour both the spawn and the young fry of 
all fish, especially of the Carp ; and I have, besides experience, 
many testimonies of it. But Lebault allows water-frogs to be 
good meat, especially in some months, if they be fat ;* but you 
are to note, that he is a Frenchman ; and we English will 
hardly believe him, though we know frogs are usually eaten in 
his country : however; he advises to destroy them and king- 
fishers out of your ponds. And he advises not to suffer much 
shooting at wild fowl : for that, he says, affrightens, and harms, 
and destroys the fish. 

Note, that Carps and Tench thrive and breed best when no 
other fish is put with them into the same pond ; for all other 
fish devour their spawn, or at least the greatest part of it. And 
note, that clods of grass throvni into any pond feed any Carps 
in summer ; and, that garden earth and parsley thrown into a 
pond recovers and refreshes the sick fish. And note, that when 
you store your pond, you are to put into it two or three melters 
for one spawner, if you put them into a breeding pond ; but if 
into a nurse pond or feeding pond, in which they will not breed, 

* Angling" for fro^s is a rommon Frenrh sport and profitablo, for frogs 
epU hi^h in the market, a dish of frogs being very expensive. I never saw 
the edible frog in Britain, though it is said to Le native. Only the hiud^ 
quarters are used. — J. R. 



THE CO-\rPLETE ANGLER. 205 

then no care is to be taken whether there be most male or 
L'lnale Carps. 

It is observed, that the best ponds to breed Carps are those 
that be stony or sandy, and are warm, and free from wind ; and 
that are not deep, but have MiUow trees and grass on their 
sides, over which the water does sometimes flow ; and note, 
tliat Carps do more usually breed in marie pits, or pits that 
Lave clean clay bottoms ; or in new ponds, or ponds that lie 
dry a \nnter season, than in old ponds that be full of mud and 
weeds.* 

* It is observable, that the author has ?aid very little of pond-fishing, 
whirh is, in truth, a dull recreation ; and to which I have heard it 
objected, that fish in ponds are already caui^ht. Nevertheless, I find that 
in ihe canal at St James's Park, which, though a large one, is yet a pond, 
it was in the reign of Charles II. the practice of ladies to angle. 

Beneath, a shoal of silver fishes glides 
And plays about the gilded barges' sides ; 
The ladies, angling in the crystal lake, 
Feast on the waters with the prey they take : 
At once victorious with their lines and eyes. 
They make the fishes and the men their prize. 

Waller — Poem on St James's Park, 

As the method of ordering fish-ponds is now very well known, and 
there are few books of gardening but what give some directions about it, 
it is hoped the reader will think the follo\\ ing quotation from Bowlker 
sufiicieiit, by Way of annotation on this chapter. 

" When you intend to stock a pool with Carp or Tench, make a close 
Pthering hedge across the head of the pool, about a yard distance of the 
dam, and abnut three feet above the water, which is the best refuge for 
them I know of, and the only method to preserve pool fish ; because if auy 
one attempts to rob the pool, muddies the water, or disturbs it with nets, 
mf)st of the fish, if not all, immediately fly between the hedge and the dam, 
to preserve themselves : and in all pools where there are such shelters and 
shades, the fish delight to swim backwards and forwards, through and 
round the same, rubbing and sporting themselves therewith. This hedge 
ought to be made chiefly of oris, and not too close, the boughs long and 
straggling towards the dam, by which means you may feed and fatten 
them as you please. The best baits for drawing them together, at first, 
are maggots or young wasps ; the next are, bullock's brains and lob- worms, 
chopped together, and thrown into the pools in large quantities, about two 
hours before sunset, summer and winter. By thus using these ground baita 
once a-day, for a fortnight together, the fish will come as constantly and 
nnturally'to the place as cattle to their fodder ; and to satisfy your curio- 
sity, and to con^ ince you herein, after you have baited the pool for some 
time, as directed, take about the quantity of a twopenny loaf of wheaten 
bread, cut it into slices, and wet it, then throw it into the pool where you 
had baited, and the Carp will feed upon it; after you have used the wet 
bread three or four mornings, then throw some dry bread in, which will 
lie on the top of the water, and if you watch, out of sight of the fish, you 
w ill presently see them swim to it, and suck it in. I look upon wheaten 
bread t<» be the best food for them, though barley or oaten bread is very 
good. If there be Tench and Perch in the same p<md, they will feed upon 
the four former baits, and not touch the bread. Indeed there is no pool- 
fish so shy and nice as a Carp. When the water is disturbed, Carp will fly 
to the safest shelter they can, which I one day observed, when assisting a 
gentleman to fish his pool; for another person disturbed thewate; by 
throwing the casting-net, but caught never a Carp, whereupon two or 
three of us stripped and went into the pool, which was provided with such 
a sort of hedge in it as is before described, whither the Carp had fled for 



206 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Well, scholar, I have told you the substance of all that either 
observation or discourse, or a diligent survey of Dubravius and 
Lebault, hath told me ; not that they, in their long- discourses, 
nave not said more ; but the most of the rest are so common 
observations, as if a man should tell a good arithmetician that 
twice two is four. I will therefore put an end to this discourse ; 
and we will here sit down and rest us. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

DIRECTIONS FOB MAKING OF A LINE, AND FOR THE COLOURING 
OF BOTH ROD AND LINE. 

Piscator. Well, scholar, I have held you too long about 
these cadis, and smaller fish, and rivers, and fish ponds ; and 
my spirits are almost spent, and so, I doubt, is your patience : 
but being we are now almost at Tottenham, where I first met 
you, and where we are to part, I will lose no time, but give 
you a little direction how to make and order your lines, and to 
colour the hair of which you make your lines, for that is very 
needful to be known of an angler ; and also how to paint your 
rod, especially your top ; for a right groHTi top is a choice com- 
modity, and should be preserved from the water soaking into it, 
which makes it in wet weather to be heavy and fish ill favour- 
edly, and not true ; and also it rots quickly for want of 
painting ; and I think a good top is worth preserving, or I had 
not taken care to keep a top above twenty years.* 

safety ; then fishing- with our hands on both sides the hedge, that is, one 
on either side, we catched what quantity of Carp was wanting, " — 
Bowlker, p. 62. 

The reader may also consult a book published about the year 1712, entitled 
A Discourse of Fish and Fish-ponds, by a Person of Honour, who, I have 
been told by one who knew him, was the Honourable Roger North, author 
of the Life of the Lord Keeper Guildford. See vol. i. p. 202. 

* The author having said nothing about choosing or making rods in any 
part of his book, it was thought proper to insert the following directions : 

For fishing at the bottom, whether with a running line or float, the reed, 
or cane-rod is, on account of its lightness and elasticity, the best, especially 
if you angle for those fish which bite but tenderly, as Roach and Dace. 
And of these there are rods that put up, and make a walking stick. There 
are others in many joints, that put up together in a bag, andi are therefore 
called bag-rods : these last are very useful to travel with, as they take but 
little room. Next to these is the hazel, but that is more apt to warp than 
the cane ; these, as also excellent fly-rods, are to be had at all the fishing 
tackle shops in London, and therefore need no particular description, only 
be careful, whenever you bespeak a rod of reed, or caTie, that the workman 
does not rasp down into the bark which grows round the joints, a fault 
which the makers of rods are often guilty of ; the consequence whereof is, 
that the rod is thereby made weaker at the joints than elsewhere, and there 
being no bark to repel the wet, it soon rots, and, whenever you hook a 
large fish, certainly breaks. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 207 

But first for your line : First note, that you are to take care 
that your hair be round and clear, and free from galls, or scabs, 

But if you live in the country, and are forced to make your own rods, 
take these directions : — 

Between the latter end of November and Christmas, when the sap is 
pone down into the roots of trees, gather the straightest hazels you can 
find for stocks, and let them, at the greatest end, be about an inch or more 
in diameter ; at the same time, gather shoots of a less size, for middle pieces 
and tops, tie them together in a bundle, and let them lie on a dry floor ; 
at the end of fifteen or sixteen months, match them together, and to the 
slender ends of the tops, after cutting off about eight or ten inches, whip a 
fine taper piece of whalebone of that length, then cut the ends of the stock, 
the middle piece, and the top, with a long slant, so that they may join 
exactly to each other, and spread some shoemaker's wax, very thin, over 
tlie slants ; bind them neatly with strong waxed thread ; and, lastly, fix a 
strong loop of horse hair to the whalebone. Let the rod, so made, lie a 
week to settle before you use it. In this manner, also, you are to make a 
fly-rod; only observe, that the latter must be much slenderer from the 
end of the stock than the former. 

But for the nentest fly-rod you can make, get a yellow whole deal 
board that is free from knots, cut off about seven feet of the best end, and 
saw it into some square breadths: let a joiner plane off the angles, and 
make it perfectly round, a little tapering, and this will serve fur the stock; 
then piece it to a fine straight hazel, of about six feet long, and then a 
delicate piece of fine grained yew, planed round like an arrow, and taper- 
ing, with whalebone, as before, of about two feet in length. There is no 
determining precisely the length of a fly-rod, but one of fourteen feet is as 
long as can be well managed with one hand. To colour the stock, dip a 
feather in aquafortis, and with your hand chafe it into the deal, and it will 
be of a cinnamon colour. 

But before you attempt this sort of work, you must be able to bind 
neatly, and fas"ten off. 

When the season is over, and you have done with your rods, take them 
to pieces, and bind the joints to a straight pole, and let them continue to 
bound till the season returns for using them again. See more directions 
about the fly-rod, part ii. chap. v. 

Rods for Barbel, Carp, and other large fish, should be of hazel, and pro- 
portionably stronger than those for Roach and Dace. And note, that for 
fly-fishing the bamboo cane is excellent. Screws to rods are not only 
heavy, and apt to be out of repair, but they are absolutely unnetess: ry ; 
and the common way of inserting one joint in another is sufficiently secure, 
if the work be true. 

Our forefathers were wont to pursue even their amusements with great 
formality. An angler of the last age must have his fishing-coat, which, if 
not black, was at least of a very dark colour ; a black velvet cap, like those 
which jockeys now wear, only larger ; and a rod with a stock as long as a 
halbert : and thus equipped, would he stalk forthwith the eyes of a whole 
neighbourhood upon him. 

But in these latter days, bag-rods have been invented, which the angler 
may easily conceal, and do not proclaim to all the world where he is going. 
Those for float-fishing are now become common ; but this invention haa 
lately been extended to rods for fly-fishing ; and here follows a description 
of such a neat, portable, and useful one, as no angler that has once tried it 
will ever be without : 

Let the joints be four in number, and made of hiccory, or some such very 
tough wood, and two feet four inches in lengtli, the largest joint not 
exceeding half an inch in thickness. The top mu'^t be bamboo shaved. And 
for the stock, let it be of ash, full in the grasp, of an equal length with the 
other joints ; and with a strong ferrule at the smaller e;:d, made to receive 
the large joint, which mvist be well shouldered and fitted to it with the 
utmost exactness. 

This rod will go into a bag, and lie very well concealed in a pocket in 
the lining of your coat, ou the left side, made straight, ou purpose to 
receive it. 



208 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

or frets : for a well chosen, even, clear, round hair, of a kind 
of glass colour, will prove as strong as three uneven scabby 
hairs that are ill chosen, and full of galls or unevenness. You 
shall seldom find a black hair but it is round, but many white 
are flat and uneven ; therefore, if you get a lock of right, round, 
clear, glass colour hair, make much of it. 

And for making your line, observe this rule : First, let your 
hair be clean washed ere you go about to twist it ; and then 
choose not only the clearest hair for it, but hairs that be of an 
equal bi.gness, for such do usually stretch all together, and 
break all together, which hairs of an unequal bigness never do, 
but break singly, and so deceive the angler that trusts to them. 

When you have twisted your links, lay them in water for a 
quarter of an hour at least, and then twist them over again 
before you tie them into a line : for those that do not so shall 
usually find their line to have a hair or two shrink, and be 
shorter than the rest at the first fishing with it, which is so 
much of the strength of the line lost for want of first watering 
it and then retwisting it ; and this is most visible in a seven- 
hair line, one of those which hath always a black hair in the 
middle,* 



* Your line, whether it be a running- line or for float-fishing', had best he 
of hair ; unless you fish for Barbel, and then it must be of strong- silk. And 
the latter, (the line for float-fishing,) must be proportioned to the general 
size of thefish you expect — always remembering that the single hair is to 
be preferred for Roach or Dace fishing. But the fly line is to be very 
strong; and, for the grtater facility in throwing, should be eighteen or 
tiventy hairs at the top, and so diminishing insensibly to the hook. There 
are lines now to be had at the fishing-tackle shops that have no joints, but 
wove in one piece. 

But notwithstanding this and other improvements, perhaps some may 
still choose to make their own lines. In which case, if they prefer those 
twisted with the fingers, they need only observe the rules given by the 
author for that purpose. But, for greater neatness and expedition, I 
would recommend an engine lately invented, which is now to be had at, 
almost any fishing tackle sliop in London : it consists of a large horizontal 
wheel and three very small ones, enclosed in a brass box about a quarter 
of an inch thick, and two inches in diameter ; the axis of each of the small 
wheels is continued through the under side of the box, and is formed into 
a hook ; by means of a strong screw it may be fixed in any post or pai'ti- 
tion, and is set in motion by a small winch in the centre of the box. 

To twist links with this engine, take as many hairs as you intend each 
sh;dl consist of, and, dividing them into three parts, tie each parcel to a bit 
of fine twine, al)outsix inches long, doubled, and put through the aforesaid 
hooks ; then take a piece of lead, of conical figure, two inches high, and 
two in diameter at the base, with a hook at the apex, or point; tie your 
tliree parcels of hair into one knot, and to this, by the hook, hang the 
weight 

Lastly, take a quart, or larger, bottle cork, and cut into the sides, at 
equal distances, three grooves ; and placing it so as to receive each division 
of hair, begin to twist: you will find the link begin to twist with great 
evenness at the lead ; as it grows tighter, shift the cork a little upwards ; 
and when the whole is sufficiently twisted, take out the cork, and tie the 
link into a knot, and so proceed till you have twisted links suflicient for 
your line, observing to lessen the number of hairs ia each link in such 
proportion as that the line may b6 taper. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 209 

And for dyeing of your hairs, do it thus : take a pint of 
strong ale, half a pound of soot, and a little quantity of the 
juice of walnut tree leaves, and an equal quantity of alum; 
put these together into a pot, pan, or pipkin, and boil them half 
an hour ; and having so done, let it cool ; and being cold, put 
your hair into it, and there let it he ; it will turn your hair to 
be a kind of water or glass colour, or greenish ; and the longer 
you let it lie, the deeper coloured it will be. You might be 
taught to make many other colours, but it is to little purpose ; 
for, doubtless, the water colour, or glass coloured hair is the 
most choice and most useful for an angler, but let it not be too 
green.* 

But if you desire to colour hair greener, then do it thus : 
take a quart of small ale, half a pound of alum ; then put these 
into a pan or pipkin, and your hair into it %\'ith them ; then put 
it upon a fire, and let it boil softly for half an hour, and then 
take out your hair, and let it dry ; and having so done, then 
take a bottle of water, and put into it two handfuls of mari- 
golds, and cover it with a tile, or what you think fit, and set it 
again on the fire, where it is to boil again softly for half an hour, 
about which time the scum will turn yellow ; then put into it 

When you use the fly, you will find it necessary to continue your line to 
a greater degree of fineness : in order to which, supposing the line to be 
eight yards in length, fasten a piece of three or four twisted links, taper- 
ing till It becomes of the size of afine grass : and to the end of this fix your 
hook link, which should be either of very fine grass, or silk-worm gut. A 
week's practice will enable a learner to throw one of these lines ; and he 
may lengthen it, by a yard at a time, at the greater end, till he can throw 
fifteen yards neatly, till when, he is to reckon himself but a novice. 

For the colour, you must be determined by that of the river you fish in : 
but I have found that a line of the colour of pepper and salt, when mixed, 
will suit any water. 

Many inconveniences attend the use of twisted (open) hairs for your 
hook-line ; see part ii. chap. v. Silk-worm gut is both fine and very strong ; 
but then it is apt to fray ; though this may, in some measure, be prevented 
by waxing it well. 

Indian, or sea-grass, makes excellent hook-lines ; and though some 
object to it, as being apt to grow brittle, and to kink in using, with proper 
management it is the best material for the purpose yet known, especially 
if ordered in the follo\ving manner : 

Take as many, of the finest you can get, as you please : put them into 
any vessel ; and pour therein the scummed fat of a pot, wherein fresh, 
but by no means salt meat has been boiled : when they have lain three or 
four hours, take them out one by one, and stripping the grease off with 
your finger and thumb, (but do not wip them,) stretch each grass as long 
as it will yield, coil them up in rings, and lay them by; and you will find 
them become near as small, full as round, and much stronger than the best 
single hairs you can get. To preserve them moist, keep them in a piece of 
bladder well oiled; and before you use them, let them soak half an hour 
in water ; or, in your walk to the river side, put a length of it into your 
mouth. 

If your grass is coarse, it will fall heavily into the water, and scare away 
the fish, on which account gut has the advantage. But, after all, if your 
grass be fine and round, it is the best thing you can use. 

* These recipes are far from being scientifically chemical ; but fewer 
improvements have been introduced into hair-staining- than any other 
art. _J. R. 



210 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

half a pound of copperas, beaten small, and with it the hair that 
you intend to colour ; then let the hair be boiled softly till half 
the liquor be wasted, and then let it cool three or four hours, 
with your hair in it : and you are to observe, that the more 
copperas you put into it the greener it will be ; but doubtless 
the pale green is best. But if you desire yellow hair, which is 
only good when the weeds rot, then put in the more mari- 
golds ; and abate most of the copperas, or leave it quite out, and 
take a little verdigris instead of it. 

This for colouring your hair. 

And as for painting your rod, which must be in oil, you must 
first make a size with glue and water, boiled together until the 
glue be dissolved, and the size of a lye colour : then strike your 
size upon the wood with a bristle, or a brush, or pencil, whilst it 
is hot : that being quite dry, take white lead, and a little red lead, 
and a little coal black, so much as altogether will make an ash 
colour ; grind these altogether mth linseed oil ; let it be thick, 
and lay it thin upon the wood with a brush or pencil : this do 
for the ground of any colour to lie upon wood. 

For a green, take pink and verdigris, and grind them together 
in linseed oil, as thin as you can well grind it ; then lay it 
smoothly on with your brush, and drive it thin : once doing, 
for the most part, will serve, if you lay it well ; and if twdce, 
be sure yoiu" first colour be thoroughly dry before you lay on a 
second.* 

Well, scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and 
we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross, I mil, as we 
walk towards it in the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle 
hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have 
possessed my soul since we met together. And these thoughts 
shall be told you, that you also may join with me in thankful- 
ness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, for our happi- 
ness. And that our present happiness may appear to be the 
greater, and we the more thankful for it, I will beg you to 
consider with me how many do, even at this very time, lie 
under the torment of the stone, the gout, and toothach ; and 
this we are free from. And every misery that I miss is a new 
mercy ; and therefore let us be thankful. There have been, 
since we met, others that have met disasters of broken limbs ; 
some have been blasted, others thunder-strucken ; and we have 
been freed from these, and all those many other miseries that 
threaten human nature : let us therefore rejoice and be thankfuL 
Nay, which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the insup- 
portable burden of an accusing, tormenting conscience — a misery 

* The painting- of the rod is not for mere ornament, but to preserve 
it from being soaked with moisture, or rendered brittle by becoming too 
dry. _ J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 211 

that none can bear : and therefore let iis praise Him for his 
preventing grace, and say, Every misery that I miss is a new 
mercy. Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty 
times our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be 
healthful and cheerful like us, who, A\ith the expense of a little 
money, have eat, and drank, and laughed, and angled, and sung, 
and slept securely ; and rose next day, and cast away care, and 
sung, and laughed, and angled again ; which are blessings rich 
men cannot purchase uith all their money. Let me tell you, 
scholar, I have a rich neighbour that is always so busy that he 
has no leisure to laugh ; the whole business of his life is to get 
money, and more money, that he may still get more and more 
money ; he is still drudging on, and says that Solomon says, 
' ' The diligent hand maketh rich ; " and it is true indeed : but 
he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a 
man happy : for it was wisely said, by a man of great observa- 
tion, " That there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this 
side them." And yet God dehver us from pinching poverty, 
and grant, that having a competency, we may be content and 
thankful ! Let not us repine, or so much as think the gifts of 
God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches ; v.hen, 
as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches, 
hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him 
with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep 
quietly. Vv'e see but the outGile of the rich man's happiness ; few 
consider him to be like the silk- worm, that, when she seems to 
play, is, at the very same time, spinning her oa\ti bowels, and con- 
suming herself ; * and this many rich men do, loading themselves 
with corroding cares, to keep what they have, probably, un- 
conscionably got. Let us, therefore, be thankful for health and 
competence ; and, above all, for a quiet conscience. 

Let me tell you, scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, 
with his friend, to see a country fair ; where he saw ribbons, and 
looking-glasses, aiid nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, 
and many other gimcracks ; and, having observed them, and all 
the other finnimbruns that make a complete country fair, he 
said to his friend, " Lord, how many things are there in this 
world of which Diogenes hath no need ! " And truly it is so, 
or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves 
to get what they have no need of. Can any man charge God, 
that he hath not given him enough to make his hfe happy ? No, 
doubtless ; for nature is content with a little. And yet you 
shall hardly meet with a man that complains not of some want ; 

* This is a very inaccurate comparison : the silk-worm does not consume 
herself by ^pinniiig- hor own bowels, but, out of <i reservoir of silk g'um ou 
each side of the thfdat, spins a warm covering fyr protection during the 
torpidity preceding a change of state. — J, R. 



212 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

though he, indeed, wants nothing but his will ; it may be, 
nothing but his will of his poor neighbour, for not worshipping 
or not flattering him : and thus, when we might be happy and 
quiet, we create trouble to ourselves. I have heard of a man 
that was angry with himself because he was no taller ; and of a 
woman that broke her looking-glass because it would not shew 
her face to be as young and handsome as her next neighbour's 
was. And I knew another to whom God had given health and 
plenty, but a wife that nature had made peevish, and her 
husband's riches had made purse-proud ; and must, because she 
was rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the 
church ; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into 
a contention for it, and at last into a lawsuit with a dogged 
neighbour who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and 
purse-proud as the other ; and this lawsuit begot higher opposi- 
tions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits ; 
for you must remember, that both were rich, and must therefore 
have their Avills. Well ! this wilful, purse-proud lawsuit lasted 
during the life of the first husband ; after which his wife vexed 
and chid, and chid and vexed, till she also chid and vexed herself 
into her grave ; and so the wealth of these poor rich people was 
cursed into a punishment, because they wanted meek and 
thankful hearts ; for those only can make us happy. I knew a 
man that had health and riches, and several houses, all beautiful, 
and ready furnished ; and would often trouble himself and 
family to be removing from one house to another : and being 
asked by a friend why he removed so often from one house to 
another, replied, *' It was to find content in some one of them." 
But his friend, knowing his temper, told him, " If he would 
find content in any of his houses, he must leave himself behind 
him ; for content will never dwell but in a meek and quiet soul." 
And this may appear, if we read and consider what our Saviour 
says in St Matthew's Gospel; for he there says, " Blessed be 
the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed be the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed be the poor in spirit, 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And, Blessed be the meek, 
for they shall possess the earth." Not that the meek shall not 
also obtain mercy, and see God, and be comforted, and at last 
come to the kingdom of heaven ; but, in the meantime, he, and 
he only, possesses the earth, as he goes toward that kingdom 
of heaven, by being humble and cheerful, and content with what 
his good God has allotted him. He has no turbulent, repining, 
vexatious thoughts that he deserves better ; nor is vexed when 
he sees others possessed of more honour or more riches than his 
wise God has allotted for his share : but he possesses what he 
has \vith a meek and contented quietness, such a quietness as 
makes his very dreams pleasing, both to God and himself, • 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 213 

j\Iy honest scholar, all this is told to incline you to thankful- 
ness : and to incline you the more, let me tell you, that though 
the prophet David was guilty of murder and adultery, and many 
other of the most deadly sins, yet he was said to be a man after 
God's o^\^l heart, because he abounded more with thankfulness 
than any other that is mentioned in Holy Scripture, as may 
appear in his book of Psalms, where there is such a commixture 
of his confessing of his sins and unworthiness, and such thank- 
fulness for God's pardon and mercies, as did make him to be 
accounted, even by God himself, to be a man after his own 
heart : and let us, in that, labour to be as like him as we can ; 
let not the blessin.gs we receive daily from God make us not to 
value, or not praise Him, because they be common ; let not us 
forget to praise him for the innocent mirth and pleasure we have 
met with since Ave met together. What would a blind man 
give to see the pleasant rivers, and meadows, and flowers, and 
fountains that we have met with since we met together ? I 
have been told, that if a man that was born blind could obtain 
to have his sight for but only one hour during his whole hfe, 
and should, at the first opening of his eyes, fix his sight upon 
the sun when it was in his full glory, either at the rising or 
setting of it, .he Avould be so transported and amazed, and so 
admire the glory of it, that he would not willingly turn his eyes 
from that first ravishing object, to behold all the other various 
beauties this world could present to him. And this, and many 
other like blessings, we enjoy daily. And for most of them, 
because they be so common, most men forget to pay their 
praises : but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to 
Him that made that sun and us, and still protects us, and gives 
us flowers, and showers, and stomachs, and meat, and content, 
and leisure to go a-fishing. 

\Vell, scholar, I have almost tired myself, and, I fear, more 
than almost tired you. But I now see Tottenham High 
Cross ; and our short walk thither shall put a period to my 
too long discourse ; in which my meaning was, and is, to 
plant that in your mind with which I labour to possess my 
own soul, — that is, a meek and thankful heart. And to 
that end I have shewed you that riches without them (meek- 
ness and thankfulness) do not make any man happy. But let 
me tell you, that riches >vith them remove many fears and 
cares. And, therefore, my advice is, that you endeavour 
to be honestly rich, or contentedly poor : but be sure that 
your riches be justly got, or you spoil all. For it is well 
said by Caussin, " He that loses his conscience has nothing 
left that is worth keeping." Therefore be sure you look to 
that. And, in the next place, look to your health ; and if you 
have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience ; 
for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of ; 



214 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



a blessing that money cannot buy ; and therefore value it, and 
be thankful for it. As for money, (which may be said to be 
the third blessing-,) neglect it not ; but note, that there is no 
necessity of being rich ; for I told you, there be as many miseries 
beyond riches as on this side them : and, if you have a compe- 
tence, enjoy it with a meek, cheerful, thankful heart. I will 
tell you, scholar, I have heard a grave divine say, that God has 
two dwellings, — one in heaven, and the other in a meek and 
thankful heart, which Almighty God grant to me, and to my 
honest scholar ! And so you are welcome to Tottenham High 
Cross. 

Venator. Well, master, I thank you for all your good direc- 
tions ; but for none more than this last, of thankfulness, which 
I hope I shall never forget. 




BowEiiBANKs, Tottenham. 

And pray let's now rest ourselves in this sweet shady arbour, 
which Nature herself has woven with her own fine finger ; it 
is such a contexture of woodbines, sweetbriar, jessamine, and 
myrtle, and so interwoven, as will secure us both from the^ sun's 
violent heat, and from the approaching shower. And being sat 
down, I will requite a part of your courtesies with a bottle of 
sack, milk, oranges, and sugar, which, all put together, make a 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 215 

drink like nectar ; indeed, too good for any body but us anglers. 
And so, master, here is a full glass to you of that liquor ; and, 
\vhen you have pledged me, I \nll repeat the verses which I 
promised you : it is a copy printed amongst some of Sir Henry 
V.'otton's, and doubtless made either by him or by a lover of 
angling. Come, master, now drink a glass to me, and then I 
will pledge you, and fall to my repetition ; it is a description 
cf such country recreations as I have enjoyed since I had the 
happiness to fall into your company. 

Quivering fears, heart-tearing cares, 
Anxious sighs, untimely tears, 

F!y, fly to courts, 

Fly to fond worldlings' sports, 
Where strain'd Sardonic smiles* are glosing stilly 
And grief is forced to laugh against her will 

Where mirth's but mummery, 

And sorrows only real be. 

Fly'from our country pastimes, fly, 
Sad troo])S of human misery. 

Come, serene looks, 

Clear as the crystal brooks, 
Or the pure azured heaven that smiles to see 
The rich attendance on our poverty ; 

Peace and a secure mind, 

Which all men seek, we only find. 

Abused mortals ! did you know 

Where joy, heart's ease, and comforts grow, 

You 'd scorn proud towers. 

And seek them in these bowers ; 
Where winds, sometimes, our woods perhaps may shake, 
But blustering care could never tempest make. 

Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us. 

Saving of fountains that glide by us. 

Here 's no fantastic mask nor dance, 
But of our kids that frisk and prance ; 

Nor wars are seen. 

Unless upon the green 
Two harmless lambs are butting one the other. 
Which done, both bleating run, each to his mother ; 

And wounds are never found, 

Save what the ploughshare gives the ground. 

Here are no entrapping baits, 
To hasten too, too hasty fates, 

Unless it be 

I'he fond credulity 

* Feig^ned, or forced smiles, from the word Sardon, the name of an herb, 
resembling' smallasre, and cfrowing- in Sardinia, which being eaten by men, 
f'^iitrpp*'^ the muscles, and excites laughter, even to death. Vide Ercumi 
.Idagia tit, Euui. 



216 THE COMPLETE ANGLER* 

Of silly fish, which (worldling like) still look 
Upon the bait, but never on the hook ; 

Nor envy, 'less among 

The birds, for price of their sweet song. 

Go, let the diving Negro seek 

For gems, liid in some forlorn creek : 

We all pearls scorn, 

Save what the dewy morn 
Congeals upon each little spire of grass, 
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass ; 

And gold ne'er here appears, 

Save what the yellow Ceres bears. 

Bless'd silent groves, oh, may you be, 
For ever, mirth's best nursery ! 

May pure contents 

For ever pitch their tents 
Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains. 
And peace stiU slumber by these purling fountains ; 

Which we may every year 

Meet, when we come a-fishing here. 

Piscator. Trust me, scholar, I thank you heartily for these 
verses ; they be choicely good, and doubtless made by a lover 
of angling. Come now, drink a glass to me, and I will 
requite you with another very good copy : it is a farewell to 
the vanities of the world, and some say written by Sir Harry 
Wotton, who, I told you, was an excellent angler. But let 
them be writ by whom they will, he that writ them had a brave 
soul, and must needs be possessed with happy thoughts at the 
time of their composure : 

Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles ! 
Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles ! 
Fame 's but a hollow echo — gold, pure clay — > 
Honour, the darling but of one short day — - 
Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin — . 
State, but a golden prison, to live in. 
And torture free-born minds — embroider'd trains. 
Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins — 
And blood allied to greatness is alone 
Inherited, not purchased, nor our own. 

Fame, honour, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth. 

Are but the fading blossoms of the earth. 

I would be great, but that the sun doth still 

Level his rays against the rising hill — 

I would be high, but see the proudest oak 

Most subject to the rending thunder-stroke — 

I would be rich, but see men, too unkind, ^ • 

Dig in the bowels of the richest mind — 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 217 

I would be wise, but that I often see 

Tlae fox suspected, whilst the ass goes free — 

I would be fair, but see the fair and proud, 

Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud — . 

I would be poor, but know the humble grass 

Still trampled on by each unworthy ass, — 

Rich, hated — wise, su>pected — scorn'd, if poor — 

Great, fear'd — .fair, tempted — high, still envied more: 
I have wish'd all ; but now I wish for neither. 
Great, high, rich, wise, nor fair, — poor I 'II be rather. 

Would the world now adopt me for her heir — . 

Would beauty's queen entitle me the fair — 

Fame speak me fortune's minion — could I " vie 

Angels" with India* — with a speaking eye 

Command bare heads, bow'd knees, strike justice dumb, 

As well as blind and lame, or give a tongue 

To stones by epitaphs — be called " great master," 

In the loose rhymes of every poetaster — 

Could I be more than any man that lives, 

Great, fair, rich, wise, all in superlatives, — 

Yet I more freely would these gifts resign. 

Than ever Fortune would have made them mine, 

And hold one minute of this holy leisure 

Beyond the riches of this empty pleasure ! 

Welcome, pure thoughts ! welcome, ye silent groves ! 
These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves i 
Now, the wing'd people of the sky shall sing 
My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring : 
A prayer-book, now, shall be my looking-glass, 
In which I will adore sweet virtue's face. 
Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares, 
No broken vows dwell here, nor pale-faced fears ; 
Then here I'll sit, and sigh my hot love's folly, 
And learn t' affect a holy melancholy : 

And if contentment be a stranger, then, 

I '11 ne'er look for it, but in heaven again. 

Venator. Well, master, these verses be worthy to keep a 
room in every man's memory. I thank you for them ; a)id I 
thank you for your many instructions, which ( God willing) I 
\vin not forget. And as St Austin, in his Confessions, (book 

* An angel is a piece of coin, value ten shillings. The words to " vie 
ang-els" are a metonomy, and sig-nify to " compare wealth." In the old 
balJad of The Beggar's Daughter of liethnal Gieen, a competition of this 
kind is introduced : a young knight, about to marry the beggar's daughter, 
is dissuaded from so unequal a match by some gentlemen, his relations, 
who urge the poverty of her father ; the beggar challenges them to " drop 
angels" with him, and fairly ••mpties the purses of them all. 

The neighbourhood of Bethnal Green is seldom without a public house 
with a sign representing the Beggar, and the dissuaders of the match, 
dropping gold; the youn'g woman, and the knight, her lover, standing 
between them. 



218 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

iv. cliap. 3) commemorates the kindness of his friend Verecundus, 
for lending him and his companion a country house, because 
there they rested and enjoyed themselves, free from the troubles 
of the world : so, having had the like advantage, both by your 
conversation and the art you have taught me, I ought ever to 
do the like ; for, indeed, your company and discourse have 
been so useful and pleasant, that, I may truly say, I have only 
lived since I enjoyed them and turned angler, and not before. 
Nevertheless, here I must part with you, here in this now sad 
place where I was so happy as first to meet you : but I shall 
long for the ninth of May ; for then I hope again to enjoy your 
beloved company at the appointed time and place. And now I 
^^dsh for some somniferous potion, that might force me to sleep 
away the intermitted time ; which Avill pass away with me as 
tediously as it does with men in sorrow ; nevertheless, I will 
make it as short as I can, by my hopes and wishes : and, my 
good master, I ^dll not forget the doctrine which you told me 
Socrates taught his scholars, that they should not think to be 
honoured so much for being philosophers, as to honour philo- 
sophy by their virtuous lives. You advised me to the like 
concerning angling, and I will endeavour to do so ; and to live 
like those many worthy men, of which you made mention in 
the former part of your discourse. This is my firm resolution. 
And as a pious man advised his friend, that, to beget mortifica- 
tion, he should frequent churches, and view monuments and 
charnel-houses, and then and there consider how many dead 
bones time had piled up at the gates of death : so when I would 
beget content, and increase confidence in the power, and 
wisdom, and providence of Almighty God, I will walk the 
meadows, by some gliding stream, and there contemplate the 
lilies that take no care, and those very many other various little 
living creatures that are not only created, but fed (man knows- 
not how) by the goodness of the God of Nature, and therefore 
trust in him. This is my purpose: and so, " let every thing 
that hath breath praise the Lord." And let the blessing of St 
Peter's Master be with mine. 

Piscator. And upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare 
trust in His providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling. 

*' STUDY TO BE QUIET." — 1 TheSS. Iv. 11. 



END OF PART I. 



It is imagined that the several descriptions of River Fish, contained 
in the foregoing pages, are abundantly sufficient for the information of 
any mere angler. But those who are curious to know the essential 
diflferences between the various species, are hereby recommended to a 
work entitled Ichthyographia, s. Historia Piscium, by Francis 
Willoughby, Esq. fol. Oxon. 1686 ; and to a posthumous work of that 
learned man and excellent naturalist, the Rev. Mr John Ray, entitled 
Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium, published by Dr Derham, 
in octavo, 1713. 

And whereas, in page 194, &c. n. it is hinted, that the history of 
aquatic insects is but little known ; and this stupendous branch of 
natural science is well worthy of farther investigation ; the reader is 
hereby directed to the perusal of the jLife of the Ephemeron, an insect 
little differing from our green and gray drake, translated from the Low 
Dutch of Dr Swammerdara, by Dr Edward Tyson, London, quarto, 
1681. And for his farther information on this subject, we have added, 
as the first number of the Appendix to this work, a translation of a 
Synopsis of these creatures, drawn out from the observations of the 
above JMr "Willoughby, and exhibited in IMr Ray's Methodus Insectorum, 
mentioned by Dr Derham in his Physico- Theology, page 234. * 

It is not for the improvement of angling alone, that the above 
authors are referred to : the study of the works of nature is the 
most effectual way to open and enlarge the mind, and excite in us the 
affections of reverence and gratitude towards that Being whose wisdom 
and goodness are discernible in the structure of the meanest reptile. 
Farther, " The wisdom of God receives small honour from those 
vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and, with a gross rusticity, 
admire his works : those highly magnify him, whose judicious inquiry 
into his acts, and deliberate research into his crtatures, return the 
duty of a devout and learned admiration." — Heligio Medici, sec. 13. 

* The fullest and plainest account, for the use of general readers, of every species of 
insects, hitherto published in English, may be found in Insect Architecture, Insect Tjans- 
formalwns, Insect Miscellanies, and Alphabet of Insects, —i. R. 



THE 

COMPLETE ANGLER; 

OR, 

CONTEMPLATIVE MAN'S RECREATION. 
PART SECOND. 



INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO ANGLE FOR A TROUT OR 
GRAYLING, IN A CLEAR STREAM. 



Q-il mihi nrm oredit, £tciat licet ipse p«rlc1oiii •■ 
Et fuerit scriptU cequior ille men. 



SOME ACCOUNT 

OF 

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 

CF 

CHARLES COTTON, ESQ. 



Charles Cotton, Esq. was descended from an honourable 
family of the town and county of Southampton. His 
grandfather was Sir George Cotton, knight ; and his grand- 
mother, Cassandra, the heiress of a family named Mac- 
Williams : the issue of their marriage were, a daughter 
named Cassandra, who died unmarried, and a son named 
Charles, wlio, settling at Ovingden in the county of Sussex, 
married Olive, the daughter of Sir John Stanhope of Elvas- 
ton, in the county of Derby, knight, half brother to Philip 
the first Earl of Chesterfield, and ancestor of the present 
Earl of Harrington, and by her had issue Charles, the author 
of the ensuing dialogues. 

Of the elder Charles we learn, from unquestionable 
authority, that he was, even when young, a person of dis- 
tinguished parts and accomplishments ; for in the enume- 
ration of those eminent persons whom Mr Hyde, afterward 
the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, chose for his friends and 
associates, while a student of the law, we find Mr Cotton 
mentioned, together with Ben Jonson, Mr Selden, Mr John 
Vaughan, afterward Lord Chief Justice, Sir Kenelm Digby, 
Mr Thomas May, the translator of Lucan, and Thomas 
Carew, the poet. The characters of these s-everal persons 
are exhibited, with the usual elegance and accuracy of their 



224 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 

author, in the Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, written by 
himself, and lately published. That of Mr Cotton here 
follows : 

" Charles Cotton was a gentleman born to a competent 
fortune ; and so qualified in his person and education, that 
for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the 
town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His 
natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts 
of conversation ; the superstructure of learning not raised to 
a considerable height ; but having passed some years in 
Cambridge, and then in France, and conversing always with 
learned men, his expressions were ever proper and signifi- 
cant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argu- 
ment ; so that he was thought by those who were not 
intimate with him, to have been much better acquainted 
with books than he was. He had all those qualities which 
in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentle- 
men ; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a 
sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and 
delightfulness in conversation, that no man in the court or 
out of it appeared a more accomplished person : all these 
extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraor- 
dinary a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of 
which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits 
in law, and waste of his fortune in those suits, made some 
impression on his mind ; which, being improved by domestic 
afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally 
attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than 
his youth had been, and gave his best friends cause to have 
wished he had not lived so long." 

The younger Mr Cotton was born on the 28th day of 
April, 1630 ; and having, as we must suppose, received such 
a school education as qualified him for a university, he was 
sent to Cambridge, where also his father had studied ; he 
had for his tutor Mr Ralph Rawson, once a fellow of Brazen- 
nose college, Oxford, but who had been ejected from his 
fellowship by the Parliament visitors, in 1 648. This person 
he has gratefully celebrated in a translation of an Ode of 
Johannes Secundus. 

What was the course of his studies, whether they tended 
to qualify him for either of the learned professions, or to 
furnish him with those endowments of general learning and 
polished manners which are requisite in the character of a 



LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 225 

gentleman, we know not : it is, however, certain, that in the 
university he improved his knowledge of the Greek and 
Roman classics, and became a perfect master of the French 
and Italian languages. 

But whatever were the views of his father in placing him 
at Cambridge, we find not that he betook himself, in 
earnest, to the pursuit of any ] ucrative profession : it is true, 
that in a poem of his writing he hints that he had a smat- 
tering of the law, which he had gotten 

More by practice than reading : 

By sitting o' the bench, while others were pleading. 

But it is rather probable, that, returning from the university 
to his father's, he addicted himself to the lighter kinds of 
study, and the improvement of a talent in poetry, of which 
he found himself possessed, and also that he might travel 
abroad ; for, in one of his poems,* he says he had been at 
Roan. His father having married a ladv of a Derbyshire 
family, and she being the daughter and heiress of Edward 
Beresford, of Beresford and Enson in Staffordshire, and of 
Bentley in the county of Derby, it may be presumed, that 
the descent of the family seat at Beresford to her, might 
have been the inducement with her husband to remove with 
his family from their first settlement at Ovingden, to Beres- 
ford, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire, and in the neie-hbour- 
hood of the Dove, a river that divides the counties of Derby 
and Stafford, and of which the reader will be told so much 
hereafter. 

And here we may suppose the younger Mr Cotton, 
tempted by the vicinity of a river plentifully stored with fish 
of the best kinds, to have chosen angling for his recreation ; 
and looking upon it to be, what Walton rightly terms it, 
" an art," to have applied himself to the improvement of 
that branch of it, fishing with an artificial fly. To this end 
he made himself acquainted with the nature of aquatic 
insects, with the forms and colours of the several flies that 
are found on or near rivers, the times of their appearance 
and departure, and the methods of imitating them with furs, 
silks, feathers, and other materials : in all which researches 
he exercised such patience, industry, and ingenuity, and 
succeeded so well, that having, in the following dialogues, 

* The Wonders of the Peak 
P 



226 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 

communicated to the public the result of his experience, he 
must be deemed the great improver of this elegant recrea- 
tion, and a benefactor to his posterity. 

There is reason to think, that, after his leaving the 
university, he was received into his father's family ; for we 
are told that his father, being a man of bright parts, gave 
him themes and authors whereon to exercise his judgment 
and learning, even to the time of his entering into the state 
of matrimony ;* the first fruit of which exercises was, as it 
seems, his Elegy on the gallant Lord Derby. \ 

In 1656, being then twenty-six years of age, and before 
any patrimony had descended to him, or he had any visible 
means of subsisting a family, he married a distant relation, 
Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, of Owthorp, 
in the county of Nottingham, knight.:}: The distress in 
which this step might have involved him was averted by 
the death of his father, in 1658, an event that put him into 
possession of the family estate : but from the character of 
his father, as given by Lord Clarendon, it cannot be sup- 
posed but that it was struggling with lawsuits, and laden 
with encumbrances. 

The great Lord Falkland was wont to say, that he " pitied 
unlearned gentlemen in rainy weather." Mr Cotton might 
possibly entertain the same sentiment ; for, in this situation, 
we find that his employments were, study, for his delight 
and improvement, and fishing, for his recreation and health ; 
for each of which several employments we may suppose he 
chose the fittest times and seasons. 

In 1660 he published A Panegyric to the King's Most 
Excellent Majesty, a prose pamphlet, in folio, a copy of 
which is preserved in the library at the British Museum. 

In 1663 he published the Moral TUlosophy of the Stoics, 
translated from the French of Monsieur de Vaix, president 
of the Parliament of Provence, in obedience, as the preface 
informs us, to a command of his father, doubtless with 
a view to his improvement in the science of morality : and 
this, notwithstanding the book had been translated by Dr 
James, the first keeper of the Bodleian library, above three- 
score years before. 

His next publication was Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, 
being the first book of Virgil's JEneis, in English burlesque, 8vo. 
1664. Concerning which, and also the fourth book, translated 

* Oldy's Life, xii. f Ibid. \ Ibid. xiii. , 



LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON'. 227 

by him, and afterward published, it may be sufficient to say, 
that, for degrading- sublime poetry into doggrel, Scarrou's 
example is no authority ; and that were the merit of this 
practice greater than many men think it, those who admire 
the wit, the humour, and the learning of Hudibras, cannot 
but be disgusted at the low buffoonery, the forced wit, and 
the coarseness and obscenity of the Virgil Travestie ; and 
yet the poem has its admirers, is commended by Sir John 
Suckling, in his Session of the Poets, and has passed fourteen 
editions. 

To say the truth, the absurdity of that species of the 
mock epic, which gives to princes the manners of the 
lowest of their inferiors, has never been sufficiently noticed. 
In the instance before us, how is the poet embarrassed, 
when he describes Dido as exercising regal authority, and 
at the same time employed in the meanest of domestic 
offices ; and -^neas, a person of royal descent, as a clown, 
a commander, and a common sailor ! In the other kind of 
burlesque, namely, where the characters are elevated, no 
such difficulty interposes ; grant but to Don Quixote and 
Sancho, to Hudibras and Ralpho, the stations which Cer- 
vantes and Butler have respectively assigned them, and all 
their actions are consistent with their several characters. 

Soon after, he engaged in a more commendable employ- 
ment, — a translation of the History of the Life of the Duke 
cVEspernon, from 1598, where D'Avila's history ends, to 
1642, in twelve books, in which undertaking he was inter- 
rupted by an appointment to some place or post, which he 
hints at in the preface, but did not hold long ; as also by 
a sickness that delayed the publication until 1670, when the 
book came out in a folio volume, wuth a handsome dedica- 
tion to Dr Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury. 

In the same year, being the fortieth of his age, and having 
been honoured with a captain's commission in the army, 
he was drawn, by some occasion of business or interest, to 
visit Ireland, which event he has recorded, with some 
particular circumstances touching the course of his life, in a 
burlesque poem called A Voyage to Ireland, carelessl}' 
written, but abounding in humorous description, as will 
appear by the following extract therefrom : — 

A guide I had ^ot, who demanded great raib 
For conducting me over the mountains of Wales ; 
Twenty good shillings, which sure very large is : 
Yet that would not serve, i ut I must bear his charges; 



228 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTOK. 

And yet, for all that, rode astride on a beast, 

The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest . 

It certainly was the most ugly of jades ; 

His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades ; 

His sides were two ladders, well spur-gall'd withal ; 

His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall : 

For his colour, my pains and your trouble I '11 spare, 

For the creature was wholly denuded of hair, 

And, except for two things, as bare as ray nail, 

A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail. 

Now, such as the beast was, e'en such was the rider, 

"With a head like a nutmeg, and legb like a spider, 

A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, 

The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat. 

E'en such was my guide, and his beast : let them pass, 

The one for a horse, and the other an ass. 

In this poem, he relates, with singular pleasantry, that, 
at Chester, coming out of church, he was taken notice of 
by the mayor of the city, for his rich garb, and particularly 
a gold belt that he then wore ; and by him invited home to 
supper, and very hospitably entertained. 

In the same year, and also the year after, more correctly, 
he published a translation of the tragedy entitled Les 
Horaces, i. e. The Horatii, from the French of Pierre 
Corneille ; and, in 1674, the Fair One of Tunis, a novel, 
translated also from the French ; as also a translation of the 
Commentaries of Blaise de Montluc, marshal of France, a 
thrasonical gascon, (as Lord Herbert has shewn, in his 
History of Henri/ VIII,) far better skilled in the arts of 
flight than of battle. 

In 1675, Mr Cotton published two little books, — The 
Planter''s Manual, being Instructions for cultivating all sortf} 
of Fruit Trees, octavo ; and a burlesque of sundry select 
dialogues of Lucian, with the title of Burlesque upon 
Burlesque, or the Scoffer scoffed, duodecimo, which has much 
the same merit as the Virgil Travestie. 

Angling having been the I'avourite recreation of Mr 
Cotton for many years before this, we cannot but suppose 
that the publication of such a book as the Complete Angler 
of Mr Walton had attracted his notice, and probably 
excited in him a desire to become acquainted vvith the 
author ; and that, setting aside other circumstances, the 
adv£intageous situation of Mr Cotton, near the finest Trout 
river in the kingdom, might conduce to beget a great 
intimacy between them. For certain it is, that before tl^e 
year 1676 they were united by the closest ties of friendship ; 



LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 229 

Walton, as also his son, had been frequent visitants to Mr 
Cotton, at Beresford ; who, for the accommodation of the 
former, no less than of himself, had erected a irshing'-house 
on the bank of the river, with a stone in the front thereof, 
containing- a cypher that incorported the initials of both 
their names. 

These circumstances, together with a formal adoption, 
by Walton, of Mr Cotton for his son, that will be explained 
in its place, were doubtless the inducements with the latter 
to the writing of a second part of the Complete Angler, and 
therein to explain more fully the art of fishing either with 
a natural or an artificial fly, as also the various methods o. 
making the latter. The book, as the author assures us, was 
written in the short space of ten days ; and first came 
abroad, with the fifth edition of the first part, in the above 
year, 1676, and ever since the two parts have been con- 
sidered as one book. 

The second part of the Complete Angler is, apparently, an 
imitation of the first. It is a course of dialogues, between 
the author, shadowed under the name of Piscator, and a 
Traveller, the very person distinguished in the first part by 
the name of Venator, and whom Walton of a hunter had 
made an angler :* in which, besides the instructions there 
given, and the beautiful scenery of a wild and romantic 
country therein displayed, the urbanity, courtesy, and hospi- 
tality of a well bred country gentleman, are represented to 
great advantage. 

This book might be thought to contain a delineation of 
the author's character ; and dispose the reader to think that 
he was delighted with his situation, content with his for- 
tunes, and, in short, one of the happiest of men : but his 
next publication speaks a very different language ; for living 
in a country that abounds, above all others in this kingdom, 
in rocks, caverns, and subterraneous passages (objects that, 
to some minds, afford more delight than stately woods and 
fertile plains, rich enclosures, and other the milder beauties 
of rural nature,) he seems to have been prompted by no 
other than a sullen curiosity to explore the secrets of that 
nether world ; and surveying it rather with wonder than 
philosophical delight, to have given way to his disgust, in a 
description of the dreary and terrific scenes around and 
beneath him, in a poem (written, as it is said, in emulation 

* Vide part ii. chap. i. 



230 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 

of Hobbes's De Mirabilibus Pecci,) entitled The Wonders 
of the PeaJc. This he first published in 1681 ; and after- 
ward, with a new edition of the Virgil Travestie and the 
Burlesque of Luc'ian. 

The only praise of this poem is the truth of the represen- 
tations therein contained ; for it is a mean composition, 
inharmonious in the versification, and abounding in exple- 
tives. Of the spirit in which it is written, a judgment may 
be formed from the following lines, part of the exordium : — 

Durst I expostulate with Providence, 

I then should ask wherein the innocence 

Of my poor undesigning infancy, 

Could Heaven offend to such a black degree, 

As for th' offence to damn me to a place 

Where nature only suffers in disgrace ? 

and these other, equally splenetic : — 

Environ'd round with nature's shames and ills, 

Black heaths, wild rocks, black crags, and naked hills. 

So far was Mr Cotton from thinking, with the Psalmist, 
" that his lot was fallen in a fair ground, or that he had a 
goodly heritage." 

But a greater, and to the world a more beneficial employ- 
ment, at this time solicited his attention. The old translation 
of Montaigne's Essays, by the " resolute" John Florio, as 
he styled himself, was become obsolete, and the world was 
.impatient for a new one. Mr Cotton not only understood 
French with a critical exactness, but was well acquainted 
with the almost barbarous dialect in which that book is 
written: and the freedom of opinion, .and the general- 
notions of men and things, which the author discovers, 
perhaps falling in with Mr Cotton's sentiments of human 
life and manners, he undertook, and, in 1685, gave to the 
world, in a translation of that author, in three volumes, 8vo. 
one of the most valuable books in the English language ; in 
short, a translation that, if it does not (and many think it 
does in some respects) transcend, is yet nothing inferior to 
the original. And, indeed, little less than this is to be 
inferred from the testimony of the noble marquis to whom 
it is dedicated, who concludes a letter of his to Mr Cotton 
with this elegant encomium : " Pray believe, that he who 
can translate such an author, without doing him wrong, 
must not only make me glad, but proud of being his very 
humble servant, Halifax." 



LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 231 

These are the whole of Mr Cotton's writings, published 
in his lifetime. Those that came abroad after his decease, 
Avere Poems on several Occasions^ 8vo. 1689, a bookseller's 
publication, tumbled into the world without preface, apology, 
or even correction, that will be spoken of hereafter; and a 
translation from the French of the Memoirs of the Sieur de 
Pontis, published in 1694, by his son, Mr Beresford Cotton, 
and by him dedicated to the then Duke of Ormond, as 
having been undertaken, and completed, at the request of 
the old duke, his grace's grandfather. 

It is too much to be feared, that the difficulties he 
laboured under, and, in short, the straitness of his circum- 
stances, were the reasons that induced Mr Cotton to employ 
himself in writing ; and, in that, so much more in transla- 
tion than original composition. For, first, by the way, they 
are greatly mistaken, who think that the business of writing 
for booksellers is a new occupation ; it is known, that 
Greene, Peacham, and Howel, for a great part of their lives 
subsisted almost wholly by it ; though perhaps Mr Cotton 
is the first instance of a gentleman by descent, and the 
inheritor of a fair estate, being reduced by a sad necessity 
to write for subsistence. But, secondly, whether through 
misfortune, or want of economy, or both, it may be collected 
from numberless passages in his writings, that Mr Cotton's 
circumstances were narrow ; his estates encumbered with 
mortgages ; and his income less than sufficient for its 
maintenance in the part and character of a gentleman : why, 
else, those querulous exclamations against the clamour of 
creditors, the high rate of interest, and the extortion of 
usurers, that so frequently occur in his poems ? From 
which several particulars, it seems a natural, and, at the 
same time, a melancholy inference, that he was — not to 
say an author — a translator, probably, for hire ; but, 
certainly, by profession. 

It is, of all employments, one of the most painful, to 
enumerate the misfortunes and sufferings of worthy and 
deserving men ; and, most so, of such as have been dis- 
tinguished for their natural or acquired endowments : but 
truth, and the laws of biographical history, oblige all that 
undertake that kind of writing, to relate as well the adverse, 
as the prosperous events in the lives of those whom they 
mean to celebrate ; else, we would gladly omit to say, that 
Mr Cotton was, during the whole of his life, involved in 
difficulties. Lord Clarendon says of his father, that " He 



232 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON 

was engaged in lawsuits, and had wasted his fortune :" and 
it cannot be supposed but that his son inherited, in some 
degree, the vexation and expense of uncertain litigation, 
together with the paternal estate ; and might, finally, be 
divested of great part of it : farther we may suppose^ that 
the easiness of his nature, and a disposition to oblige others, 
amounting even to imbecility, laid him open to the arts of 
designing men, and gave occasion to those complaints of 
ingratitude and neglect which we meet with in his eclogues, 
odes, and other of his writings. 

It is true, that he was never reduced by necessity to 
alienate the family estate : nor were his distresses uniformly 
extreme ; but they were at times severely pungent.* It is 
said, that the numerous pecuniary engagements into which 
he had entered, drew upon him the misfortune of personal 
restraint ; and that, during his confinement in one of the 
city prisons, he inscribed, on the wall of his apartment 
therein, these affecting lines : — 

A prison is a place of care, 

Wherein no one can thrive, 
A touchstone sure to try a friend, 

A grave for men alive, f 

And to aggravate these his afflictions, he had a wife whom 
he appears to have tenderly loved, and of whom, in an 
ironical poem, entitled the Joys of Marriage, he speaks 
thus handsomely : — 

Yet with me, 'tis out of season, 
To complain tlius without reason. 
Since the best and sweetest fair 
Is allotted to my share : 
But, alas ! I love her so. 
That my love creates my woe ; 
For if she be out of humour, 
Straight, displeased I do presume her. 
And would give the world to know 
What it is offends her so ; 



* It is said that he used to secrete himself in a cave near Beresford Hal), 
when pursued by the unrelenting hand of a bailiif at the suit of his credi- 
tors, and that his food was carried to him by a faithful female dependant. 

t It is not very probable that Cotton was the author of these lines. They 
were found inscribed on the wall of the Hall of the Old Tolbooth, or 
common Prison of Edinburgh, with the following stanza additional: 

Sometimes a place of right, 

Sometimes a place of wrong, < 

Sometimes a place of jades and thieves, 

And honest men among, — S. 



LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 233 

Or if she be discontented, 
Lord ! how am I then tormented ! 
And am ready to persuade her 
That I have unhappy made her ; 
But if sick, then I am dying, 
Meat and med'cine both defying. 

This lady, the delight of his heart, and the partner of his 
sorrows, he had the misfortune to lose ; but in what period 
of his life is not certain. 

We might flatter ourselves, that his sun set brighter than 
it rose ; for his second marriage, which was with the 
Countess Dowager of Ardglass, who possessed a jointure 
of fifteen hundred a-year, and survived him, might suggest 
a hope that he might have been thereby enabled to 
extricate himself out of the greatest of his difficulties ; and, 
in reality, to enjoy that tranquillity of mind which he 
describes with so much feeling in the Stayizes Irregulkrs : 
but this supposition seems to be contradicted by a fact, 
which the act of administration of his effects, upon his 
decease, discloses, namely, that the same was granted " to 
Elizabeth Bludworth, his principal creditrix ; the Hon. 
Mary Countess Dowager of Ardglass, his widow, Beres- 
ford Cotton, Esq., Olive Cotton, Catherine Cotton, Jane 
Cotton, and Mary Cotton, his natural and lawful children, 
first renouncing." 

The above act, bearing date the 12th day of September, 
1687, fixes, perhaps, within a few days, the day of his death ; 
and describes him as having lived in the parish of St James, 
Westminster : it also ascertains his issue, which were all by 
his first lady. 

There is a tradition current in his neighbourhood, that 
he had, by some sarcastic expression in his writings, so 
offended an aunt of his, that she revoked a clause in her 
will, whereby she had bequeathed to him an estate of five 
hundred pounds a-year : but as two unlikely circumstances 
must concur to render such a report credible, — great impru- 
dence in himself, and want of charity in her ; and there is 
no such offensive passage to be found in any of his writings, 
— we may presume the tradition to be groundless. 

Of the future fortunes of his descendants, little is known, 
save that, to his son, Beresford Cotton, was given a company 
in a regiment of foot, raised by the Earl of Derby for the 
service of King William ; and that one of his daughters 
became the wife of that eminent divine, Dr George 



234 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 

Stanhope, dean of Canterbury, who, from his name, the 
same with that of Mr Cotton's mother, is conjectured to 
have been distantly allied to the family. 

The above are the most remarkable particulars that at 
this time are recovejable of the life of Mr Cotton. His 
moral character is to be collected, and indeed does naturally 
arise, out of the several sentiments contained in his writings ; 
more especially those in the Collection of his Poems above 
mentioned, which, consisting of all such verses of his as 
the publishers could get together, — as, namely. Eclogues, 
Odes, and Epistles to his Friends, and Translations from 
Ausonius, Catullus, Martial, Mons. Maynard, Corneille, 
Benserade, Guarini, and others, — if perused with a severe 
and indiscriminating eye, may perhaps be thought to reflect 
no great credit on his memory ; for many of them are so 
inexcusably licentious, as to induce a suspicion that the 
author was but too well practised in the vices of the town : 
and yet it may be said of the book, that it contains the only 
good poems he ever wrote. 

It is true that, for the looseness of his writings, and, if we 
may judge by them, of his manners, he deserves censure : 
but, at the same time, it is to be noted, that he was a warm 
and steady friend, and a lover of such as he thought more 
worthy than himself ; of which last quality, his attachment 
to Mr Walton affords the clearest proof. 

Nor did it derogate from the character of honest old Izaak, 
to contract and cherish an intimacy with one who, being 
of the cavalier party, might have somewhat of the gallant, 
not to say the rake, in him, and be guilty of some of those 
practices which it was the employment of Izaak's life and 
writings to discountenance. Mr Cotton was both a wit and 
a scholar ; of an open, cheerful, and hospitable temper ; 
endowed with fine talents for conversation, and the courtesy 
and affability of a gentleman ; and was, withal, as great a 
proficient in the art, as a lover of the recreation, of angling ; 
these qualities, together with the profound reverence which 
he uniformly entertained for his father, Walton, could not 
but endear him to the good old man, whose charitable 
practice it was, to resolve all the deviations from that rule 
of conduct which he had prescribed himself, not into vicious 
inclination, but error. 

But notwithstanding this creditable connection, and the 
qualities above ascribed to him, Mr Cotton's moral character 
must appear very ambiguous to any one that shall reflect 



LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 235 

on the subjects by him chosen for the exercise of his 
poetical talent, — a burlesque of an epic poem — aversion of 
the most licentious of Lucian's dialogues — and a ludicrous 
delineation of some of the most stupendous works of 
nature, — in all which we meet with such foul imagery, such 
obscene allusions, such offensive descriptions, such odious 
comparisons, such coarse sentiment, and such filthy expres- 
sion, as could only proceed from a polluted imagination, and 
tend to excite loathing and contempt. 

On the other hand, there are, in his Poems on several 
Occasions^ verses, to ladies in particular, of so courtly and 
elegant a turn, that, bating their incorrectness, they might 
vie with many of Waller and Cowley : * others there are, 
that bespeak him to have had a just sense of honour, 
loyalty, and moral rectitude ; as do these that follow, penned 
by him with a view to preserve the memory of a deceased 
friend : f 

Virtue, in those good times that bred good men, 

No testimony craved of tongue or pen ; 

No marble columns nor engraven bra-s, 

To tell the world that such a person was ; 

For then each pious act, to fair descent, 

Stood for the worthy owner's monument : 

But in this change of manners and of states, 

Good names, though writ in marble, have their fates ; 

Such is the barbarous and irreverent rage 

That arms the rabble of this impious age. 

Yet may this happy stone, that bears a name 
Such as no bold survivor dares to claim, 

* It is not only for their courtly and elegant turn that the verses of 
Charles Cotton ought to be praised, — there is such a delightful flow of 
feeling and sentiment, so much of the best parts of our nature mixed up 
in them, and so much fancy displayed, that one of our most distin- 
guished living poets has adduced several passages of his Ode upon 
Winter, for a general illustration of the characteristics of fancy. 
" The middle part of this Ode contains a most lively description of the 
entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as a 'palsied king,' and yet a 
military monarch, advancing for conquest with his army, the several 
bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a 
rapidity of detail, and a profusion of fanciful comparisons, which 
indicate, on the part of the poet, extreme activity of intellect, and a 
correspondent hurry of delightful feeling." This recommendation from 
the hand of Wordsworth, will make the reader anxious to become 
acquainted with a volume, " which, though stained with some peculia- 
rities of the age in which the poet lived," ought yet to form a part of 
all future collections of English poetiy. 

f On a monument of Robert Port, Esq. in the church of Dam, in 
the county of Stafford. 



2S6 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 

To ages yet unborn, unhlemish'd stand, 

Safe from the stroke of an inhuman hand. 

Here, reader ! here a poet's sad relics lie, 

To teach the careless world mortality ; 

Who while he mortal was, unrivall'd stood. 

The crown and glory of his ancient blood ; 

Fit for his prince's and his country's trust ; 

Pious to God, and to his neighbour just ; 

A loyal husband to his latest end, 

A gracious father and a faithful friend ; 

Beloved he lived, and died o'ercharged with years, 

Fuller of honour than of silver hairs. 

And, to sum up his virtues, this was he 

Who was what all we should, but cannot be. 

To this it may be added, that in sundry parts of liis 
writings, and even in his poems, the evidences of piety in 
the author are discernible : among them is a paraphrase on 
that noble and sublime hymn, the eighth Psalm. And in 
the poem entitled Stanzes Irregtdiers, are the following 
lines ; — 

Dear Solitude ! the soul's best friend. 
That man acquainted with himself dost make, 
And all his JNIaker's wonders to intend ; 
With thee I here converse at will. 
And would be glad to do so still, 
For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake. 

And lastly, in the following book, he, in the person of 
Piscator, thus utters his own sentiment of a practice which 
few that love fishing, and have a sense of decorum, not 
to say of religion, would in these days of licence forbear ! 
" A worm is so sure a bait at all times that, excepting in a 
flood, I would I had laid a thousand pounds that 1 did not 
kill fish, more or less, with it, winter or summer, every day 
in the year ; those days always excepted that upon a more 
serious account always ought so to be :"* whence it is but 
just to infer, that the delight he took in fishing was never 
a temptation with him to profane the Sabbath. 

The inconsistences above pointed out, we leave the 
perusers of his various writings to reconcile ; with this 
remark, that he must have possessed a mind well stored 
with ideas, and habituated to reflections, who could write 
such verses as immediately follow this account, and, in 
many respects, have been an amiable man, whom Walton 
could choose for his friend, and adopt for his son. — J. H. 

* Note — Chap. xi. 



TO 
MY MOST WORTHY FATHER AND FRIEND, 

MR IZAAK Vv ALTON, THE ELDER. 



Sir, — Being you were pleased, some years past, to grant me your free 
leave to do what I have here attempted ; and observing you never retract 
any promise when made in favour of your meanest friends, I accordingly 
expect to see these following particular directions for the taking of a 
Trout, to wait upon your better and more general rules for all sorts of 
angling. And though mine be neither so perfect, so well digested, nor 
indeed so handsomely couched, as they might have been, in so loug a 
time as since your leave was granted, yet I dare affirm them to be generally 
true : and they had appeared, too, in something a neater dress, but th^t 
I was surprised with the sudden news of a sudden new edition of vour 
Complete Angler ; so that, having but a little more than ten days' time 
to turn me in, and rub up my memory, (for in truth, I have not, in all 
this long time, though I have often thought on 't, and almost as often 
resolved to go presently about it,) I was forced, upon the instant, tu 
scribble what I here present you, v.hich I have also er.deavoured tu 
accommodate to your own method. And, if mine be clear enough for 
the honest brothers of the angle readily to understand, (which is the 
only thing I aim at,) then I have ray end; and shall need to make no 
farther apology ; a writing of this kind not requiring (if I were master 
of any such thing) any eloquence to set it off or recommend it ; so that 
if you, in your better judgment, or kindness rather, can allow it passable 
for a thing of this nature, you will then do me honour if the cipher fixed 
and carved in the front of my little fishing-house may be here explained : 
and to permit me to attend you in public, who, in private, have ever 
been, am, and ever resolve to be. 

Sir, 

Your most affectionate son and servant, 

CHARLES COTTON. 



BERESFORn, 

10th of March, 1675-6. 



TO 

MY MOST HONOURED FRIEND, 

CHARLES COTTON, ESQ. 

Sir, 

You now see I liave returned you your very pleasant and useful dis- 
course of The Art of Fly Fishing, printed just as it was sent me; 
for I have been so obedient to your desires, as to endure all tlie praises 
you have ventured to fix upon me in it. And when I have thanked 
for them, as the effects of an undissembled love, then, let me tell you, 
sir, that I will really endeavour to live up to the character you have given 
of me, if there were no other reason, yet for this alone, that you, that 
love me so well, and always think what you speak, may not, for my 
sake, suffer by a mistake in your judgment. 

And, sir, I have ventured to fill a part of your margin, by way of 
paraphrase, for the reader's clearer understanding the situation both of 
your fishing-house, and the pleasantness of that you dwell in. And I 
have ventured also to give Mm a Copy of Verses that you were pleased 
to send me, now some years past, in which he may see a good picture 
of both ; and so much of your own mind, too, as will make any reader, 
that is blessed with a generous soul, to love you the better. I confess, 
that for doing this you may justly judge me too bold : if you do, I will 
say so too ; and so far commute for my offence, that, though I be more 
than a hundred miles from you, and in the eighty-third year of my age, 
yet I will forget both, and next month begin a pilgrimage to beg your 
pardon ; for I would die in your favour, and till then will live, 

Sir, 

Your most affectionate Father, * and Friend, 

IZAAK WALTON. 

London, April 29, 1676. 

* It was a practice with the pretended masters of the Hermetic science, to adopt favourite 
persons for their sons, to whom they imparted their secrets. Ashmole, in his Diary, p. 25, 
says, " Mr Backhouse told me, I must now needs be his son, because he had communi- 
cated so many secrets to me." And a little after, p. 27, ' My father Backhouse, lying 
sick in Fleet street, told me, in syllables, the true matter of the philosopher's stone, which 
he bequeathed to me as a legacy. " See more of this practice, and of the tremendous 
solemnities with which the secret was communicated, in Ashmole's Theat. Chem. Brit. 
p. 440. 

And, in imitation of this practice, Ben Jonson adopted several persons his sons, to the 
numbes' of twelve or fourteen ; among whom were Cartwright, Randolph, and Alexander 
Brome. And it should seem, by the text, that Walton followed the above meirtioned 
examples, by adopting Cotton for his son. 



THE RETIREMENT. 

STANZES IRREGULIERS, TO MR IZAAK AV ALTON. 

Farewell, thou busy world, and may 
We never meet again ; 
Here I can eat, and sleep, and pray, 
And do more good in one short day 
Than he who his whole age out-wears 
Upon the most conspicuous theatres, 
Where nought but vanity and vice appears. 

Good God ! how sweet are all things here ! 
How beautiful the fields appear ! 

How cleanly do we feed and lie ! 
Lord ! what good hours do we keep ! 
How quietly we sleep ! 

What peace, what unanimity ! 
How innocent from the lewd fashion, 
Is all our business, all our recreation ! 

Oh, how happy here's our leisure ! 
Oh, how innocent our pleasure ! 
O ye valleys ! O ye mountains ! 
O ye groves, and crystal fountains ! 
How I love, at liberty, 
By turns to come and visit ye ! 

Dear Solitude, the soul's best friend, 

That man acquainted with himself dost make, 
And all his Maker's wonders to intend. 

With thee I here converse at will, 

And would be glad to do so still. 
For it is thou alone that keep 'st the soul awake. 

How calm and quiet a delight 

Is it, alone, 
To read and meditate and write, 

By none offended, and offending none! 
To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease. 
And, pleasing a man's self, none other to dispkast;. 

my beloved nymph, fair Dove, 
Princess of rivers, how I love 

Upon thy flowery banks to lie, 
And view thy silver stream, 
When gilded by a summer's beam I 
And in it all thy wanton fry. 
Playing at liberty. 
And with my angle, upon them 
The all of treachery 

1 ever leam'd, industriously to try ! 



240 STANZES IRREGULIERS. 

Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show, 
The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po, 
The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine 
Are puddle water all compared with thine ; 
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are 
With thine, much purer, to compare ; 
The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine 
Are both too mean, 

Beloved Dove, with thee 

To vie priority ; 
Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoin'd, submit, 
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet. 

O my beloved rocks, that rise 

To awe the earth and brave the skies, 

From some aspiring mountain's crown. 

How dearly do I love, 
Giddy with pleasure, to look down ; 
And, from the vales, to view the noble heights above I 
O my beloved caves ! from dog-star's heat, 
And all anxieties, my safe retreat ; 
What safety, ]3rivaoy, what true delight, 
In the artificial night 

Your gloomy entrails make, 

Have I taken, do I take ! 
How oft, when grief has made me fly. 
To hide me from society. 
E'en of my dearest friends, have I, 

In your recesses' friendly shade, 

All my sorrows open laid. 
And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy ! 

Lord ! would men let me alone, 
What an over-happy one 

Should I think myself to be ; 
Might I in this desert place, 
(Which most men in discourse disgrace,) 

Live but uudisturb'd and free ! 
Here, in this despised recess, 

Would I, maugre winter's cold. 
And the sunmier's worst excess. 
Try to live out to sixty full years old ; * 
And, all the while. 

Without an envious eye 
On any thriving under fortune's smile, 
Contented live, and then contented die. C. C 

* This he did not ; for he was bom 1630, and ditd in 1G87. See the Account 
of his Life prefixed. 



THE 



COMPLETE ANGLER. 



PART SECOND. 



CHAPTER I. 

A CONFERENCE BETWEEN A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, A PROFICIENT 
IN FLY FISHING, AND A TRAVELLER. 



PISCATOR JUNIOR, AND VIATOR. 

Piscafor. You are happily overtaken, sir : may a man be so 
bold as to inquire how far you travel this way ? 

Viator. Yes, sure, sir, very freely ; though it be a question 
I cannot very well resolve you, as not knowing myself how far 
it is to Ashbom, where I intend to-night to take up my inn. 

Piscator. Why then, sir, seeing I perceive you to be a stran- 
ger in these parts, I shall take upon me to inform you, that 
from the town you last came through, called Brelsford,* it is 
five miles ; and you are not yet above half a mile on this side. 

Viator. So much! I was told it was but ten miles f from 
Derby, and methinks I have rode almost so far already. 

Piscator. Oh, sir, find no fault wth large measure of good 
land, which Derbyshire abounds in, as much as most coimties 
of England. 

Viator. It may be so ; and good land, I confess, affords a 
pleasant prospect : but, by your good leave, sir, large measure of 
foul way is not altogether so acceptable. 

Piscator. True, sir ; but the foul way serves to justify the 
fertility of the soil, according to the proverb, " There is good 
land where there is foul way : " and is of good use to inform you 
of the riches of the country you are come into, and of its con- 
tinual travel and traffic to the country town you came from ; 

* Brailsford. f Thirteea miles is the true distance. —J. R. 



242 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

which is also very observable by the foulness of its road, and 
the loaden horses you meet every where upon the way. 

Viator. Well, sir ! I will be content to think as well of your 
country as you would desire. And I shall have a great deal of 
reason both to think and to speak very well of you, if I may 
obtain the happiness of your company to the forementioned 
place, provided your affairs lead you that way, and that they 
will permit you to slack your pace, out of complacency to a 
traveller utterly a stranger in these parts, and who am still to 
wander farther out of my own knowledge. 

Piscator. Sir, you invite me to my own advantage. And I 
am ready to attend you, my way lying through that to^vn ; but 
my business, that is, my home, some miles beyond it : however, 
I shall have time enough to lodge you in your quarters, and 
afterward to perform my own journey. In the mean time, 
may I be so bold as to inquire the end of your journey. 

Viator. 'Tis into Lancashire, sir; and about some business 
of concern to a near relation of mine ; for I assure you, I do not 
use to take so long journeys as from Essex upon the single 
account of pleasure. 

Piscator. From thence, sir ! I do not then wonder you should 
appear dissatisfied with the length of the miles, and the foul- 
ness of the way : though I am sorry you should begin to quarrel 
with them so soon ; for believe me, sir, you will find the mile^ 
much longer, and the way much worse, before you come to 
your journey's end. 

Viator. Why, truly, sir ! for that I am prepared to expect 
the worst ; but methinks the way is mended since I had the 
good fortune to fall into your good company. 

Piscator. You are not obliged to my company for that, but 
because you are already p»ast the worst, and the greatest part of 
your way to your lodging. 

Viator. I am very glad to hear it, both for the ease of myself 
and my horse ; but especially, because I may then expect a 
freer enjoyment of your conversation : though the shortness of 
the way will, I fear, make me lose it the sooner. 

Piscator. That, sir, is not worth your care : and I am sure 
you deserve much better for being content with so ill company. 
But we have already talked away two miles of your journey ; 
for, from the brook before us, that runs at the foot of this sandy 
liill, you have but three miles to Ashborn. 

Viator. I meet, every where in this country, vAxh these little 
brooks ; and they look as if they were full of fish : have they 
not Trouts in them ? 

Piscator. That is a question which is to be excused in a 
stranger, as you are : otherwise, give me leave to tell you, it 
would seem a kind of affront to our country, to make a^doubt 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 243 

/ , of what we pretend to be famous for, next, if not before, our 
malt, wool, lead, and coal ; for you are to understand, that we 
think we have as many fine rivers, rivulets, and brooks, as any 
country whatever ; and they are all full of Trouts, and some 
of them the best (it is said) by many degrees, in England. 

Viator. 1 was first, sir, in love with you ; and now shall be 
so enamoured of your country, by this account you give me of 
it, as to ^vish myself a Derbyshire man, or, at least, that I might 
live in it : for you must know I am a pretender to the angle, 
and, doubtless, a Trout affords the most pleasure to the angler 
of any sort of fish whatever; and the best Trouts must needs 
make the best sport ; but this brook, and some others I have 
met with upon this way, are too full of wood for that recreation. 

Piscator. This, sir! why this, and several others like it, 
which you have passed, and some that you are like to pass, 
have scarce any name amongst us ; but we can shew you as 
fine rivers, and as clear from wood, or any other encumbrance 
to hinder an angler, as any you ever saw ; and for clear beautiful 
streams, Hantshire itself, by Mr Izaak Walton's good leave, can 
shew none such, nor, I think, any country in Europe. 

Viator. You go far, sir, in the praise of your country rivers, 
and, I perceive, have read Mr Walton's Complete Angler, by 
your naming of Hantshire ; and, I prav, what is vour opniion oV 
that book ? 

Piscator. My opinion of Mr Walton's book is the same with 
every man's that understands any thing of the art of angling, — 
that it is an excellent good one, and that the forementioned 
gentleman understands as much of fish and fishing as any man 
living. But I must tell you, farther, that I have the hapjpiness 
to know his person, and to be intimately acquainted with him ; 
and, in him, to know the worthiest man, and to enjoy the best 
and the truest friend any man ever had : nav, I shall yet 
acquaint you farther, that he gives me leave to call him father, 
and I hope is not yet ashamed to own me for his adopted son. 

Viator. In earnest, sir, I am ravished to meet with a friend 
of Mr Izaak Walton's, and one that does him so much right in 
so good and true a character : for I must boast to you, that I 
have the good fortune to know him too, and came acquainted 

with him much after the same manner as I do wdth you that he 

was my master, who first taught me to love angling, and then 
to beconae an angler — and, to be plain with you, I am the very 
man deciphered in his book under the name of " Venator; " for 
I was wholly addicted to the chase, till he taught me as good, 
a more quiet, innocent, and less dangerous diversion. 

Piscator. Sir, I think myself happy in your acquaintance ; 

— and, before we part, shall entreat leave to embrace you. You 

have said eaough to recommend you to my best opinion ; for ni/ 



244 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

father Walton wdll be seen twice in no man's company lie does 
not like, and likes none but such as he believes to be very honest 
men, which is one of the best arguments, or at least of the best 
testimonies I have, that I either am, or that he thinks me one 
of those, seeing I have not yet found him weary of me. 

Viator. You speak like a true friend, and, in doing so, render 
yourself worthy of his friendship. May I be so bold as to ask 
your name ? 

Piscator. Yes, surely, sir ; and, if you please, a much nicer 

question : my name is , and I intend to stay long enough 

in your company, if I find you do not dislike mine, to ask yours 
too. In the meantime, (because we are now almost at Ashborn,) 
I shall freely and bluntly tell you, that I am a brother of the 
angle too, and, peradventure, can ^ve you some instructions 
how to angle for a Trout in a clear river, that my father Walton 
himself will not disapprove, though he did either purposely 
omit, or did not remember them, when you and he sat dis- 
coursing under the sycamore tree. And, being you have already 
told me whither your journey is intended, and that I am better 
acquainted with the country than you are, I will heartily and 
earnestly entreat you will not think of staying at this town, but 
go on with me six miles farther to my house, where you shall 
be extremely welcome ; it is directly in your way, we have day 
enough to perform our journey, and, as you like your enter- 
tainment, you may there repose yourself a day or two, or as 
many more as your occasions will permit, to recompense the 
trouble of so much a longer journey. 

Viator. Sir, you surprise me with so friendly an invitation, 
upon so short acquaintance ; but how advantageous soever it 
would be to me, and that my haste, perhaps, is not so great but 
it might dispense mth such a divertisement as I promise myself 
in your company, yet I cannot, in modesty, accept your offer, 
and must therefore beg yom- pardon : I could otherwise, I con- 
fess, be glad to wait^upon you, if upon no other account but to 
talk of Mr Izaak Walton, and to receive those instructions you say 
you are able to give me for the deceiving a Trout, in which art 
I will not deny but that I have an ambition to be one of the 
greatest deceivers ; though I cannot forbear freely to tell you, 
that I think it hard to say much more than has been read to me 
upon that subject. 

Piscator. Well, sir, I grant that, too ; but you must know, 
that the variety of rivers require different ways of angling : 
however, you shall have the best rules I am able to give, and I 
Mali tell you nothing I have not made myself as certain of, as 
any man can be in thirty vears' experience, (for so long I have 
been a dabbler in that art ;") and that, if you please to stay a f^w 
days, you shall, in a very great measure, see made good to you. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 245 

But of that hereafter : and now, sir, if I am not mistaken, I 
have half overcome you; and that I may wholly conquer that 
modesty of yours, I will take upon me to be so familiar as to 
say, you must accept my invitation ; w^hich, that you may the 
more easily be persuaded to do, I \nll tell you, that my house 
stands upon the margin of one of the finest rivers for Trouts 
and Grayling in England — that I have lately built a little 
fishing house upon it, dedicated to anglers, over the door of 
which you will see the two first letters of my father Walton's 
name and mine, twisted in cipher — that you shall lie in the 
same bed he has sometimes been contented with, and have such 
country entertainment as my friends sometimes accept, and be 
as welcome, too, as the best friend of them all. 

Viator. No doubt, sir, but my master Walton found good 
reason to be satisfied with his entertainment in your house ; for 
you who are so friendly to a mere stranger, who deserves so 
little, must needs be exceeding kind and free to him who 
deserves so much. 

Piscator. Believe me, no : and such as are intimately ac- 
quainted with that gentleman, know him to be a man who will 
not endure to be treated like a stranger. So that his acceptation 
of my poor entertainment has ever been a pure effect of his own 
humility and good nature, and nothing else. But, sir, we are 
now going down the Spittle Hill into the toum ; and, therefore, 
let me importune you suddenly to resolve, and most earnestly 
not to deny me. 

Viator. In truth, sir, I am so overcome by your bounty, that 
I find I cannot, but must render myself w^hoUy to be disposed 
by you. 

Piscator. Wliy, that 's heartily and kindly spoken, and I as 
heartily thank you. And, being you have abandoned yourself 
to my conduct, we will only call and drink a glass on horse- 
back at the Talbot, and away. 

Viator. I attend you. But what pretty river is this, that 
runs under this stone bridge ? has it a name ? 

Piscator. Yes, it is called Henmore ;* and has in it both 
Trout and Grayling ; but you will meet with one or two better 
anon. And so soon as we are past through the towTi, I will 
endeavour, by such discourse as best likes you, to pass away 
the time till you come to your ill quarters. 

Viator. We can talk of nothing with which I shall be more 
delighted than of rivers and angling. 



* At that time it was commonly so callpd, because it flowed through 
Hcnmoor ; but its proper name is Schoo Brook. See a singular cont'st 
re'rnrding' tln^ right of fishing in this brook, as reported in Burrows, 2279, 
Eichard Hayne, Esq. of Asliborn, v. Uriah Corden, Esq of CUfton, 



246 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Piscator. Let those be the subjects then. But we are now 
come to the Talbot — what will you drink, sir — ale or wine? 

Viator. Nay, I am for the country liquor, Derbyshire ale, if 
you please ; for a man should not, methinks, come from London 
to drink wine in the Peak. 

Piscator. You are in the right : and yet, let me tell you, you 
may drink worse French wine in many taverns in London than 
they have sometimes at this house. What, ho! bring us a 

flagon of your best ale And now, sir, my service to you: a 

good health to the honest gentleman you know of, and you are 
welcome into the Peak. 

Viator. I thank you, sir, and present you my service again, 
and to all the honest brothers of the angle. 

Piscator. I'll pledge you, sir: so, there 's for your ale, and 
farewell. Come, sir, let us be going, for the sun grows low, 
and I would have you look about you as you ride ; for you will 
see an odd country, and sights that will seem strange to you. 



CHAPTER II. 

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL RIVERS IN DERBYSHIRE. VIATOR 
LODGES AT PISCATOR'3 HOUSE. 

Piscator, jun. So, sir, now we have got to the top of the hill 
out of town, look about you, and tell me how you like the 
country. 

Viator. Bless me ! what mountains are here I are Ave not in 
Wales?* 

Piscator. No, but in almost as mountainous a country : and 
yet these hills, though high, bleak, and craggy, breed and feed 
good beef and mutton above ground, and afford good store of 
lead within. 

Viator. They had need of all those commodities to make 
amends for the ill landscape : but I hope our way does not lie 
over any of these, for I dread a precipice. 

Piscator. Believe me, but it does ; and down one especially, 
that will appear a little terrible to a stranger ; though the way 
is passable er.ough, and so passable that we who are natives of 
these mountains, and acquainted with them, disdain to alight. 

Viator. I hope, though, that a foreigner is privileged to use 
his own discretion, and that I may have the liberty to intrust 
my neck to the fidelity of my own feet, rather than to those of 
my horse, for I have no more at home. 

* It is very well for an Essex man to take for mountains, hills not 
much hifrher than the Calton Hill at Edinburgh, or Shooter'e Hill at 
Woolvi'ich. — J. R. 



THE COiMPLETE ANGLER. 247 

Piscator. 'Twere hard else. But, in the meantime, 1 tliink 
'twere best, while this way is pretty even, to mend our pace, 
that we may be past that hill I speak of, to the end your appre- 
hension may not be doubled for want of light to discern the 
easiness of the descent. 

Viator. I am willing to put forward as fast as my beast will 
give me leave, though I fear nothing in your company. But 
what pretty river is this we are going into ? 

Piscator. Why this, sir, is called Bently Brook,* and is full 
of very good Trout and Grayling, but so encumbered with wood 
in many places, as is troublesome to an angler. 

Viator. Here are the prettiest rivers, and the most of them, 
in this country that ever I saw: do you know how many yo\i 
have in the country ? 

Piscator. I know them all, and they were not hard to reckon, 
were it worth the trouble : but the most considerable of them I 
wll presently name you. And to begin where we now are, for 
you must know we are now upon the very skirts of Derbyshire, 
we have, first, the river Dove, that we shall come to by and 
by, which divides the two counties of Derby and Stafford for 
many miles together, and is so called from the swiftness of its 
current, and that swiftness occasioned by the declivity of its 
course, and by being so strained in that course bet\nxt the 
rocks, by which (and those very high ones) it is, hereabout, for 
four or five miles, confined into a very narrow stream ; a river 
that from a contemptible fountain, which I can cover with my 
hat, by the confluence of other rivers, rivulets, brooks, and rills, 
is swelled, before it falls into Trent, a little below Eggington, 
where it loses the name, to such a breadth and depth as to be in 
most places navigable, were not the passage frequently interrup- 
ted with fords and weirs ; and has as fertile banks as any river 
in England, none excepted. And this river, from its head for a 
mile or two, is a black water, as all the rest of the Derbyshire 
rivers of note originally are, for they all spring from the mosses ; 
but is in a few miles' travel so clarified by the addition of several 
clear and very great springs, bigger than itself, which gush out 
of the fimestone rocks, that before it comes to my house, which 
is but six or seven miles from its source, you will find it one of 
the purest crystalline streams you have seen.f 

* A narrow swift stream, two miles beyond Ashbourn, in the present 
high road, and considerably neater to it in the o'd re aa. 

f Between Beresford Hall and Ashbourn lies Dove Lale, whose crested 
cliffs and swift torrents are again noticed by Mr Cotton, in his Wunders of 
the Peak. Through this singularly deep valley the Dove runs for about 
two miles, .'hanging its course, its motion, and its appearance perpetually, 
never less than ten, and rarely so .n.-in> as twenty yards in width, raaking^ 
a continued noise by rolling over or falling among loo--e stones. The rocks 
which form its sides are heaved up in enormous piles, soraetimes coauected 



248 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Viator. Does Trent spring in these parts ? 

Piscator. Yes, in these parts ; not in this county, but some- 
where towards the upper end of Staffordshire, I think not far 
from a place called Trentham ; and thence runs down, not far 
from Stafford, to Wolsly Bridge, and washing the skirts and 
purlieus of the forest of Needwood, runs down to Burton in the 
same county : thence it comes into this, where we now are, and 
running by Swarkston and Dunnington, receives Derwent at 
Wildon ; and so to Nottingham ; thence, to Newark ; and, by 
Gainsborough, to Kingston-upon-HuU, where it takes the name 
of Humber, and thence falls into the sea ; but that the map will 
best inform you. 

Viator. Know you whence this river Trent derives its name ? 

Piscator, No, indeed ; and yet I have heard it often dis- 
coursed upon : when some have given its denomination from the 
forenamed Trentham, though that seems rather a derivative 
from it : others have said it is so called from thirty rivers that 
fall into it, and there lose their names ; which cannot be, 
neither, because it carries that name from its very fountain, 
before any other rivers fall into it : others derive it from thirty 
several sorts offish that breed there ; and that is the most likely 
derivation : but be it how it will, it is doubtless one of the finest 
rivers in the world, and the most abounding with excellent 
Salmon, and all sorts of delicate fish. 

Viator. Pardon me, sir, for tempting you into this digression ; 
and then proceed to your other rivers, for I am mightily 
delighted with tliis discourse. 

Piscator. It was no interruption, but a very seasonable 
question ; for Trent is not only one of our Derbyshire rivers, 
but the chief of them, and into which all the rest pay the 
tribute of their names, which I had, perhaps, forgot to insist 
upon, being got to the other end of the county, had you not 
awoke my memory. But I will now proceed. And the next 
river of note, for I will take them as they lie eastward from 
us, is the river Wye ; I say of note, for we have two lesser 
betvnxt us and it, namely Lathkin and Bradford, of which 
Lathkin is, by many degrees, the purest and most transparent 
stream that I ever yet saw, either at home or abroad, and 
breeds, it is said, the reddest and the best Trouts in England : 
but neither of these are to be reputed rivers, being no better 

with each other, and sometimes detached; some perforated in natural 
cavities, others adorned with foliage, with here and there a tall rock, 
having- nothing to relieve the bareness of its appeirance but a mountain 
ash flourishing at the top. The grandeur of its scenery is probably unri- 
vailed in Eno-land. — H. 

It is utterly ridiculous to talk of the " grandeur" of Dove Dale. My 
impression, on visiting it in 1817, was, that it is prettily romantic — oz& 
so small a scale, that it might almost be artificially imitated. —J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 549 

than great springs. The river Wye, then, has its source near 
unto Buxton, a town some ten miles from hence, famous for a 
warm bath, and which you are to ride through in your way to 
Manchester ; a black water, too, at the fountain, but, by th& 
same reason with Dove, becomes very soon a most delicate clear 
river, and breeds admirable Trout and Grayling, reputed by 
those who, by living upon its banks, are partial to it, the best 
of any : and this, running down by Ashford, Bakewell, and 
Hadden, at a town a little lower, called Rowesly, faDs into 
Derwent, and there loses its name.* The next in order is 
Derwent, a black water too, and that not only from its fountain, 
but quite through its progress, not having these crystal springs 
to wash and cleanse it which the two forementioned have, but 
abounds with Trout and Grayling, such as they are, towards 
its source, and vrith Salmon below. And this river, from the 
upper and utmost part of this county, where it springs, taking 
its course by Chatsworth, Darley, Matlock, Derby, Burrow 
Ash, and Awberson, falls into Trent, at a place called Wildon ; 
and there loses its name. The east side of this county of 
Derby is bounded by little inconsiderable rivers, as Awber, 
Eroways, and the like, scarce worth naming, but Trouty too ; 
and farther we are not to inquire. But, sir, I have carried you, 
as a man may say, by water, till we are now come to the 
descent of the formidable hill I told you of, (at the foot of 
which runs the river Dove, which I cannot out love above 
all the rest ;) and therefore prepare yourself to be a little 
frightened. 

Viator. Sir, I see you would fortify me, that I should not 
shame myself ; but I dare follow where you please to lead me. 
And I see no danger yet ; for the descent, methinks, is thus far 
green, even, and easy. 

Piscator. You will like it worse presently, when you come 
to the brow of the hill : and now we are there, what think 
you? 

* By this it appears, that there are two rivers in England that bear the 
name of Wye : the former Wye, occasionally mentioned, part i. p. 124, n. 
127, 129, n. and elsewhere in this work, has, as well as the Severn, itshead 
in the Plynlimraon hill, on the borders of Montgomery and Cardiganshire; 
from whence, as its Latin name, Vaga, imports, wanderiiig^ through part 
of Brecknockshire, it, near the Hay, enters Herefordbhire, and at Mordi. 
ford, within four miles of Hereford, receives the Lug; from thence, 
passing on to Ross, it enters Monmouthshire, and falk into the Severn 
below Chepstow. 

It abounds with that small species of fish called Last-springs, (for which, 
see page 129, n.) and also with Grayling, 

And here it may be necessary to remark, that the names of Avon, Ouse, 
Stoure, and some others, are common to many rivers in England, as Chat 
of Dulaa is to numbers in Wales. See Not«s on the FolyolbxQn, song the 
sixth. 



250 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Viator. What do I think ? why, I think it the Strang jst place 
that ever, sure, men and horses went down ; and that, if there 
be any safety at all, the safest way is to alight. 

Piscator. I think so too, for you who are mounted upon a 
beast not acquainted with these slippery stones : and though I 
frequently ride down, I will alight too to bear you company, 
and to lead you the way. And, if you please, my man shall 
lead your horse. 

Viator. Marry, sir ! and thank you too : for I am afraid I 
shall have enough to do to look to myself : and, with my 
horse in my hand, should be in a double fear, both of breaking 
my neck, and my horse's falling on me, for it is as steep as a 
penthouse. 

Piscator. To look do\ATi from hence it appears so, I confess : 
but the path winds and turns, and will not be found so 
troublesome. 

Viator. Would I were well down though ! Hoist thee ! 
there 's one fair 'scape ! these stones are so slippery I cannot 
stand ! yet again ! I think I were best lay my heels in my neck 
and tumble down. 

Piscator. If you think your heels will defend your neck, that 
is the way to be soon at the bottom. But give me your hand 
at this broad stone, and then the worst is past. 

Viator. I thank you, sir, I am now past it, I can go myself. 
What 's here ? the sign of a bridge ? Do you use to travel witn 
wheelbarrows in this country ? 

Piscator. Not that I ever saw, sir: why do you ask that 
question ? 

Viator. Because, this bridge certainly was made for nothing 
else : why ! a mouse can hardly go over it : it is not two 
fingers broad. 

Piscator. You are pleasant, and I am glad to see you so; but 
I have rid over the bridge many a dark night. 

Viator. Why, according to the French proverb, and it is a 
good one, among a great many of worse sense and sound that 
language abounds in, Ce que Dieu garde, est hien garde. They 
whom God takes care of, are in safe protection : but, let me 
tell you, I would not ride over it for a thousand pounds, nor 
fall off it for two : and yet I think I dare venture on foot, 
though if you were not by to laugh at me, I should do it on all 
four. 

Piscator. Well, sir, your mirth becomes you, and I am 
glad to see you safe over, and now you are welcome into 
Staffordshire. 

Viator. How, Staffordshire ! What do I there, trow ? there 
is not a word of StafTordshire in all my direction. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 251 

Piscator. You see you are betrayed into it, but it shall be in 
order to something that will make amends : and it is but an ill 
mile or two out of your way. 

Viator. I believe all things, sir, and doubt nothing. Is this 
your beloved river Dove ? It is clear and swift indeed, but a 
very little one. 

Piscator. You see it here at the worst : we shall come to it 
anon again, after two miles riding, and so near as to lie upon 
the very banks. 

Viator. Would we were there once : but I hope we have no 
more of these Alps to pass over. 

Piscator. No, no, sir, only this ascent before you, which you 
see is not very uneasy, and then you will no more quarrel with 
your way. 

Viator. Well, if ever I come to London, of which many a 
man there, if he were in my place, would make a question, I 
■will sit down and write my travels ; and, like Tom Coriate, * 

* Tom Coriate lived in the reign of King- James the First, and, as Wood 
calls him, was the whf'tstone of all the wits of that age ; and, indeed, the 
allusions to him, and to the singular oddness of his charafter, are number- 
less. He travelled almos*- over Europe on foot, and, in that tour, walked 
nine hundred miles with one pair of shoes, which he got mended at Zurich. 
Afterwards he visited Turkey, Persia, and the Gn-at Mogul's dominions, 
travelling in so frugal a manner, that, as he tells his mother, in a letter 
to her, in his ten months' travels, between Aleppo and the Mogul's court, 
he spent but three pounds sterling, living remarkably well for about two- 
pence sterling a-day ; and of that three pounds he elsewhere says, he was 
cozened of no less than ten shillings sterling by certain Christians of the 
Armenian nation; so that, indeed, he spnnt but fifty shillings in his ten 
months' travels. In these his travels, he attained to great proficiency both 
in the Persian and Indostan languages: in the former, he made and pro- 
nounced an oration to the Great Mogul ; and his skill in the latter he took 
occasion to manifest in the following very signal instance : In the service 
of the English ambassador, then resident, was a woman of Indostan, a 
laundress, whose frequent practice it was to scold, brawl, and rail, from 
Bunrising to sunset. This formidable shrew did Coriate one day undertake 
to scold with, in her own language ; and succeeded so well in the attempt, 
that, by eight of the clock in the morning, he had totally silenced her, 
leaving her not a word to speak. See A Vouage to East India, by Edward 
Terrv, chaplain to Sir Thomas Row, ambassador to the Great Mogul, 
12m o. 1655. 

Farther, it appears that he was a zoalous champion for the Christian 
religion against the Mahometans and Pagans, in the deft-nce whereof, he 
sometimes risked his life. In Turkey, wh^n a priest, as the custom is, was 
proclaiming from a mosque tower that Mahomet was a true prophet, Tom, 
lu the fury of his zeal, and in the face of the whole city, told the priest 
•' he lied," ;ind " that his prophet was an impostor ;" and at a city called 
Moltan, in the Ea-st Indies, he in public disputed with a Mahometan, who 
had called him Giaur, or infidel, in these words: " But I pray thep. tell 
me, thou T^fahometan! dost thou, in sadness, call me Giaur ? "_" That I 
do," quoth he. — " Then," quoth he, "in very sober sadness, I retort that 
shameful word in thy throat, and tell thee plainly, that I am a Mussulman, 
and thou art a Giaur." He concludes thus: '" Goto, then, thou false 
believer! since, by thy injurious imputat'on laid on me, in that thou callest 
me Giaur, thou hast provoked me to speak thus. I pray thee, let this mine 
answer be a wa'-ning for thee not to scandalize me in the like manner any 
more j for the Christian relig^ion, which 1 profess, is so dear and tender 



252 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



print them at my own charge. Pray what do you call this liill 
we came down ? 

Piscator. We call it Hanson Toot. 

Viator. Why, farewell, Hanson Toot ! I '11 no more on thee : 
I '11 go twenty miles about first. Puh ! I sweat that my shirt 
sticks to my back. 

Piscator. Come, sir, now Ave are up the hill ; and now how 
do you ? 

Viator. Why, very well, I humbly thank you, sir, and warm 
enough, I assui'e you. What have we here — a church? 




ASTONFIELD CHURCH. 

As I'm an honest man, a very pretty church. Have you churches 
in this country, sir ? 

unto me, that neither thou, nor any othsr Mahometan, shall, scot free, call 
me Giaur, but that I shall quit you with an answer much to the wonder of 
those Mahometans. Dixi." 

He died of the flux, occasioned by drinking- sack at Surat, in 1617, 
having published his European travels in a quarto volume, which he called 
his Crudities; and to this circumstance the passage in the text is a manifest 
allusion. See Athen. Oxon. vol. i. col. 422 ; Purchase's Pilgrim, parti, hook 
4, chap. 17 ; Coriate's Letter from the Court of the Great Mogul, quarto, 1616, 
and, above all, Terry's Voyage, before cited, the author whereof was, as he 
himself asserts, his chamber-fellow, or tent-mate, in East India. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 253 

Piscator. You see we have : but had you seen none, why- 
should you make that doubt, sir ? 

Viator. Why, if you ^vill not be angry, I'll tell you, — I 
thought myself a stage or two beyond Christendom. 

Piscator. Come ! come ! we '11 reconcile you to our country 
before we part Avith you, if shewing you good sport with 
angling will do it. 

Viator. My respect to you, and that together, may do much, 
sir ; otherwise, to be plain with you, I do not fiiid myself much 
inclined that way. 

Piscator. Well, sir, your raillery upon our mountains has 
brought us almost home ; and look you where the same river 
of Dove has again met us to bid you welcome, and to invite you 
to a dish of Trouts to-morrow. 

Viator. Is this the same we saw at the foot of Penmen 
Maure ? It is a much finer river here. 

Piscator. It will appear yet much finer to-morrow — But look 
you, sir, here appears the house, that is now like to be your inn, 
for want of a better. 

Viator. It appears on a sudden, but not before 'twas look'd 
for ; it stands prettily, and here 's wood about it too, but so 
young, as appears to be of your ow^n planting. 

Piscator. It is so ; wiU it please you to alight, sir ? And 
now permit me, after all yoiu- pains and dangers, to take you 
in my arms, and to assure you, that you are infinitely welcome. 

Viator. I thank you, sir, and am glad, with all my heart, I 
am here ; for, in downright truth, I am exceeding weary. 

Piscator. You will sleep so much the better ; you shall 

presently have a light supper, and to bed Come, sirs, lay the 

cloth, and bring what you have presently, and let the gentle- 
man's bed be made ready in the meantime in my father Walton's 
chamber. And now, sir, here is my service to you ; and, once 
more, welcome ! 

Viator. I marry, sir, this glass of good sack has refreshed 
me. And I '11 make as bold with your meat ; for the trot has 
got me a good stomach. 

Piscator. Come, sir, fall to then ; you see my little supper 
is always ready when I come home, and I 'U make no stranger 
of you. 

Viator. That your meal is so soon ready, is a sign your 
servants know your certain hours, sir ; I confess I did not 
expect it so soon : but now it is here, you shaU see I will make 
myself no stranger. 

Piscator. Much good do your heart ! and I thank you for that 
friendly word : and now, sir, my service to you in a cup of 
More-Lands ale; for you are now in the More-Lands, but 
%\ithin a spit and a stride of the Peak. Fill my friend his glass. 



254 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Viator. Believe me, you have good ale in the More-Lands, 
far better than that at Ashborn. 

Piscator. That it may soon be ! for Ashborn has (which is a 
kind of riddle) always in it, the best malt and the worst ale in 
England.* Come, take away, and bring us some pipes and a 
bottle of ale, and go to your owti suppers. Are you for this 
diet, sir? 

Viator. Yes, sir, I am for one pipe of tobacco ; and I per- 
ceive yours is very good by the smell. 

Piscator. The best I can get in London, I assure you.f But, 
sir, now you have thus far complied with my designs, as to take 

* This seems to be something- contradictory to what is formerly stated. 
A friend informs me that at tliis time Ashborn ale is quite famous in the 
northern and inland counties. — J. R. 

+ It should seem by what Walton says, chap. x. that he was a smoker : 
and the reader sees, by the passage in the text, that Piscator, by whom 
we are to understand Cotton himself, is so curious as to have his tobacco 
from London. 

Smoking-, or, as the phrase was, taking tobacco, was, in Queen Elizabeth's 
and her successor's time, esteemed the greatest of all foppery. Ben Jon- 
son, who mortally hated it, has numberU-ss sarcasms against smoking and 
smokers ; all which are nothing, compared to those contained in that work 
of our King- James the First, A Counter-blast to Tobacco. Nor was the 
ordinary conversation of this monarch less fraught with reasons and 
invectives against the use of that weed, as will appear from the following^ 
saying of his, extracted from A Collection of Witty Apothegms, deliveredby 
him and others, at several times, and on sundry occasions, published in duo- 
decimo, 1671. 

" That tobacco was the lively irarge and pattern of hell ; for that it had, 
by allusion, in it all the parts and vices of the world whereby hell may be 
gained, to wit . First, it was a smoke — so are the vanities of this world. 
Secondly, It delighteth them who take it — sodo the pleasures of the world 
delight the men of the world. Thirdly, It maketh men drunken, and light 
in the head -^ so do the vanities of the world — men are drunken therewith. 
Fourthly, He that taketh tobacco saith he cannot leave it, it doth bewitch 
him — even so the pleasures of the world make men loath to leave them, 
they are for the most part so enchanted with them. And, farther, besides 
all this. It is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a stinking loath- 
some thing, and so is hell. And, farther, his majesty professed that, were- 
he to invite the devil to dinner, he should have three dishes : 1. A pig; 2. 
A pole of ling and mustard ; and 3. A pipe of tobacco for digesture." 

In a poem, printed anno 1619, written by Samuel Rowley, I meet with 
tlie following humorous lines, uttered by two good fellows, lovers of 
drinking and tobacco, and, since that time, printed on a London tobacco- 
nist's paper ; 

I am as dry as ever was March dust ; 
I have one groat, and I will spend it just ; 
O honest fellow ! if that thou say'st so, 
Lo ! here 's my groat, and my tobacco too 

I conclude this note on smoking, which, by this time, may have made the 
reader laugh, with the mention of a fact that may go near to make him 
weep, which the people of Herefordshire have by tradition. In that county, 
to signify the last, or concluding, pipe that any one means to smoke at a 
sitting, they use the term, a Kemble pipe, alluding to a man of the name 
of Kemble, who, in the cruel persecution under that merciless bigot Queen 
Mary, being condemned for heresy, in his walk of some miles from the 

Erison to the stake, amidst a crowd of weeping friends, with the trauquil- 
ty aud fortitude of a primitive martyr, smoked a pipe of tobacco ! 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 255 

a troublesome journey into an ill country, only to satisfy me ; 
how long may I hope to enjoy you ? 

Viator. Why, truly, sir, as long as I conveniently can ; and 
longer, I think, you would not have me. 

Piscator. Not to your inconvenience, by any means, sir : but 
I see you are weary, and therefore I will presently wait on you 
to your chamber, where, take counsel of your pillow, and 
to-morrow resolve me. Here, take the lights ; and pray, follow 
them, sir. Here you are like to lie ; and now I have shewed 
you your lodging, I beseech you, command any thing you want, 
and so I wish you good rest. 

Viator. Good night, sir. 



CHAPTER HI. 

CONFERENCE, CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF MR COTTON'S FISH- 
ING HOUSE, WITH HIS APOLOGY FOR WRITING A SUPPLEMENT 
TO WALTON'S BOOK. 

Piscator, junior. Good morrow, sir : what ! up and dressed 
so early ? 

Viator. Yes, sir, I have been dressed this half hour ; for I 
rested so well, and have so great a mind either to take, or to 
see a Trout taken in your fine river, that I could no longer lie 
a-bed. 

Piscator. I am glad to see you so brisk this morning, and so 
eager of sport : though I must tell you, this day proves so calm, 
and the sun rises so bright, as promises no great success to the 
angler ; but, however,* we '11 try, and, one way or other, Ave 
shall, sure, do something. What will you have to your break- 
fast, or what will you drink this morning ? 

Viator. For breakfast I never eat any, and for drink I am very 
indifferent ; but if you please to call for a glass of ale, I 'm for 
you : and let it be quickly, if you please, for I long to see the 
little fishing house you spoke of, and to be at my lesson. 

Piscator. Well, sir, you see the ale is come without calling ; 
for though I do not know yours, my people know my diet, 
M'hich is always one glass as soon as I am dressed, and no more, 
till dinner : and so my servants have served you. 

Viator. My thanks ! And now, if you please, let us look out 
this fine morning. 

Piscator. With all my heart. Boy, take the key of my 
fishing house, and carry down those two angle-rods in the hall 
window thither, with my fish pannier, pouch, and landing net ; 
and stay you there till we come. Come, sir, we '11 walk after, 



256 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

where, by the way, I expect you should raise all the exceptions 
against our country you can. 

Viator. Nay, sir, do not think me so ill-natured nor so 
uncivil ; I only made a little bold with it last night to divert 
you, and was only in jest. 

Piscator. You were then in as good earnest as I am now mth 
you : but had you been really angry at it, I could not blame you; 
for, to say the truth, it is not very taking at first sight. But, 
look you, sir, now you are abroad, does not the sun shine as 
bright here as in Essex, Middlesex, or Kent, or any of your 
southern counties ? 

Viator. ' Tis a delicate morning, indeed, and I now think this 
a marvellous pretty place. 

Piscator. Whether you think so or no, you cannot oblige me 
more than to say so ; and those of my friends who know my 
humour, and are so kind as to comply with it, usually flatter me 
that way. But look you, sir, now you are at the brink of the 
hill, how do you like my river, the vale it winds through, like 
a snake, and the situation of my little fishing house ? 

Viator. Trust me, 'tis all very fine ; and the house seems, at 
this distance, a neat building. 

Piscator. Good enough for mat purpose. And here is a 
bowling-green, too, close by it ; so, though I am myself no very 
good bowler, I am not totally devoted to my own pleasure, but 
that I have also some regard to other men's. And now, sir, you 
are come to the door : pray walk in, and there we '11 sit, and 
talk as long as you please. 

Viator. Stay, what 's here over the door ? " Piscatoribus 
Sacrum."* Why, then, I perceive I have some title here ; for 
I am one of them, though one of the worst. And here, below 
it, is the cipher, too, you spoke of, and 'tis prettily contrived. 
Has my master Walton ever been here to see it, for it seems 
new built ? f 

« There is, under this motto, the cipher mentioned in pag'es 299 and 312. 
And some part of the fishing- house has been described ; but the pleasant, 
ness of the river, mountains, and meadows about it, cannot, unless Sir 
Philip Sidney, or Mr Cotton's father, were again alive to do it. — I. W. 

t I have been favoured with an accurate description of this fishing 
house, by a person who, being- in that country, with a view to oblige me, 
went to see it. The account he gave of it is, that it is of stone, and the 
room inside a cube of fifteen feet; that it is paved with black and white 
marble, and that in the middle is a square black marble table, supported by- 
two stone feet. The room is wainscoted with curious mouldings that 
divide the panels up to the ceiling. In the larger panels are represented, 
in painting, some of the most pleasant erf the adjacent scenes, with persons 
fishing ; and in the smaller, the various sorts of tackle and implements 
iised in angling. In the farther corner, on the left, is a fire-place, with a 
chimney ; on the right, a large beaufet, with folding-doors, whereon ara 
the portraits of Mr Cotton, with a boy-servant, and Walton, in the dress 
of the time. Underneath is a cupboard, on the door whereof the figures 
of a Trout and of a Grayling are well portrayed. The edifice is at this time 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 257 

Piscator. Yes, lie saw it cut in the stone before it was set up, 
but never in the posture it now stands ; for the house was but 
building- when he was last here, and not raised so high as the 
arch of the door. And I am afraid he A^ill not see it yet ; for 
he has lately writ me word, he doubts his coming Aown this 
summer, which, I do assure you, was the worst news he could 
possibly have sent me. 

Viator. Men must sometimes mind their affairs, to make 
more room for their pleasures. And 'tis odds he is as much 
displeased \A"ith the business that keeps him from you, as you 
are that he comes not. But I am the most pleased with this 
little house, of any thing I ever saw : it stands in a kind of 
peninsula, too, with a dehcate clear river about it. I dare 
hardly go in, lest I should not like it so well Anthin as M-ithout ; 

but, by your leave, I'll try Why, this is better and better ! 

fine hghts, finely wainscoted, and all exceeding neat, ^\ith a 
marble table and all in the middle ! 

Piscator. Enough, sir, enough ; I have laid open to you the 
part where I can worst defend myself, and now you attack me 
there. Come, boy, set two chairs ; and whilst 1 am taking a 
pipe of tobacco, which is always my breakfast, we v/ill, if you 
please, talk of some other subject. 

Viator. None fitter, then, sir, for the time and place, than 
those instructions you promised. 

Piscator. I begin to doubt, by something I discover in you, 
whether I am able to instruct you or no ; though, if you are 
really a stranger to our clear northern rivers, I still think I can : 
and, therefore, since it is yet too early in the morning at this 
time of the year, to-day being but the seventh of March, to cast 
a fly ui)on the water, if you will direct me what kind of fishing 
for a Trout I shall read you a lecture on, I am \\illing and ready 
to obey you. 

Viator. Why, sir, if you ■\\~ill so far oblige me, and that it 
may not be too troublesome to you, I would entreat you would 
run through the whole body of it ; and 1 will not conceal from 
you, that I am so far in love with you, your comtesy, and pretty 
More- Land seat, as to resolve to stay with you long enough by 
intervals, for I will not oppress you, to hear all you can say upon 
that subject. 

Piscator. You cannot obhge me more than by such a pro- 
mise : and, therefore, wthout more ceremony, I M-ill be.gin to 
tell you, that my father Walton having read to you before, it 

(1784; in but indifferent condition; the paintings, and even the wains- 
coting, in many place3, being much decayed. — H. 

Mr Bagiter, who visited it in ISU, found it much dilapidated, the 
windows unglazed, and the wainscot and pavement gone, but the cipher 
still legible.— J. K. 

E 



258 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

would look like a presumption in me (and, peradventure, would 
do so in any other man,) to pretend to give lessons for angling 
after him, who, I do really believe, understands as much of it 
at least as any man in England, did I not preacquaint you, that 
I am not tempted to it by any vain opinion of myself, that I am 
able to give you better directions ; but having, from my child- 
hood, pursued the recreation of angling in very clear rivers, 
truly, I think, by much (some of them, at least,) the clearest 
in this kingdom, and the manner of angling here with us, by 
reason of that exceeding clearness, being something different 
from the method commonly used in others, which, by being not 
near so bright, admit of stronger tackle, and allow a nearer 
approach to the stream, I may peradventure give you some 
instructions, that may be of use, even in your own rivers, and 
shall bring you acquainted with more flies, and shew you how 
to make them, and with what dubbing, too, than he has taken 
notice of in his Complete Angler. 

Viator. I beseech you, sir, do ; and if you will lend me your 
steel, I will light a pipe the while, for that is commonly my 
breakfast in a morning, too. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF ANGLING FOR TROUT OR GRAYLING. 

Piscator, junior. Why then, sir, to begin methodically, as a 
master in any art should do, (and I will not deny, but that I 
think myself a master in this,) I shall divide angling for 
Trout or Grayling into these three ways: at the top, at the 
bottom, and in the middle. Which three ways, though they 
are all of them, (as I shall hereafter endeavour to make it 
appear,) in some sort, common to both those kinds of fish; yet 
are they not so generally and absolutely so, but that they will 
necessarily require a distinction, which, in due place, I will also 
give you. 

That which we call angling at the top, is with a fly ; at the 
bottom, with a ground-bait; in the middle, Avith a Minnow 
or ground-bait. 

Angling at the top is of two sorts : with a quick-fly, or with 
an artificial fly. 

That we call angling at the bottom, is also of two sorts : by 
hand, or with a cork or float. 

That we call angling in the middle, is also of two sorts : Avith 
a Minnow for a Trout, or with a ground-bait for a Grayling. 

Of all which several sorts of angHng, I will, if you can have 
the patience to hear me, give you the best account I can. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 259 

Viator. The trouble will be yours, and mine the pleasure and 
the obligation ; I beseech you, therefore, to proceed. 
Piscator. Why, then, first for fly-fishing. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF FLY-FISHING. 

Piscator, junior. Fly-fishing, or fishing at the top, is, as I 
said before, of two sorts ; wth a natural and living fly, or with 
an artificial and made fly. 

First, then, of the natural fly; of which we generally use 
but two sorts, and those but in the two months of May 
and June only ; namely, the green-drake and the stone-fly : 
though I have made use of a third, that way, called the 
camlet-fly, ^^dth very good success, for Grayling, but never 
saw it angled vnXh by any other, after this manner, my master 
only excepted, who died many years ago, and was one of the 
best anglers that ever I knew. 

These are to be angled with with a short line, not much more 
than half the. length of your rod, if the air be still ; or ^^^th a 
longer very near or all out as long as your rod, if you have 
any wind to carry it from you. And this way of fishing we call 
daping, dabbing, or dibbing ; * w^herein you are always to have 
your line flpng before you up or doA^m the river, as the wind 
serves, and to angle as near as you can to the bank of the same 
side whereon you stand, though where you see a fish rise near 
you, you may guide your quick fly over him, whether in the 
middle, or on the contrary side ; and if you are pretty well out 
of sight, either by kneeling, or the interposition of a bank or 
bush, you may almost be sure to raise, and take him too, if it 
be presently done ; the fish ^vill other\\ise peradventure be 
removed to some other place, f if it be in the still deeps, where 
he is always in the motion, and roving up and do^\^l to look for 
prey, though, in a stream, you may always almost, especially if 
there be a good stone near, find him in the same place. J Your 
line ought, in this case, to be three good hairs next the hook ; 
both by reason you are, in this kind of angling, to expect the 

* See in chap. vii..May, art. 11, directions how to bait with the green 
drake-fly. 

t It may be considered almost the invariable habit of a fish, particularly 
Trout, to swim away from the spot where it has risen at a fly, so that the 
caution in the text is not far from correct. — J. R. 

t As the bird termed the fly-catcher has always a favourite post from 
which to spring upon flies on the winjr, and hence it is called the post bird 
in Kent, so Trouts have usually a favourite stone to lie near in a river ; 
and if you kill a Trout in such a haunt, his place will probablv be soon 
supplied with another. — J. R. 



260 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

biggest fish, and also that, wanting length to give him line after 
he is struck, you must be forced to tug for it : to which I will 
also add, that not an inch of your line being to be suffered to 
touch the Avater in dibbing, it may be allowed to be the stronger. 
I should now give you a description of those flies, their shape and 
colour ; and then, give you an account of their breeding ; and 
withal, shew you how to keep and use them : but shall defer 
that to their proper place and season. 

Viator. In earnest, sir, you discourse very rationally of this 
aifair, and I am glad to find myself mistaken in you ; for, in 
plain truth, I did not expect so much from you. 

Piscator. Nay, sir, I can tell you a great deal more than this : 
and will conceal nothing from you. But I must now come to the 
second way of angling at the top ; which is Avith an artificial 
fly, vi'hich also I Mill shew you how to make before I have 
done ; but, first, shall acquaint you, that, with this, you are to 
angle mth a line longer by a yard and a half, or sometimes two 
yards, than }'our rod : and with both this and the other in a still 
day, in the steams, in a breeze that curls the water, in the still 
deeps, where (excepting in May and June, that the best Trouts 
will lie in shallow streams to watch for prey, and even then too) 
you are like to hit the best fish.* 

For the length of your rod, you are always to be governed by 
the breadth of the river you shall choose to angle at : and for a 
Trout river, one of five or six yards long is commonly enough ; 
and longer (though never so neatly and artificially made) it 
ought not to be, if you intend to fish at ease : and if otherwise, 
where lies the sport ? 

Of these, the best that ever I saw are made in Yorkshire, 
which are all of one piece, that is to say, of several, six, eight, 
ten, or twelve pieces, so neatly pieced and tied together with 
fine thread below and silk above, as to make it taper like a, 
switch, and to ply vAi\i a true bent to your hand, and these too 
are light, being made of fir wood for two or three lengths 
nearest to the hand, and of other wood nearer to the top, that 
a man might very easily manage the longest of them that ever 
I saw, mth one hand. And these, when you have given over 
angling for a season, being taken to pieces, and laid up in some 
dry place, may afterward be set together again in their former 
postures, and will be as straight, sound, and good as the first 
hour they were made, and being laid in oil and colour, according 
to your master Walton's direction, will last many years. f 

The length of your line, to a man that knows how to handle 

* For fishing with two or more flies, see note on next page. 

t The great objection to rods in many pieces is, that they are not 
Siifficiei'-tly pliant; and no angler, who is as near his station as Mr Cotton 
livas to the Dove, should tiiink of such a pieced rod as he describes, -r- J. K. 



THE COxMPLETE ANGLER. 261 

his rod, and to cast it. is no manner of encumbrance, except in 
woody places, and in landing of a fish, which every one that 
can afford to angle for pleasure has somebody to do for him. 
And the length of line is a mighty advantage to the fishing at 
distance ; and to fish fine and far off is the first and principal 
rule for Trout angling.* 

Your line in this case should never be less, nor ever exceed 
two hairs next to the hook ; for one (though some, I know, 
will pretend to more art than their fellows) is, indeed, too few, 
the least accident, with the finest hand, being sufficient to 
break it : but he that cannot kill a Trout of twenty inches long 
wdth two, in a river clear of wood and weeds, as this and some 
others of ours are, deserves not the name of an angler. f 

Now, to have your whole line as it ought to be, two of the 
first lengths nearest the hook should be of two hairs a-piece ; 
the next three lengths above them of three ; the next three 
above them of four ; and, so of five, and six, and seven, to the 
very top : by which means, your rod and tackle wll, in a 
manner, be taper from your very hand to your hook ; your line 
will fall m.uch better and straighter, and" cast your fly to any 
certain place to which the hand and eye shall direct it, with less 
weight and violence, that would otherwise circle the water, and 
fright away the fish. 

In casting your line, do it always before you, J and so that 

* An artist may easily throw twelve yards of line with one hand ; and 
with two h? may as easily throw ejg-liteeu. 

f See the direction for your rod and line, in the notes on chap. xxi. 
part i 

I Till you are a proficient, every throw will go near to cost you a hook : 
therefore practise for some time without one. — H. 

Management of the line, when fishing either with one fly, or two or 
more flies. When you have fixed your rod properly with your winch 
thereon, [see parti, p. 121, note, describing winch and rings,] and brought 
your line from it throuffh the rings of your rod, loop on to it, by the 
strongest end, your foot-length, which should be about three yards and a 
half long, made of good, strong, single silkworm gut, well ti^d, and the 
knots neatly whipped, running (very little) finer towards the bottom end, 
at which place there must be a neatly whipped loop : theu take your end-fly, 
or stretcher, which should be made with one or two lengths of good level 
gut, full as fine, or a little finer, than the bottdm link of your foot-length, 
tied and whipped neatly together, and looped nicely at the end-' loop this 
to the end of your gut "length ; and then, your drop-fiy just above a knot, 
where whipped, about a yard from the end fly, to hang from the line, 
not more than two or thre"e inches. If you choose to fish for more, keep 
them all about the same distance. And observe, that if your droppers be 
larger than, or even as large as, your stretcher, you wll not be able to 
throw a good line : but a beginner should never use more than one fly. 

When thus prepared, let "out the line, about half as long again as the 
rod; and holding the rod properly in one hand, and the line, just above the 
fly, in the other, give your roda motion from right to left : and as you 
move the rod backVvards, in order to throw out the line, dismiss the line 
from your hand at the same time : and try several throws at this length. 
Then let out more line, and try that; still using more and more, till you 
can manage any length needful; but about nine yards is quite sufficient 



262 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

your fly may first fall upon the water, and as little of your line 
with it as is possible : though, if the wind be stiff, you will 
then of necessity, be compelled to drown a good part of your 
line, to keep your fly in the water. And in casting your fly you 
must aim at the farther, or nearer bank, as the wind serves 
your turn, which also will be with and against you, on the same 
side, several times in an hour, as the river winds in its course, 
and you^^dll be forced to angle up and down by turns accordingly, 
but are to endeavour, as much as you can, to have the wind 
evermore on your back. And always be sure to stand as far 
off the bank as the length will give you leave, when you throw 
to the contrary side : though when the wind will not permit you 
so to do, and that you are constrained to angle on the same side 
. whereon you stand, you must then stand on the very brink of 
the river, and cast your fly at the utmost length of your rod 
and line, up or down the river, as the gale serves. 

It only remains, touching your line, to inquire whether your 
two hairs next to the hook are better twisted or open ? And 
for that I should declare, that I think the open Avay the better, 
because it makes less show in the water, but that I have found 
an inconvenience, or two, or three, that have made me almost 
weary of that way ; of which, one is, that, without dispute, they 
are not so strong open as twisted ; another, that they are not 
easily to be fastened of so exact an equal length in the arming 
that the one vdll not cause the other to bag, by which means a 
man has but one hair upon the matter to trust to; and the 
last is, that these loose flying hairs are not only more apt to 
catch upon every twig or bent they meet with, but moreover, 
the hook, in falling upon the water, will, very often, rebound 
and fly back betwixt the hairs, and there stick (which, in a 
rough water especially, is not presently to be discerned by the 

for a learner to practise with. And observe, that in raising- your line, in 
order to throw it a^ain, you should wave the rod a little round your head, 
and not bring it directly backwards = nor must you return the line too 
soon, nor until it has streamed its full length behind you, or you will 
certainly whip oft' your end fly. There is great art in making your line 
fall light on the water, and shewing the flies well to the fish. The best 
way that I can direct is, that when you have thrown out your line, 
contriving to let it fall lightly and naturally, you should raise your rod 
gently, and by degrees ; sometimes with a kind of gentle tremulant flourish, 
wliich will bring the flies on a little towards you; still letting them go 
down with the stream, but never draw them against it, for it is unnatural ; 
and before the line comes too near you, throw out again. When you see 
a fish rise at a natural fly, throw about a yard above him, but not directly 
over his head ; and let your fly (or flies) move gently towards him, which 
will shew it to him in a more natural form, and tempt him the more to 
take it. Experience and observation alone, however, can make an angler 
a complete adept in the art, so as to enable him to throw his fly behind 
bushes and trees, into holes, under banks, and other places mentioned as 
the Trout's haunts, and where the best fish are to be found. — Taylor's 
Art of Anglijig. __ * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 263 

angler,) so as the point of the hook shaU stand reversed; by 
which means your fly s^\^ms backward, makes a much greater 
circle in the water, and, till taken home to you and set right, 
will never raise any fish, or, if it should, I am sure, but by a 
very extraordinary chance, can hit none.* 

Having done ^^'ith both these ways of fishing at the top, the 
length of your rod and line, and all, I am next to teach you 
how to make a fly ; and, afterwards, of what dubbing you are to 
make the several flies I shall hereafter name to you. 

In making a fly, then, which is not a hackle, or palmer-fly, 
(for of those, and their several kinds, Ave shall have occasion to 
speak every month in the year,) you are, first, to hold your 
hook fast betxWxt the fore-finger and thumb of your left hand, 
with the back of the shank upwards, and the point towards your 
finger's end; then take a strong small silk of the colour of the 
fly you intend to make, wax it well Anth wax of the same colour, 
to wliich end you are always, by the way, to have wax of 
all colours about you, and draw it betwixt your finger and 
thumb to the head of the shank ; and then whip it tA^dce or 
thrice about the bare hook, which, you must know, is done, 
both to prevent slipping, and also that the shank of the hook 
may not cut .the hairs of your towght, which sometimes it aWU 
otherwise do. Which being done, take your line, and draw it 
likeA\ise betwixt your finger and thumb, hokhng the hook so 
fast, as only to suffer it to pass by, until you have the knot of 
your towght almost to the middle of the shank of your hook, on 
the inside of it ; then whip your silk twice or thrice about both 
hook and line, as hard as the strength of the silk will permit. 
Which being done, strip the feather for the \vii\gs proportionable 
to the bigness of your fly, placing that side downwards which 
grew uppermost before upon the back of the hook, leaving so 
much only as to serve for the length of the wing of the point of 
the plume lying reversed from the end of the shank upwards : 
then whip your silk twice or thrice about the root end of the 
feather, hook, and towght ; which being done, clip off the root 
end of the feather close by the arming, and then whip the silk 
fast and firm about the hook and towght, until you come to the 
bend of the hook, but not farther, as you do at London, and so 
make a very unhandsome, and, in plain English, a very unnatural 
and shapeless fly. Wliich being done, cut away the end of your 
towght, and fasten it. And then take your dubbing which is 
to make the body of your fly, as much as you think convenient, 
and holding it lightly, with your hook, betwixt the finger and 

* This and the other inconveniences mentioned in this paragraph, are 
eti'ectually avoided by the use of fine grass, or gut, of about half a yard 
lung, next the hook. See notes on chap. xxi. part i. 



264 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

thumb of your left hand, take your silk with the right, and 
twisting it betwixt the finger and thumb of that hand, the dub- 
bing will spin itself about the silk, which when it has done, 
whip it about the armed hook backward, till you come to the 
setting on of the wings. And then take the feather for the 
wings, and divide it equally into two parts, then turn them 
back towards the bend of the hook, the one on the one side, and 
the other on the other of the shank ; holding them fast in that 
posture betwixt the fore finger and thumb of your left hand ; 
which done, warp them so down as to stand and slope towards 
the bend of the hook ; and having warped up to the end of the 
shank, hold the fly fast betwixt the finger and thumb of your 
left hand, and then take the silk betwixt the finger and thumb of 
your right hand ; and, where the warping ends, pinch or nip it 
with your thumb nail, against your finger, and strip away the 
remainder of your dubbing from the silk : and then Avith the bare 
silk, whip it once or twice about; make the wings to stand in 
due order ; fasten, and cut it off. After which, with the point 
of a needle, raise up the dubbing gently from the warp ; twitch 
oflT the superfluous hairs of your dubbing ; leave the wings of an 
equal length — your fly will never else svidm true — and the 
work is done. And this way of making a fly, which is certainly 
the best of all other, was taught me by a kinsman of mine, one 
Captain Henry Jackson, a near neighbour, an admirable fly- 
angler, by many degrees the best fly-maker that ever I yet met 
with.* And now that I have told you how a fly is to be made, 
you shall presently see me make one, with which you may per- 
adventure take a Trout this morning, notvidthstanding the 
unlikeliness of the day ; for it is now nine of the clock, and fish 
wll begin to lise, if tJaey Avill rise to-day. I will walk along by 
you, and look on. And, after dinner, I will proceed in my 
lecture of fly-fishing. 

Viator. I confess I long to be at the river ; and yet I could 
sit here all day to hear you : but some of the one, and some of 
the other, \Adll do well ; and I have a mighty ambition to take a 
Trout in your river Dove. 

Piscator. I warrant you shall : I would not, for more than I 
will speak of, but you should, seeing I have so extolled my river 
to you : nay, I will keep you here a month, but you shall have 
one day of good sport before you go. 

Viator. You will find me, I doubt, too tractable that way ; 
for, in good earnest, if business would give me leave, and that if 
it were fit, I could find in my heart to stay with you for ever. 

* There needs nothing more to be said of these directions, than that 
hundreds have, by means of them alone, become excellent fly makers. 
For making a palmer, or hackle, see the notes on chap. vii. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 265 

Piscator. I thank you, sir, for that kind expression. And, 
now, let me look out my things to make this fly. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FISHING AT THE TOP CONTINUED. FARTHER DIRECTIONS FOR 
FLY MAKING. TIME WHEN THE GRAYLING IS IN SEASON. 
ROCK JN PIKE POOL. 

Piscator, junior. Boy ! come, give me my dubbing bag here 
presently ; and now, sir, since I find you so honest a man, I 
will make no scruple to lay open my treasure before you. 

Viator. Did ever any one see the like ! what a heap of 
trumpery is here ! certainly never an angler in Europe has his 
shop half so well furnished as you have. 

Piscator. You, perhaps, may think now, that I rake together 
tills trumpery, as you call it, for show only, to the end that 
such as see it (which are not many, I assure you,) may think 
me a great master in the art of angling : but let me tell you, 
here are colours, as contemptible as they seem here, that are 
very hard to' be got, and scarce any one of them which, if it 
should be lost, I should not miss, and be concerned about the 
loss of it too, once in the year. But, look you, sir, amongst 
all these I ^^dll choose out these tvv'O colours only ; of which, 
this is bear's hair ; this darker, no ,gi-eat matter what, but I am 
sure I have killed a great deal of fish ^nth it ; and with one or 
both of these, you shall take Trout or Grayling this very day, 
notwithstanding all disadvantages, or my art shall fail me. 

Viator. You promise comfortably, and I have a great deal of 
reason to beheve every thing you say : but I wish the fly were 
made, that we were at it. 

Piscator. That will not be long in doing : and pray observe 
then. You see, first, how I hold my hook ; and thus I begin. 
Look you, here are my first two or three whips about the bare 
hook ; thus I join hook and line ; thus I put on my wings ; 
thus I t\virl and lap on my dubbing ; thus I work it up towards 
the head ; thus I part my wings ; thus I nip my superfluous 
dubbing from my silk ; thus fasten ; thus trim and adjust my 
fly. And there's a fly made : and now, how do you like it ? 

Viator. In earnest, admirably well ; and it perfectly resembles 
a fly ; * but we about London make the bodies of our flies both 

* If so, it is more than ever I saw any artificial angler's fly do, which, 
to use Shakespeare's term, imitate Nature abominably ; but thoagh 
noways like natural flies, (and this is not, it would appear, of the slightest 
importance,) they certainly catch fish jis if they were. — J. R. 



266 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

much bigger and longer, so long as even almost to the very 
beard of the hook. 

Piscator. I know it very well, and had one of those flies 
given me by an honest gentleman, who came with my father 
Walton to give me a visit ; which (to tell you the truth) I 
hung in my parlour window to laugh at : but, sir, you know 
the proverb, " They who go to Rome must do as they at Rome 
do ; " and, believe me, you must here make your flies after this 
fashion, or you will take no fish. Come, I will look you out a 

line, and you shall put it on and try it There, sir, now I 

think you are fitted ; and now beyond the farther end of the 
walk J ou sliall begin : I see, at that bend of the water above, 
the air crisps the water a little : knit your line first here, and 
then go up thither, and see what you can do. 

Viator. Did you see that, sir ? 

Piscator. Yes, I saw the fish : and he saw you too, which 
made liim turn short. You must fish farther off, if you intend 
to have any sport here ; this is no New River, let me tell you. 
That was a good Trout, believe me : did you touch him ? 

Viator. No, I would I had, we woidd not have parted so. 
Look you, there was another : this is an excellent fly. 

Piscator. That fly, I am sure, Avould kill fish, if the day 
were right : but they only chew at it, I see, and will not take 
it.* Come, sir, let us return back to the fishing-house : this 
still water, I see, will not do our business to-day : you shaR 
now, if you please, make a fly yourself, f and try what you can 
do in the streams vAt\\ that : and I know a Trout taken with 
a fly of your own making, will please you better than twenty 
with one of mine. Give me that bag again, sirrah : look you 
sir, there is a hook, towght, silk, and a feather for the wings: 
be doing with those, and I will look you out a dubbing that I 
think will do. 

Viator. This is a very little hook. 

Piscator. That may serve to inform you, that it is for a very 
little fly, and you must make your wings accordingly ; for as 

* When a fish is thus observed to play, as it were, with the fly, I think 
he is probably doubtful of its smell ; and 1 have often succeeded in making 
them bite in such cases, by putting a cadis bait or other insect on the fly 
hook. — J. R. 

f To make a fly is so essential, that he hardly deserves the name of an 
angler who cannot do it. There are many who will go to a tackle shop, 
and tell the master of it, as Dapper does Subtle in the Alchymist, that they 
■want a fly ; for which they have a thing put into their hands that would 
pose a naturalist to find resemblance for ; though, when particular direc- 
tions have been given, I have known them exc^ellently made by the persons 
employed by the fishing- tackle makers in London. But do thou, my honest 
friend, learn to make thy own flies; and be assured, that in collecting and 
arranging the materials, and imitating the various shapes and colours of 
these admirable creatures, there is little less pleasure than even in catching 
fish. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 267 

the case stands, it must be a little fly, and a very little one too, 
that must do your business. Well said ! believe me, you shift 
your fingers very handsomely. I doubt I have taken upon me 
to teach my master. So, here 's your dubbing now. 

Viator. This dubbing is very black. 

Piscator. It appears so in hand ; but step to the door, and 
hold it up betwixt your eye and the sun, and it mil appear a 
shining red : let me tell you, never a man in England can discern 
the true colour of a dubbing any way but that ; and, therefore, 
choose always to make your flies on such a bright sunshine day 
as this, which also you may the better do, because it is worth 
nothing to fish in. Here, put it on ; and be sure to make the 
body of your fly as slender as you can. Very good ! upon my 
word, you have made a marvellous handsome fly. 

Viator. I am very glad to hear it ; 'tis the first that ever I 
made of this kind in my life. 

Piscator. Away, away ! You are a doctor at it : but I will 
not commend you too much, lest I make you proud. Come, 
put it on ; and you shall now go downward to some streams 
betwixt the rocks, below the little foot bridge you see there, 
and try your fortune. Take heed of slipping into the water as 
you follow me under this rock. So, now you are over : and now 
throw in. 

Viator. This is a fine stream indeed. There 's one ! I have 
him. 

Piscator. And a precious catch you have of him ; pull him 
out ! I see you have a tender hand. This is a diminutive 
gentleman ; e'en throw him in again, and let him grow till he 
be more worthy your anger. 

Viator. Pardon me, sir ; all's fish that comes to the hook with 
me now. Another. 

Piscator. And of the same standing. 

Viator. I see I shall have good sport now. Another ! and 
a Grayling. Why, you have fish here at will. 

Piscator. Come, come, cross the bridge, and go dowTi the 
other side, lower, where you will find finer streams and better 
sport, I hope, than this. Look you, sir, here is a fine stream 
now. You have length enough ; stand a little fai'ther off, let 
me entreat you ; and do but fish this stream like an artist, and 
peradventure a good fish may fall to your share. How now! 
what ! is all gone ? 

Viator. No, I but touch'd him ; but that was a fish worth 
taking. 

Piscator. Why, now, let me tell you, you lost that fish by 
your own fault, and through your own eagerness and haste ; for 
you are never to offer to strike a good fish, if he does not strike 
himself, till first vou see him turn his head after he has taken 



268 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

your fly, and then you can never strain your tackle in the stri- 
king, if you strike with any manner of moderation. Come, tlirow 
in once again, and fish me this stream by inches ; for, I assure you, 
here are very good fish — both Trout and GrayHng lie here ; 
and at that great stone on the other side, 'tis ten to one, a good 
Trout gives you the meeting. 

Viator. I have him nov\r ; but he is gone down towards the 
bottom. I cannot see what he is, yet he shoidd be a good fish 
by his weight : but he makes no great stir. 

Piscator. Why, then, by what you say, I dare venture to 
assure you 'tis a Grayling, who is one of the deadest-hearted 
fishes in the world; and the bigger he is, the more easily taken. 
Look you, now you see him plain ; I told you what he was. 
Bring hither that landing-net, boy. And now, sir, he is your 
own ; and, believe me, a good one — sixteen inches long I war- 
rant him — I have taken none such this year. 

Viator. I never saw a Grayling before look so black. 

Piscator. Did you not? why, then let me tell you, that you 
never saw one before in right season : for then a Grayling is 
very black about his head, gills, and down his back, and has his 
belly of a dark gray, dappled with black spots, as you see this 
is ; and I am apt to conclude, that from thence he derives his 
name of Umber.* Though I must tell you, this fish is past his 
prime, and begins to decline, and was in better season at Christ- 
mas than he is now. But move on, for it grows towards dinner 
time ; and there is a very great and fine stream below, under 
that rock, that fills the deepest pool in all the river, where you 
are almost sure of a good fish. 

Viator. Let him come, I '11 try a fall mth him. But I had 
thought that the Grayling had been always in season ^vith the 
Trout, and had come in and gone out with him. 

Piscator. Oh, no ! assure yourself a Grayling is a winter fish, 
but such a one as would deceive any but such as know him very 
well indeed ; for his flesh, even in his worst season, is so firm, 
and wall so easily calver, that, in plain truth, he is very good 
meat at all times : but in his perfect season, (which, by the way, 
none but an overgrown Grayling vvdll ever be,) I think him so 
good a fish, as to be little inferior to the best Trout that ever I 
tasted in my life. 

Viator. Here 's another skipjack ; and I have raised five or 
six more at least whilst you were speaking. Well, go thy way, 
little Dove ! thou art the finest river that ever I sa^y, and the 
fullest of fish. Indeed, sir, I like it so well, that I am afraid 
you will be troubled wth me once a-year, so long as we tw^o 
live. 

* others say, that the name, Umber, signifying " Shadow," is given, 
because the fish swims so fast as to pass like a shadow. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 269 

Piscator. I am afraid I shall not, sir : but were you once here 
a May or a June, if good sport would tempt you, I should then 
expect you would sometimes see me ; for you would then say it 
were a fine river indeed, if you had once seen the sport at the 
height. 

Viator. Wliich I will do, if I live, and that you please to give 
me leave. There was one, and there another. 

Piscator. And all this in a strange river, and with a fly of 
your o■\^'n making ! Why, what a dangerous man are you ? 

Viator. I, sir ! but who taught me ? and as Dametas says by 
his man Dorus, so you may say by me, — 

If my man such praises have, 
WTiat then have I that taught the knave ? * 

But what have we got here? a rock springing up in the middle 
of the river ! this is one of the oddest sights that ever I saw. 

Piscator. Why, sir, from that Pike f that you see standing up 
there distant from the rock, this is called Pike Pool. And 
young Mr Izaak Walton was so pleased with it, as to draw it in 
landscape, in black and wliite, in a blank book I have at home, 
as he has done several prospects of my house also, which I keep 
for a memorial of his favour, and will shew you when we come 
up to dinner. 

Viator. Has young master Izaak Walton been here, too ? ' 
Piscator. Yes, marry has he, sir, and that again and again, 
too; and in France since, and at Rome, and at Venice, and I 
can 't tell where ; but I intend to ask him a great many hard 
questions so soon as I can see him, which wiW. be, God ^^'illing, 
next month. In the meantime, sir, to come to this fine stream 
at the head of this great pool, you must venture over these 
slippery cobbling stones. Believe me, sir, there you were 
nimble, or else you had been do^^^l. But now you are got 
over, look to yourself ; for, on my w^ord, if a fish rise here, he 
is like to be such a one as "svill endanger your tackle. How 
now ! 

* Sidney's Arcadia. 

+ It is a rock, in the fashion of a spire-steeple, and almost as big-. It 
stands in the midst of the river Dove, and not far from Mr Cotton'-s 
house, below which place this delicate river takes a swift career betwixt 
many mighty rocks, much higher and bigger than St Paul's church before 
it was burnt.* And this Dove being opposed by one of the highest of 
them, has, at last, forced itself a way through it ; and after a mile's 
concealment, appears again with more glory and beauty than before that 
opposition, running through the most pleasant valleys and most fruitful 
meadows that this nation can justly boast of. — \V. 

* About the height of some hundred fee<, as it appeared to me iu 1S17 ; but I onlv 
measured it by the eye. —J. R. 



270 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

Viator. I think you have such command here over the fishes. 
that you can raise them by your word, as they say conjurors can 
do spirits, and afterward make them do what you bid them ; 
for here 's a Trout has taken my fly, — I had rather have lost a 
crown. What luck's this! he was a lovely fish, and turned up 
a side like a Salmon. 

Piscator. Oh, sir, this is a war where you sometimes win, and 
must sometimes expect to lose. Never concern yourself for the 

loss of your fly ; for ten to one I teach you to make a better 

Who's that calls? 

Servant. Sir, ^villit please you to come to dinner? 

Piscator. We come. You hear, sir, we are called : and now 
take your choice, whether you will climb this steep hill before 
you, from the top of which you will go directly into the house, 
or back again, over these stepping stones, and about by the 
bridge. 

Viator. Nay, sure the nearest way is best ; at least my 
stomach tells me so ; and I am now so well acquainted with 
your rocks that I fear them not. 

Piscator. Come, then, follow me. And so soon as we have 
dined, we will down again to the little house, where I will 
begin, at the place I left off, about fly-fishing, and read you 
another lectm-e ; for I have a great deal more to say upon that 
subject. 

Viator. The more the better ; I could never have met mth 
a more obliging master, my first excepted. Nor such sport can 
all the rivers about London ever afford, as is to be found in this 
pretty river. 

Piscator. You deserve to have better : both because I see you 
are ^villing to take pains, and for liking this little so well ; and 
better I hope to shew you before we part. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FISHING AT THE TOP. PLIES FOR THE MONTHS OF JANUARY, 
FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, AND PART OF MAY; INCLUDING 
UNDER MAY, PARTICULAR DIRECTIONS FOR BAITING WITH THE 
GREEN DRAKE. 

Viator. Come, sir, having now well dined, and being again 
set in your little house, I -will now challenge your promise, and 
entreat you proceed in your instruction for fly-fishing : which, 
that you may be the better encouraged to do, I -will assure you, 
that I have not lost, I think, one syllable of what you have told 
me ; but very well retain all your directions, both for the rod^ 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 271 

line, and making a fly, and now desire an account of the flies 
themselves. 

Piscator. Viliy, sir, I am ready to give it you, and shall have 
the whole afternoon to do it in, if nobody come in to interrupt 
us; for you must know, (besides the unfitness of the day,) that 
the afternoons, so early in March, signify very little to angling 
mth a fly, though \\ith a Minnow, or a worm, something might, 
I confess, be done. 

To begin, then, where I left oflf : — My father Walton tells us 
but of twelve artificial flies to angle Avdth at the top, and gives 
their names ; of which some are common vdth us here ; and I 
think I guess at most of them by his description, and I believe 
they all breed and are taken in our rivers, though we do not 
make them either of the same dubbing or fashion. And it may 
be in the rivers about London, which I presume he has most 
frequented, and where it is likely he has done most execution, 
there is not much notice taken of many more : but we are 
acquainted with several others here, though perhaps I may 
reckon some of his by other names too ; but if I do, I shall 
make you amends by an addition to his catalogue. And although 
the forenamed great master in the art of angling — for so in truth 
he is — tells you that no man should, in honesty, catch a Trout 
till the middle of March, yet I hope he will give a man leave 
sooner to take a Grayling, which, as I told you, is in the dead 
months in his best season : and do assure you (which I remember 
by a very remarkable token) I did once take, upon the sixth day 
of December, one, and only one, of the biggest Graylings, and 
the best in season, that ever I yet saw or tasted ; and do Uiually 
take Trouts too, and with a fly, not only before the middle of 
this month, but almost every year in February, unless it be a 
very ill spring indeed ; and have sometimes in January, so 
early as New-year's tide, and in frost and snow, taken Grayling 
in a warm sunshine day for an hour or two about noon ; and to 
fish for him with a grub, it is then the best time of all. 

I shall therefore begin my fly-fishing with that month, (though, 
I confess, very few begin so soon, and that such as are so fond 
of the sport as to embrace all opportunities can rarely in that 
month find a day fit for their purpose,) and tell you, that, upon 
my knowledge, these flies, in a warm sun, for an hour or two, 
in the day, are certainly taken. 



1 . A red brown, with wings of the male of a mallard, almost 
white ; the dubbing of the tail of a black long-coated cur, such 
as they commonly make muffs of ; for the hair on the tail of 
such a dog dyes, and turns to a red bro\vn, but the hair of a 



272 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

smooth-coated dog of the same colour will not do, because it 
will not dye, but retains its natural colour.* And this fly is 
taken in a warm sun, this whole month through. 

2. There is also a very little bright dun gnat, as little as can 
possibly be made, so little as never to be fished ^\dth, ^vith 
above one hair next the hook ; and this is to be made of a 
mixed dubbing of marten's fur, and the white of a hare's scut, 
with a very white and small wing ; and it is no great matter 
how fine you fish, for nothing will rise in this month but a 
Grayling ; and of them I never, at this season, saw any taken 
with a fly, of above a foot long, in my life : but of httle ones 
about the bigness of a smelt, in a warm day, and a glowing sun, 
you may take enough with these two flies ; and they are both 
taken the whole month through. 

FEBRUARY. 

1. Where the red brown of the last month ends, another, 
almost of the same colour, begins vnth this : saving that the 
dubbing of this must be of something a blacker colour, and both 
of them v.'arpt on with red silk. The dubbing that should 
make this fly, and that is the truest colour, is to be got off" the 
black spot of a hog's ear : not that a black spot in any part of 
the hog will not afford the same colour, but that the hair in 
that place is, by many degrees, softer, and more fit for the 
purpose. His wing must be as the other, [1. in January ;J and 
tills kills all this month, and is called the lesser red-brown. 

2. This month, also, a plain hackle, t or palmer-fly, made 
with a rough black body, either of black spaniel's fur, or the 
whirl of an ostrich feather, and the red hackle of a capon 
over all, will kill, and, if the weather be right, make very good 
sport. 

3. Also a lesser hackle, with a black body also, silver twist 
over that, and a red feather over all, will fill your pannier, if the 
month be open, and not bound up in ice and snow, with very 
good fish ; but, in case of a frost and snow, you are to angle 
only ^^dth the smallest gnats, browns, and duns you can make ; 
and with those are only to expect Graylings no bigger than 
sprats. 

4. In this month, upon a whirling round water, we have a 
great hackle, the body black, and wrapped with a red feather of 
a capon untrimmed ; that is, the whole length of the hackle 

* The dubbing- is to be warped on as No. 1. in February, infra. 

t The author is now in the month of February ; during which are 
taktm, the plain hackle, which we should recommend to be made of black 
ostrich herl, warped, or tied down, to the dubbing with red silk, aiid a 
red cock's hackle over all. * 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 273 

Staring out, (for we sometimes barb the hackle-feather short all 
over, sometimes barb it only a little, and sometimes barb it 
close underneath,) leaving the whole length of the feather on 
the top or back of the fly, which makes it swim better, and, 
as occasion serves, kills very great fish, 

5. We make use, also, in this month, of another great hackle, 
the body black, and ribbed over \vith gold t^\dst, and a red 
feather over all ; which also does great execution.* 

6. Also a great dun, made Avith dun bear's hair, and the 
wings of the gray feather of a mallard near unto his tail ; which 
is absolutely the best fly can be throwTi upon a river this month, 
and \^dth which an angler shall have admirable sport. 

7. We have also this month the great blue dun, the dubbing 
of the bottom of bear's hair next to the roots, mixed with a 
littl e blue camlet ; the "mngs, of the dark gray feather of a 
mallard. 

8. We have also this month a dark bro^^-n, the dubbing of 
a brouTi hair off the flank of a brended cow ; and the wings 
of the gray drake's feather. 

And note, that these several hackles, or palmer-flies, are 
some for one water and one sky, and some for another : and 
according to the change of those, we alter their size and colour. 
And note also that, both in this and all other months of the 
year, when you do not certainly know what fly is taken, or 
cannot see any fish to rise, you are then to put on a small 
hackle, if the water be clear, or a bigger, if something dark, 
imtil you have taken one ; and, then thrusting your finger 
through his gills, to pull out his gorge, which, being opened 
^\^th your knife, you will then discover what fly is taken, and 
may fit yourself accordingly.! 

* Gold twist hackle ; the same dubbing-, wai-ping, and hackle ; with gold 
twist. 

These hackles are taken chiefly from nine to eleven in the morning, and 
from one to three in the afternoon. They will do for any month in the 
year, and upon any water. 

+ You may also observe, that the fish never rise eagerly and freely at 
any sort of fly, until that kind come to the water's side ; for though I have 
often, at the first coming iii of some flies, (which I judged they loved best,) 
gotten several of them, yet I could uever find that they did much, if at all, 
value them, until those sorts of flies began to flock to the river's side, 
and were to be found on the trees and bushes there in great numbers. — 
Venables, p. 15. 

When you first come to the river in the morning, with your rod beat 
upon the bushes or boughs which hang over the waters ; and by their 
falling upon the waters, you will see what sorts of flies are there in 
greatest numbers ; if divers sorts, and equal in number, try them all, and 
you will quickly find which they most desire. Sometimes they change 
their fly (but it 's not very usual) twice or thrice in one day ; hut, ordinarily, 
they seek not for an-ither sort of fly, till they have, for some days, even 
glutted themselves with a former kind, wliich is commoniy when those fiies 
die and go out. — Ibid. p. 16.* 

* Both these extracts from Venahles are founded upon the notion that the fish can discri- 
minate the species of flies, than which nothing can be more unfounded, for the angler's 
flies are not like any sptcies. — J. R. 

S 



274 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

For the making of a hackle, or palmer-fly, my father Walton 
has already given you sufficient direction.* 

* But, with Mr Cotton's good leave, he has not, nor has any author 
that I know of, unless we are to take that for a palmer which Walton has 
given directions for making, part i. p. 108, which I can never do till 1 see 
what I have never yet seen, namely, caterpillars with wings. Rejecting, 
therefore, wings as unnatural and absurd, supposing you would make the 
plain hackle, or palmer, which are terms of the same import, the method ot 
doing it is as follows, viz. 

Hold your hook in ahorizontal position, with the shank downwards, and 
the bent of it between the fore-finger and thumb of your left hand ; and, 
having a fine bristle and other materials lying by you, take half a yard of 
fine red marking silk, well waxed, and with your right hand give it four 
or five turns about the shank of the hook, inclining the turns to the right 
hand : when you are near the end of the shank, turn it into such a loop as 
you are hereafter directed to make for fastening off, and draw it tight, 
leaving the ends of the silk to hang down at each end of the hook. Having 
singed the end of your bristle, lay the same along on the inside of the shank 
of the hook, as low as the bent, and whip four or five times round ; then 
singeing the other end of the bristle to a fit length, turn it over to the back 
of the shank, and, pinching it into a proper form, whip down and fasten 
ofiF, as before directed, which will bring both ends of the silk into the bent. 
After you have waxed your silk again, take three or four strands of an 
ostrich feather, and holding them and the bent of the hook as at first 
directed, the feathers to your left hand, and the roots in the bent of your 
hook, with that end of the silk which you just now waxed, whip them 
three or four times round, and fasten off: then turning the feathers to the 
right, and twisting them and the silk with your fore-finger and thumb, 
wind them round the shank of the hook, still supplying the short strands 
■with new ones, as they fail, till you come to the end, and fasten oft'. When 
you have so done, clip off the ends of the feathers, and trim the body of 
the palmer small at the extremities, and full in the middle, and wax 
both ends of your silk, which are now divided, and lie at either end of the 
hook. 

Lay your work by you ; and, taking a strong bold hackle, with fibres 
about half an inch long, straighten the stem very carefully, and, holding 
the small end between the fore-finger and thumb of your left hand, with 
those of the right stroke the fibres the contrary way to that which they 
naturally lie; and taking the hook, and holding it as before, lay the point 
of the hackle into the bent of the liook, with the hollow (which is the 
palest) side upwards, and whip it very fast to its place : in doing whereof, 
be careful not to tie in many of the fibres ; or, if you should chance to do 
so, pick them out with the point of a very large needle. 

When the hackle is thus made fast, the utmost care and nicety isnecessary 
in winding it on ; for if you fail in this, your fly is spoiled, and you must 
begin all again : to prevent which, keeping the hollow or pale side to yoiu- 
left hand, and, as much as possible, the side of the stem down on the dubbing, 
wind the hackle twice round; and holding fast what you have so wound, 
pick out the loose fibres which you may have taken in, smd make another 
turn ; then lay hold of the hackle with the third and fourth fingers of your 
left hand, with which you may extend it while you disengage the loose 
fibres as before. 

' In this manner proceed till you come to within an eighth of an inch of the 
end of the shank, where you will find an end of silk hanging ; and by which 
time you will find the fibres at the great end of the hackle something 
discomposed ; clip these off close to the stem, and with the end of your 
middle finger press the stem close to the hook, while, with the fore-finger 
of your right hand, you turn the silk into a loop ; which, when you have 
twice put over the end of the shank of the hook, loop and all. your 
work is safe. 

Then wax that end of the silk which you now used, and turn it over as 
before, till you have taken up nearly all that remained of the hrfok, 
observing to lay the turns neatly side by side ; and, lastly, clip' off the 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 275 



For this month you are to use all the same hackles and flies 
>vith the other ; but you are to make them less. 

1 . We have, besides, for this month, a little dim, called a 
whirling dun,* (though it is not the wliirling dun indeed, which 
is one of the best flies we have ;) and for this, the dubbing 
must be of the bottom fur of a squirrel's tail ; and the wing, of 
the gray feather of -a drake. 

2. Also a bright bro\ATi ; the dubbing either of the brown of 
a spaniel, or that of a red cow's flank, with a gray v.ing. 

3. Also a whitish dun, made of the roots of camel's hair, 
and the wings, of the gray feather of a mallard. 

4. There is also for this month a fly called the thorntree fly ; 
the dubbing, an absolute black, mixed with eight or ten hairs 

pnds of thfi silk. Thus you will have made a bait that will catch Trout of 
the largest size, in any water in England. 

It is true, the method above described will require some variation in the 
case of gold and silver twist palmers ; in the making- whereof, the manage- 
ment of the twist is to be considered as another operation ^ but this 
variation will suggest itself to every reader, a-s will also the method of 
making those flies, contained in the notes, that have hackle under the 
wings ; which else we should have added to Cotton's directions for making 
a fly, which he gives Viator in the fishing-house. See chap. v. 

* Great trhirling dun. Dub with fox-cub's or squirrel's fur, well 
mixed with about a sixth part of the finest hog's wool ; warp with pale 
orange wings, very large, taken from the quill feather of a ruddy hen ; 
the head to be fastened with ash-coloured silk ; a red cock's hackle, at full 
length, may be wrapped under the wings, and a turn or two lower towards 
the tail. 

This is a killing fly, and is to be seen rising out of the hedges in most 
Trout rivers, late in the evening, seldom before sunset, and continues on 
the water till midnight, or after. It is found in most of the warm months ; 
but kills chiefly in a blustering, warm evening, from the middle of May 
to the end of July. 

The directions of Mr Cotton for making flies are to be considered as the 
very basis and foundation of that art, no author before him having ever 
treated the subject so copiously and accurately as he has done : what 
improvements have been made since his time have been handed about in 
manuscript lists, but have hardly ever been communicated to the public. 

A reverend, worthy, and ingenious friend of mine, a lover of angling, 
who has practi-ed that and the art of fly-making these thirty years, and is 
the gentleman mentioned in the note, p. 194, hasgenerously communicated 
to me the result of his many years' experience, in a list of a great number 
of flies not mentioned by Cotton, with some variations in the manner of 
making those described in the text. And as to these deviations, it is 
hoped they will be considered as improvements ; since I am authorized to 
say, that the above gentleman has, in the making of flies, made it a constant 
rule to follow nature. 

Part of this list is, for very obvious reasons, wrought into the form of 
notes on that of Mr Cotton ; and the rest, with another very valuable 
catalogue, composed by a north country angler, and communicated to me 
by the same gentleman, make N'os. II. and III. of the Appendix. 

'The reader will there also find No. IV. a Lw^o/fZ/e^, formerly published 
in the Angler's J'ade Mecum, so often referred to in the course of this work : 
and though the flies therein contained are said to be chiefly of use in stony, 
I have tried some of them, especially the duns, in other rivers, and found 
them to be excellent. 



276 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

of Isabella-coloured * mohair ; the body as little as can "be made ; 
and the wings, of a bright mallard's feather. An admirable fly, 
and in great repute amongst us for a killer. 

5. There is, besides this, another blue dun ;t the dubbing of 
which it is made being thus to be got. Take a s-mall tooth- 
comb, and with it comb the neck of a black grayhound, and the 
down that sticks in the teeth will be of tlie finest blue that ever 
you saw. The wings of this fly can hardly be too white ; and 
he is taken about the tenth of this month, and lasteth till the 
four-and-twentieth. 

6. From the tenth of this month also, till towards the end, 
is taken a little black gnat. The dubbing, either of the fur ot 
a black water-dog, or the down of a young black water-coot ; 
the wings, of the male of a mallard as white as may be ; the 
body as little as you can possibly make it, and the wings as 
short as his body. 

7. From the sixteenth of this month also to the end of it, 
we use a bright brown ; the dubbing for which is to be had out 
of a skinner's lime-pits, and of the hair of an abortive calf, 
which the lime will turn to be so bright, as to shine like gold ; 
for the wings of this fly, the feather of a brown hen is best. 
Which fly is also taken till the tenth of April. 

APRIL. 

All the same hackles and flies that were taken in March Mali 
be taken in this month also, with this distinction only concerning 
the flies, that all the browns be lapped vidth red silk, and the 
duns with yellow. ' 

* Isabella, Spezie di colore che partecipa del bianco e del giallo. Altieri'a 
Dictionary. A kind of whitish yellow, or, as some say, buif colour a little 
soiled. 

How it came by this name will appear from the following anecdote, for 
which I am obliged to a very ingenious and learned lady. The Archduke 
Albertus, who had married the Infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip the 
Second, King of Spain, with whom he had the Low Countries in dowry, 
in the year 1602, having determined to lay siege to Ostend, then in posses- 
sion of the heretics, his pious princess, who attended him in that expedi- 
tion, made a vow that, till it was taken, she weald never change her 
clothes. Contrary to expectation, as the story says, it was three years 
before the place was reduced, in which time her Highness 's linen had 
acquired the above mentioned hue. 

t Blue, or violet dun. Dub with the roots of a fox cub's tail, and a 
very little blue-violet worsted ; warp with pale yellow silk ; wing, of the 
pale part of a starling's feather. This fly is taken from eight to eleven, 
and from one to three. 

This fly, which is also called the ash-coloured dun, and blue dun, is 
produced from a cadis ; it is so very small, that the hook, known at the 
shops by the size No. 9, is full big enough for it, if not too big. The shape 
of the fly is exactly the same with that of the green drake. So early in 
the year as February, they will drop on the water before eight in the 
morning ; and Trouts of the largest size, as well as small ones, will rise at 
them very eagerly. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 277 

1. To these a small bright brown, made of a spaiiiel's fur, 
^\ith a light gray ^ving, in a bright day, and a clear water, is 
very well taken. 

2. We have, too, a little* dark bro-wn ; the dubbing of that 
colour, and some violet camlet niLxed ; and the wing, of the 
gray feather of a mallard. 

3. From the sixth of this month to the tenth, we have also a 
fly called the violet-fly, made of a dark violet stuff; -with the 
wings of the gray feather of a mallard. 

4. About the twelfth of this month comes in a fly called the 
whirling dun,f which is taken every day, about the mid time of 
day, all this month through, and, by fits, from thence to the end 
of June ; and is commonly made of the down of a fox-cub, 
which is of an ash colour at the roots next the skin, and ribbed 
about ^vith yellow silk ; the wings of the pale gray feather of a 
mallard. 

5. There is also a yellow dun : % the dubbing of camel's hair, 
and yellow camlet, or wool, mixed ; and a white gray Ming. 

6. There is also this month another little brown, besides 
that mentioned before, made with a slender body ; the dubbing 
of dark bromi and violet camlet, mixed, and a gray wing ; 
which, though the direction for the making be near the other, 
is yet another fly, and A\'ill take when the other will not, 
especially in a bright day and a clear water. 

7. About the twentieth of this month comes in a fly called 
the horse-flesh fly ; the dubbing of which is a blue mohair, with, 
pink-coloured and red tammy mixed, a light coloured wing, and 
a dark bro^\^l head. This fly is taken best in an evening, and 
kills from two hours before sunset till twilight, and is taken the 
month through. 

* Dark hronm. Dub with the hair of a dark brown spaniel, or calf, 
that looks ruddy by being- exposed to wind and weather; warp with 
yellow ; wing-, dark starling's feather. Taken from eight to eleven. 
This is a good fly, and to be seen in most rivers ; but so variable in its hue, 
as the season advances, that it requires the closest attention to the natural 
fly to adapt the materials for making it artificially, which is also the case 
with the violet, or ash coloured dun. When this fly first appears, it is 
nearly of a chocolate colour, from which, by tlie middle of May, it has been 
observed to deviate to almost a lemon colour. Northern anglers call it, 
by way of eminence, the dark bro\vn ; others call it the four-winged 
brown : it has four wings, lying flat on its back, something longer than 
the body, which is longish, but not taper. This fly must be made on a 
smallish hook, namely, No. 8, or 9. 

t Little whirling dun. The body, fox cub, and a little light ruddy 
brown mixed : warp with gray, or ruddy silk ; a red hackle under the 
wing ; wing- of a land-rail, or ruddy brown chicken, which is better. 
This is a killing fly in a blustering day, as the great whirling dun is in the 
evening, and late at night. 

X Yellow dun. Dub with a small quantity of pale yellow crewel, mixed 
with fox-cub down from the tail, and warp with yellow ; wing, of a palish 
starling's feather. Taken from eight to eleven, and from two to four. 
See more of the yellow dun in the Appendix, No. IV. 



278 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



And now, sir, that we are entering into the month of May, 
I think it requisite to beg not only your attention, but also your 
best patience, for I must now be a little tedious with you, and 
dwell upon this month longer than ordinary, which, that you 
may the better endure, I must tell you, this month deserves and 
requires to be insisted on, forasmuch as it alone, and the next 
following, afford more pleasure to the fly angler than all the 
rest ; and here it is that you are to expect an account of the 
green-drake and stone-fly, promised you so long ago, and some 
others that are peculiar to this month, and part of the month 
following, and that, though not so great either in bulk or name, 
do yet stand in competition with the two before named, and so 
that it is yet undecided amongst the anglers to which of the 
pretenders to the title of the May-fly it does properly and duly 
belong. Neither dare I, where so many of the learned in this 
art of angling are got in dispute about the controversy, take 
upon me to determine ; but I think I ought to have a vote 
amongst them, and, according to that privilege, shall give you my 
free opinion, and, peradventure, when I have told you all, you 
may incline to think me in the right. 

Viator. I have so great a deference to your judgment in these 
matters, that I must always be of your opinion ; and the more 
you speak, the faster I grow to my attention, for I can never be 
weary of hearing you upon this subject. 

Piscator. Why, that 's encouragement enough : and now, 
prepare yourself for a tedious lecture ; but I will first begin with 
the flies of less esteem, (though almost any thing will take a 
Trout in May,) that I may afterwards insist the longer upon 
those of greater note and reputation. Know, therefore, that the 
first fly we take notice of in this month, is called 

1 . The turkey-fly ; the dubbing ravelled out of some blue 
stuff, and lapped about with yellow silk; the wings of a gray 
mallard's feather. 

2. Next, a great hackle, or palmer-fly, with a yellow body, 
ribbed with gold twist, and large wings, of mallard's feather 
dyed yellow, Avith a red capon's hackle over all. 

3. Then a black fly ; the dubbing of a black spaniel's fur, 
and the wings of a gray mallard's feather. 

4. After that, a light brown, with a slender body; the dub- 
bing twirled upon small red silk, and raised with the point of a 
needle, that the ribs, or rows of silk, may appear through the 
wings of the gray feather of a mallard. 

5. Next, a little dun; the dubbing of a bear's dun whirled 
upon yellow silk; the wings, of the gray feather of a mallard.* 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 279 

6. Then a white gnat, with a pale wing, and a Mack head. 

7. There is also, this month, a fly called the peacock-fly ; 
the body made of a whirl of a peacock's feather, \\-ith a red head ; 
and wings, of a mallard's feather. 

8. We have then another very killing fly, kno^^^l by the name 
of the dun-cut ; * the dubbing of which is a bear's dun, Avith a 
little blue and yellow mixed with it ; a large dun mng, and two 
horns at the head, made of the hairs of a squirrel's tail. 

9. The next is the cow-lady, a little fly ; f the body, of a pea- 
cock's feather ; the wing, of a red feather, or strips of the red 
hackle of a cock. 

10. We have then the cow-dung fly ; the dubbing, light brown 
and yellow mixed ; the wing, the dark gray feather of a mallard. 
And note that, besides these above mentioned, all the same hackles 
and flies, the hackles only brighter, and the flies smaller, that are 
taken in April, will also be taken this month, as also all bro^^^ls 
and duns; and now I come to my stone-fly and green-drake, which 
are the matadores for Trout and Grayling, and, in their season, 
kill more fish in our Derbyshire rivers, than all the rest, past 
and to come, in the whole year besides. 

But first, I am to tell you, that we have four several flies 
which contend for the title of the May-fly, namely, the green- 
drake, the stone-fly, the black-fly, and the little yellow May-fly. 

And all these have their champions and advocates to dispute 
and plead their priority ; though I do not understand why the 
two last named should — the first tv\'o having so manifestly the 
advantage, both in their beauty, and the wonderfid execution 
they do in their season. 

11. Of these, the green-drake comes in about the twentieth 
of this month, or betwixt that and the latter end, (for they are 
sometimes sooner and sometimes later, according to the quality 
of the year,) but never well taken till towards the end of this 
month and the beginning of June. The stone-fly comes much 
sooner, so early as the middle of April, but is never well taken 
till towards the middle of May, and continues to kill much longer 
thau'the green-drake stays with us, so long as to the end almost of 
.Tune ; and, indeed, so long as there are any of them to be seen 
upon the water ; and sometimes, in an artificial fly, and late at 
night, or before sunrise in the morning, longer. 

Now, both these flies, and I believe many others, though I 
think not all, are certainly and demonstratively bred in the very 
rivers where they are taken ; oiu- cadis or cod-bait, which lie 

* Dun-cut. Dub with bear's cub fur, and a little yellow and green 
crewel; Marp with yellow or green: wing, of a land-rail. Towards the 
evenincT of a showery day, this is a great killer. 

f Not a fly exactly, though it has wings, but the little roundish, reddi?h 
beetle, with black spots, otherwise called a lady-bird, {Coccitiella.) — J. R. 



280 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

under stones at the bottom of the water, most of them turning 
mto those two flies, * and being gathered in the husk, or crust, 
near the time of their maturity, are very easily kno\Mi and dis- 
tinguished, and are of all other the most remarkable, both for 
their size, as being of all other the biggest, (the shortest of them 
being a full inch long or more,) and for the execution they do, 
the Trout and Grayling being much more greedy of them than 
of any others ; and, indeed, the Trout never feeds fat, nor comes 
into ills perfect season, till these flies come in. 

Of these the green-drake never discloses from his husk till he 
be first there grown to full maturity, body, wings, and all ; and 
then he creeps out of his cell, but with his wings so crimped and 
ruffled, by being pressed together in that narrow room, that they 
are for some hours totally useless to him ; by which means he is 
compelled either to creep upon the flags, sedges, and blades of 
grass, (if his first rising from the bottom of the water be near the 
banks of the river,) till the air and sun stiffen and smooth them; 
or if his first appearance above water happen to be in the middle, 
he then lies upon the surface of the water, like a ship at hull, 
(for his feet are totally useless to him there, and he cannot creep 
upon the water as the stone-fly can,) until his mngs have got 
stiffness to fly wdth, if by some Trout or Grayling he be not 
taken in the interim, (which ten to one he is,) and then his 
wings stand high, and closed exact upon his back, like the but- 
terfly, and his motion in flying is the same, f His body is in some 
of a paler, in others, of a darker yellow, (for they are not all 
exactly of a colour,) ribbed with rows of green, long, slender, 
and growing sharp towards the tail, at the end of which he has 
three long small whisks of a very dark colour, almost black, and 
his tail turns up towards his back Hke a mallard, from whence, 
questionless, he has his name of the green-drake. These (as I 
think I told you before) we commonly dape or dibble with ; 
and having gathered great store of them into a long draw box, 
with holes in the cover to give them air, (where also they will 
continue fresh and vigorous a night or more,) we take them out 
thence by the wings, and bait them thus upon the hook. We 
first take one, (for we commonly fish with two of them at a 
time,) and putting the point of the hook into the thickest part 
of his body, under one of his Avings, run it directly through, and 
out at the other side, leaving him spitted cross upon the hook ; 
and then taking the other, put him on after the same manner, 

* This is a mistake. The stone-fly {Phryganea) alone is from the cadis 
worm. The green-drake {Ephemera) being- from a grub that feeds indeed 
under water, not in an artificial case like the other, but in a hole dug in the 
bank, or under the shelter of loose weeds. — J. R. 

f This is correct, —a circumstance rare enough, as we have already 
seen in this work, when either Waiton or Cotton venture upon natural 
history. — J. R, 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 281 

but ^\^th his head the contrary way ; in which posture they \^all 
live upon the hook, and play with their wings, for a quarter of 
an hour or more ; but you must have a care to keep their ^\•ings 
dry, both from the water, and also that your fingers be not wet 
when you take them out to bait them, for then your bait is 
spoiled. 

Having now told you how to angle with this fly alive, I am 
now to tell you next how to make an artificial fly, that will so 
perfectly resemble him,* as to be taken in a rough windy day, 
when no flies can lie upon the water, nor are to be found about 
the banks and sides of the river, to a wonder ; and with which 
you shall certainly kill the best Trout and Grayling in the 
river. 

The artificial green-drake, f then is made upon a large hook, 
the dubbing camel's hair, bright bear's hair, the soft down that 
is combed from a hog's bristles, and yellow camlet, well mixed 
together ; the body long, and ribbed about with green silk, or 
rather yellow, waxed with green wax : the whisks of the tail of 
the long hairs of sables, or fitchet, and the wings of the white- 
gray feather of a mallard, dyed yellow, which also is to be 
dyed thus : 

Take the root of a barbary tree, and shave it, and put to it 
woody viss, with as much alum as a walnut, and boil your 
feathers in it with rain water, and they will be of a very fine 
yellow. 

I have now done with the green-drake, excepting to tell you, 
that he is taken at all hours, during his season, J whilst there is 
any day upon the sky ; and with a made fly I once took, ten 
days after he was absolutely gone, in a cloudy day, after a shower, 
and in a whistling wind, five and thirty very great Trouts and 
Graylings, betwixt five and eight of the clock in the evening, 
and had no less than five or six flies, with three good hairs apiece, 
taken from me, in despite of my heart, besides. 

12. I should now come next to the stone-fly, but there is 
another gentleman in my way, that must of necessity come in 
between, and that is the gray-drake, which in all shapes and 
dimensions is perfectly the same with the other, but almost quite 
of another colour, being of a paler, and more livid yellow, and 
green, and ribbed with black quite douTi his body, with black 

* The resemblance is not much nearer, I should say, than Hamlet's cloud 
to a camel, or a whale. — J. R. 

f Green drake, or May fly. The body of seal's fur, or yellow mohair, a 
little fox-cub down, and'hop's wool, or "light brown from "a Turkey carpet, 
mixed; warp with pale yellow, or red rock's hackle, under the wings; 
wings, of a mallard's feather, dyed yellow : three wi~ks in his tail from a 
sable mufl'. 'I'aken all day, but chiefly from two to four in the afternoon. 

t The fly will be taken'or not according to the colour of the water, or 
of the sky, not the season. — J. R. 



282 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

sliining wings, and so diaphanous and tender, cobweb-like, that 
they are of no use for daping ; but come in, and are taken after 
the green-drake, and in an artificial fly kill very well, which fly 
is thus made : * The dubbing of the down of a hog's bristles and 
black spaniel's fur mixed, and ribbed down the body with black 
silk ; the whisks, of the hairs of the beard of a black cat ; and 
the wings, of the black gray feather of a mallard. 

And now I come to the stone-fly ; but I am afraid I have 
already wearied your patience ; which, if I have, I beseech you 
freely tell me so. and I will defer the remaining instructions for 
fly angling till some other time. 

Viator. No, truly, sir, I can never be weary of hearing you. 
But if you think fit, because I am afraid I am too troublesome, 
to refresh yourself with a glass and a pipe, you may afterwards 
proceed, and I shall be exceedingly pleased to hear you. 

Piscator. I thank you, sir, for that motion ; for, believe me, 
I am dry with talking, : here, boy ! give us here a bottle and a 
glass ; and, sir, my service to you, and to all our friends in the 
south. 

Viator. Your servant, sir ; and I '11 pledge you as heartily ; 
for the good powdered beef I ate at dinner, or something else, 
has made me thirsty. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FISHING AT THE TOP CONTINUED. FLIES FOR THE END OF MAY, 
AND FOR THE FOLLOWING MONTHS TILL DECEMBER ; CON- 
TAINING, UNDER MAY, INSTRUCTIONS WHEN TO DAPE WITH 
THE STONE-FLY. 

Viator. So, sir, I am now ready for another lesson, so soon 
as you please to give it me. 

Piscator. And I, sir, as ready to give you the best I can. 
Having told you the time of the stone-fly's coming in, and that 
he is bred of a cadis in the very river Avhere he is taken, f I am 
next to tell you that, 

13. This same stone-fly has not the patience to continue in 
his crust, or husk, till his wings be full grown ; but as soon as 

* Grap-drnJce. The body, of an absolute white osh-ich feather ; the end 
of the bo'dy towards the tail, of peacock's herl ; warping, of an ash colour, 
with silver twist and black hackle ; wing, of a dark gray feather of a 
mallard. A very killing fly, especially towards the evening, when the fish 
are glutted with the green-drake. 

f Chap. vii. Num. 11.* 

* It is an old and foolish notion among anglers, that fish will only take the sorts of 
maggots bred in the rivers where they live. If so, they would never take grasshopperB, 
crickets, and earSi worms, much less artificial flies. — J. R. » 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 283 

ever they begin to put out, that he feels himself strong, (at which 
time we call him a jack,) squeezes himself out of prison, and 
crawls to the top of some stone, where, if he can find a chink 
that vnH receive him, or can creep betwixt two stones, the one 
lying hollow upon the other, (which, by the way, we also lay 
so purposely to find them,) he there lurks till his vdngs be full 
grown ; and there is your only place to find him, (and from 
thence doubtless he derives his name ;) though, for want of such 
converuence, he will make shift Mdth the hollow of a bank, or 
any other place where the wind cannot come to fetch him off. 
His body is long, and pretty thick, and as broad at the tail 
almost as in the middle : his colour a very fine brown, ribbed 
with yellow, and much yellower on the belly than the back ^ 
he has two or three whisks also at the tag of his tail, and two 
little horns upon his head : his ^vings, when full grown, are 
double, and flat down his back, of the same colour, but rather 
darker than his body, and longer than it, though he makes but 
little use of them ; for you shall rarely see him flying, though 
often s-^amming and paddling A\dth several feet he has under his 
belly, upon the water, without stirring a wing. But the drake 
will mount steeple-height into the air ; though he is to be found 
upon flags and grass too, and indeed every where, high and low, 
near the river ; there being so many of them in their season as, 
were they not a very inoffensive insect, would look like a 
plague : and these drakes (since I forgot to tell you before, I 
\nll tell you here) are taken by the fish to that incredible degree 
that, upon a calm day, you shall see the still deeps continually 
all over circles by the fishes rising, who will gorge themselves 
with those flies till they purge again out of their gills : * and the 
Trouts are at that time so lusty and strong, that ov.e of eight or 
ten inches long \vill then more struggle and tug, and more 
endanger your tackle, than one twice as big in winter. But 
pardon this digression. 

This stone-fly, then, Ave dape or dibble with as A\4th the 
drake, but with this difference, that whereas the green-drake is 
common both to stream and still, and to all hours of the day, 
we seldom dape with this but in the streams, (for in a whistling 
wnd a made-fly, in the deep, is better,) and rarely, but early 
and late, it not being so proper for the mid time of the day ; 
though a great Grayling will then take it very well in a sharp 
stream, and, here and there, a Trout, too, but much better 
towards eight, nine, ten, or eleven, of the clock at night, at 
which time, also, the best fish rise, and the later the better, 
provided you can see your fly ; and when you cannot, a made 

* I have caught a Trout so full of them that, in taking him ofFthe hook, 
I have pressed out of his throat a lump of them as big as a walnut. 



284 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

fly will murder, which is to be made thus : the dubbing, ot 
bear's dun, with a little brown and yellov/ camlet very well 
mixed, but so placed that your fly may be more yellow on the 
belly and towards the tail, underneath, than in any other part ; 
and you are to place two or three hairs of a black cat's beard on 
the top of the hook, in your arming, so as to be turned up when 
you warp on your dubbing, and to stand almost upright, and 
staring one from another ; and note, that your fly is to be ribbed 
with yellow silk ; and the wings long, and very large, of the 
dark gray feather of a mallard. 

14. The next May-fly is the black-fly ; made with a black 
body, of the whirl of an ostrich feather, ribbed with silver twist, 
and the black hackle of a cock over all ; and is a killing fly, but 
not to be named with either of the other. 

15. The last May-fly (that is of the four pretenders*) is the 
little yellow May-fly ; in shape exactly the same \\dth the green- 
drake, but a very little one, and of as bright a yellow as can be 
seen ; which is made of a bright yellow camlet, and the wings 
of a white gray feather dyed yellow. 

16. The last fly for this month, (and which continues all June, 
though it comes in the middle of May,) is the fly called the 
camlet-fly, in shape like a moth, with fine diapered or water 
wings, and udth which (as I told you before) I sometimes used 
to dibble ; and Grayling will rise mightily at it. But the arti- 
ficial fly (which is only in use amongst our anglers) is made of 
a dark brown shining camlet, ribbed over with a very small light 
green silk ; the wings, of the double gray feather of a mallard ; 
and it is a killing fly for small fish. And so much for May. 

JUNE. 

From the first to the four-and-twentieth, the green-drake and 
stone-fly are taken, as I told you before. 

1. From the twelfth to the four-and-twentieth, late at night, 
is taken a fly called the owl-fly ;f the dubbing of a white weasel's 
tail ; and a white gray wing. 

2. We have then another dun, called the barm-fly, from its 
yeasty colour. The dubbing of the fur of a yellow dun cat ; 
and a gray Aving, of a mallard's feather. 

3. We have also a hackle with a purple body, whipped about 
with a red capon's feather. 

* See ante, p. 279. 

+ White miller, or owl-fly. The body of Avhite ostrich herl, white 
hackle, and silver twist, if you please; wing-, of the white feather of a 
tame duck. Taken from sunset till ten at niglit, and from two to four in 
the morning. — H. 

The white or pale-coloured moths, such as the ghost-moth, {Hepialus 
humuli,) are called owl-flies by anglers. — J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 285 

4. As also a gold twist hackle with a purple body, whipped 
about with a red capon's feather. 

5. To these we have, this month, a flesh-fly ; the dubbing of 
a black spaniel's fur and blue wool mixed, and a gray wing. 

6. Also another little flesh-fly ; the body made of the whirl 
of a peacock's feather ; and the wing, of the gray feather of a 
drake. 

7. We have then the peacock-fly ; the body and wing both 
made of the feather of that bird. 

8. There is also the flying-ant, or ant-fly;* the dubbing of 
brown and red camlet mixed, wdth a light gray wing. 

9. We have likewise a brown gnat ; with a very slender body 
of brown and violet camlet, well mixed, and a light gray wing. 

10. And another little black gnat;f the dubbing of black 
mohair, and a white gray wing. 

11. As also a green grasshopper ; the dubbing of green and 
yellow wool mixed, ribbed over ^vith green silk, and a red 
capon's feather over all. 

12. And, lastly, a little dun grasshopper; the body slender, 
made of a dun camlet, and a dun hackle at the top. 



First, all the small flies that were taken in June are also taken 
in this month. 

1. We have then the orange-fly ; :{: the dubbing of orange 
wool, and the wing of a black feather. 

2. Also a httle white dun ; the body made of white mohair, 
and the wing, blue, of a heron's feather. 

3. We have likewise this month a wasp-fly ; made either of 
a dark brown dubbing, or else the fur of a black cat's tail, 
ribbed about with yellow silk ; and the wing, of the gray 
feather of a mallard. 

4. Another fly taken this month is a black hackle ; the body 
made of the whirl of a peacock's feather, and a black hackle 
feather on the top. 

5. We have also another, made of a peacock's whirl without 
wings. 

6. Another fly also is taken this month, called the shell-fly; 
the dubbing of yellow-green Jersey wool, and a little white 

* The ant-fly, which is the male or female ant, h;is four wing-s ; but the 
artificial fly so called, has only two, — so much for imitattou. — J. R. 

■f- Ulack gntit The body extremely small, of black mohair, spaniel's fur, 
ST ostrich feather ; winer, of the liglitest part of a starling- or mallard's 
feather. A very killing fly in an evening-, after a shower, in rapid rivers, 
as in Derbyshire or Wales. 

t Orange-fli/. 1 he body of raw orang-e silk, with a red or black hackle ; 
gold twist may be added ; warp with orange. Taken when the May-fly is 
almost over, and also to the end of June, especially iu hot gloomy weather. 



^^Q THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

hog's hair mixed, which I call the palm-fly, and do believe it is 
taken for a palm, that drops off the willows into the water ; for 
this fly I have seen Trouts take little pieces of moss, as they 
have swum down the river ; by which I conclude that the best 
way to hit the right colour is to compare your dubbing with the 
moss, and mix the colours as near as you can. 

7. There is also taken, this month, a black blue dun ; the 
dubbing of the fur of a black rabbit mixed mth a little yello \v ; 
the wings, of the feather of a blue pigeon's wing. 



The same flies with July. 

1 . Then another ant-fly ; the dubbing of the black brown 
hair of a cow, some red warped in for the tag of his tail, and a 
dark wing. A killing fly. 

2. Next, a fly called the fern-fly ;* the dubbing of the fur of 
a hare's neck, that is of the colour of fern, or bracken, with a 
darkish gray wing of a mallard's feather. A killer too. 

3. Besides these we have a white hackle ; the body of white 
mohair, and warped about with a white hackle-feather ; and 
this is assuredly taken for thistle-do\\Ti. 

4. We have also, this month, a Harry-long -legs ; f the body 
made of bear's dun and blue wool mixed, and a brown hackle 
feather over all. 

Lastly, in this month, all the same browns and duns are taken 
that were taken in May. 

SEPTEMBER. 

This month the same flies are taken that aie taken in April. 

1 . To which I shall only add a camel-brown fly, the dut)bing 
pulled out of the lime of a wall, whipped about Avith red silk ; 
and a darkish gray mallard's feather for the wing. 

2. And one other for which we have no name ; but it is 
made of the back hair of a badger's skin, mixed with the yellow 
softest down of a sanded hog-. 



The same flies are taken this month that were taken in March. 

* This is not properly a fly, but a beetle, called the fern, or garden 
chafer, {Melalontha horticola.) — J. H. 

f Harry-long--leg-s. Made of lightish bear's hair, and a dunnish hackle j 
add a few hairs of light blue mohair, and a little fox-cub down ; warp 
with light gray or ptile blue silk ; the head large. Taken chiefly in a 
cloudy windy day. I have formerly, in the rivers near London, had great 
success, fishing with a long line, and the head of this insect only. — H. 

Called the Jenny-spinner in Scotland; the Pedicia rivosa of systematic 
authors. — J, R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 287 



NOVEMBER. 

The same flies that were taken in February are taken this 
month also. 

DECEMBER. 

Few men angle \\-ith the fly this month, no more than they 
do in January ; but yet, if the weather be warm, (as I have 
kno\\Ti it sometimes in my life to be, even in this cold country, 
v\'here it is least expected,) then a brown, that looks red in the 
hand, and yello\\ish betwixt your eye and the sun, will both 
raise and kill in a clear water and free from snow-broth : but, 
at the best, it is hardly worth a man's labour. * 

And now, sir, I have done with fly-fishing, or angling at the 
top, excepting, once more, to tell you, that of all these (and I 
have named you a great many very killing flies) none are fit to 
be compared with the drake and stone-fly, both for many and 
very great fish ; and yet there are some days that are by no 
means proper for the sport. And in a calm you shall not have 
near so much sport, even with daping, as in a whistling gale of 
wind, for two reasons, both because you are not so easily 
discovered by the fish, and also because there are then but few 
flies that can lie upon the water ; for where they have so m-uch 
choice, you may easily imagine they \\ill not be so eager and 
forward to rise at a bait, that both the shadow of your body, 
and that of your rod, nay, of your very line, in a hot calm 
day, will, in spite of your best caution, render suspected 
to them : but even then, in s\^'ift streams, or by sitting down 
patiently behind a v/illow bush, you shall do more execu- 
tion than at almost any other time of the year, with any 
other fly : though one may sometimes hit of a day when he shall 
come home very well satisfied with sport Avith several other 

* Some, in making- a fly, work it upon, and fasten it immediately, to the 
hook-link, whether it be of gut, grass, or hair ; others whip on the shank 
of the hook a stiff' hog's bristle bent into a loop : and concerning these 
methods there are different opinions. 

I confess the latter, except for small flies, seems to me the more eligible 
way : and it has this advantage, that it enables you to keep your flies in 
excellent order ; to do which, string them, each species separately, through 
the loops, upon a fine piece of catgut, of about seven inches long; and 
string also thereon, through a large "pinhole, a very small ticket of parch- 
ment, with the name of the fly written on it : tie the catgut into a ring, 
and lay them in round flat boxes, with paper between each ring. And 
when you use them, having a neat loop at the lower end of your hook-link, 
you may put them on and take them off at pleasure. 

In the other way, you are troubled with a great length of hook-link, 
wliich, if you put even but few flies together, is sure to tangle, and occasion 
great trouble and loss of time. And as to an objection which some make 
to a loop, that the fi?h see it, and therefore will not take the fly, you may 
be assured tiiere is nothing in it. 



288 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

flies. But with ttese two, the green drake and the stone-fly, I 
do verily believe, I could, some days in my life, had I not been 
weary of slaughter, have loaden a lusty boy ; and have some- 
times, I do honestly assure you, given over upon the mere 
account of satiety of sport ; which will be no hard matter to 
believe, when I likewise assure you, that with this very fly, I 
have, in this very river that runs by us, in three or four hours, 
taken thirty, five-and-thirty, and forty of the best Trouts in the 
river. What shame and pity is it then, that such a river should 
be destroyed by the basest sort of people, by those unlawful 
ways of fire and netting in the night, and of damming, groping, 
spearing, hanging, and hooking by day ; which are now gro\vn 
so common, that though we have very good laws to punish such 
offenders, every rascal does it, for aught I see, impune* 

To conclude, I cannot now, in honesty, but frankly teU you, 
that many of these flies I have named, at least so made as we 
make them here, will peradventure do you no great service in 
your southern rivers ; f and will not conceal from you, but that 
I have sent flies to several friends in London, that, for aught I 
could ever hear, never did any great feats with them ; and, 
therefore, if you intend to profit by my instructions, you must 
come to angle with me here in the Peak ; and so, if you please, 
let us walk up to supper ; and to-morrow, if the day be windy, 
as our days here commonly are, it is ten to one but we shall 
take a good dish of fish for dinner. 

* Not at present with impunity in some parts of Derbyshire, where, I am 
informed, an unprivileged person is not allowed to go near some of the 
streams with so much as a walking stick in his hand. — J. R. 

f The reader may rest assured, that with some or other of these flies, 
especially with the palmers or hackles, the great dun, dark brown, early 
(and late) bright brown, the black gnat, yellow-dun, great whirling-dun, 
dun-cut, green and gray-drake, camlet-fly, cow-dung-fly little ant-fly, 
badger-fly, and fern-fly, he shall catch Trout, Grayling, Chub, and Dace, 
in any water in England or Wales ; always remembering that in a strange 
water he first tries the plain, gold, silver, and peacock hackle. Of the truth 
ofthis he need not doubt, when he is told, that in the year 1754, a gentleman, 
who went into Wales to fish with the flies last above mentioned, made as 
above is directed, did, in about six weeks' time, kill near a thousand brace 
of Trout and Grayling, as appeared to him by an account in writing, 
which he kept of each day's success. In confirmation whereof, and as a 
proof how the rivers in Wales abound with fish, the reader will find in the 
Appendix, No. V. a little account, kept by another person, of fish, to an 
astonishing amount, caught by him, in a series of years, in some of the 
Welsh rivers ; which account was sent by him to Mr Bartholomew Lowe, 
fishing-tackle maker, in Drury Lane, 24ith February, 1766, and is inserted 
in his own words. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 289 

CHAPTER IX. 

FLY FISHING IN WINDY WEATHER, BEST IN THE STILL DEEPS. 

Piscafor. A GOOD day to you, sir ; I see you will always be 
stirring before me. 

Viator. Why, to tell you the truth, I am so allured with the 
sport I had yesterday, that I long to be at the river again ; and 
when I heard the wind sing in my chamber window, could 
forbear no longer, but leap out of bed, and had just made an 
end of dressing myself as you came in. 

Piscator. Well, I am both glad you are so ready for the day, 
and that the day is so fit for you. And look you, I have made 
you three or four flies this morning ; this silver twist hackle, 
this bear's dun, this light brouTi, and this dark bro^vn, any of 
which I dare say will do ; but you may try them all, and see 
which does best : only I must ask your pardon that I cannot 
wait upon you this morning, a little business being fallen out, 
that for two or three hours \vill deprive me of your company ; 
but I '11 come and call you home to dinner, and my man shall 
attend you. 

Viator. Oh, sir, mind your affairs by all means. Do but 
lend me a little of your skill to these fine flies, and, unless it 
have forsaken me since yesterday, I shall find luck of my o\vn 
I hope, to do something. 

Piscator. The best instruction I can give you, is, that seeing 
the wind curls the water, and blows the right way, you would 
now angle up the still deep to-day ; for betwixt the rocks where 
the streams are, you would find it now too brisk ; and, besides, I 
would have you take fish in both waters. 

Viator. I'll obey your direction, and so good morning to 
you. Come, young man, let you and I walk together. But 
hark you, sir, I have not done with you yet ; I expect another 
lesson for angling at the bottom, in the afternoon. 

Piscator. Well, sir, I '11 be ready for you. 

CHAPTER X. 

DIRECTIONS HOW TO DRESS A TROUT AND GRAYLING. 

Piscator. Oh, sir! are you returned ? you have but just pre- 
vented me. I was coming to call you. 
, Viator. I am glad, then, I have saved you the labour, 
i Piscator. And how have you sped ? 
* Viator. You shall see that, sir, presently ; look you, sir, 

T 



290 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

here are three * brace of Trouts, one of them the biggest but one 
that ever I killed with a fly in my life ; and yet I lost a bigger 
than that, with my fly to boot ; and here are three Graylings, 
and one of them longer by some inches than that I took yesterday, 
and yet I thought that a good one too. 

Piscator. Why, you have made a pretty good morning's work 
on 't ; and now, sir, what think you of our river Dove ? 

Viator. I think it to be the best Trout river in England ; 
and am so far in love with it, that if it were mine, and that I 
could keep it to myself, I would not exchange that water for all 
the land it runs over, to be totally debarred from it. 

Piscator. That compliment to the river speaks you a true 
lover of the art of angHng. And now, sir, to make part of 
amends for sending you so uncivilly out alone this morning, I 
will myself dress you this dish of fish for your dinner : walk but 
into the parlour, you will find one book or other, in the window, 
to entertain you the while : and you shall have it presently. 

Viator. Well, sir, I obey you. 

Piscator. Look you, sir, have I not made haste ? 

Viator. Believe me, sir, that you have ; and it looks so well, 
I long to be at it. 

Piscator. Fall to then : now, sir, what say you, am I a 
tolerable cook or no ? 

Viator. So good a one that I did never eat so good fish in 
my life. This fish is infinitely better than any I ever tasted of 
the kind in my life. It is quite another thing than our Trouts 
about London. 

Piscator. You would say so, if that Trout you eat of were 
in right season : but pray eat of the Grayling, which, upon my 
word, at this time, is by much the better fish. 

Viator. In earnest, and so it is. And I have on* request to 
make to you, which is, that as you have taught me to catch 
Trout and Grayling, you will now teach me how to dress them 
as these are dressed, which, questionless, is of all other the 
best way. 

Piscator. That I will, sir, with all my heart ; and am glad 
you like them so well as to make that request. And they are 
dressed thus : 

Take your Trout, wash, and dry him with a clean napkin ; 
then open him, and having taken out his guts, and all the blood, 
wipe him very clean wthin, but wash him not ; and give him 
three scotches with a knife to the bone, on one side only. After 
which take a clean kettle, and put in it as much hard stale beer, 
(but it must not be dead,) vinegar, and a little white "wine and 
water, as will cover the fish you intend to boil : then throw into 
the liquor a good quantity of salt, the rind of a lemon, a handful 
* Spoke like a. South-country man. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 291 

of sliced horse-radish root, \vith a handsome little faggot of rose- 
mary, thyme, and winter savory. Then set your kettle upon a 
quick fire of wood, and let your liquor boil up to the height 
before you put in your fish ; and then, if there be many, put 
them in one by one, that they may not so cool the liquor as to 
make it fall. And whilst your fish is boiling, beat up the butter 
for your sauce \vdth a ladleful or two of the liquor it is boiling 
in. And being boiled enough, immediately pour the liquor from 
the fish : and being laid in a dish, pour your butter upon it ; 
and strewing it plentifully over ^vith shaved horse-radish, and a 
little pounded ginger, garnish the sides of your dish, and the fish 
itself, \\'ith a sliced lemon or two, and serve it up.* 

A Grayling is also to be dressed exactly after the same 
manner, saving that he is to be scaled, which a Trout never is; 
and that must be done either with one's nails, or very lightly 
and carefuDy AA-ith a knife, for fear of bruising the fish. And 
note, that these kinds of fish, a Trout especially, if he is not 
eaten A\ithin four or five hours after he be taken, is worth 
nothing. 

But come, sir, T see you have dined ; and, therefore, if you 
please, we will walk doAAii again to the little house, and there 
I will read you a lecture of angling at the bottom. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OF ANGLING AT THE BOTTOM FOR TROUT OR GRAYLING. 

Viator. So, sir, now we are here, and set, let me have my 
instructions for angling for Trout and GrayHng at the bottom ; 
which, though not so easy, so cleanly, nor, as 'tis said, so genteel 
a way of fisliing as with a fly, is yet, if I mistake not, a good 
holding way, and takes fish when nothing else will. 

Piscator. You are in the right, it does so : and a worm is so 
sure a bait at all times, that, excepting in a flood, I would I had 
laid a thousand pounds that I killed fish, more or less, vath. it, 
winter or summer, every day throughout the year ; those days 
always excepted, that, upon a more serious account, always 
ought so to be. But not longer to delay you, I \W11 begin and 
tell you, that angling at the bottom is, also, commonly of two 
sorts, (and yet there is a third way of angling with a ground- 
bait, and to very great effect, too, as shall be said hereafter,) 
namely, by hand, or uith a cork or float. 

That we call anghng by hand, is of three sorts. 

* Only very larc^e Troiits should be boiled ; the smaller ones are always 
much better broiled or fried. Lamb grives direetions for boiling them la 
diainpaign, yery similar to the above recipe of Cotton. — J. R. 



292 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

The first, with a line about half the length of the rod, a good 
weighty plumb, and three hairs next the hook, which we call a 
running line, and with one large brandling, or a dew- worm of a 
moderate size, or two small ones of the first, or any other sort 
proper for a Trout, of which my father Walton has already given 
you the names, and saved me a labour, or, indeed, almost any 
worm whatever ; for if a Trout be in the humour to bite, it must 
be such a worm as I never yet saw, that he will refuse ; and if 
you fish with two, you are then to bait your hook thus : You 
are, first, to run the point of your hook in at the very head of 
your first worm, and so down through his body till it be past 
the knot, and then let it out, and strip the worm above the 
arming, that you may not bruise it with your fingers, till you 
have put on the other, by running the point of the hook in 
below the knot, and upwards through his body towards his head, 
till it be but just covered with the head; which being done, 
you are then to slip the first worm down over the arming again, 
till the knots of both worms meet together. 

The second way of angling by hand, and with a running line, 
is with a line something longer than the former, and with tackle 
made after this same manner. At the utmost extremity of your 
line, where the hook is always placed in all other ways of 
angling, you are to have a large pistol or carbine bullet, into 
which the end of your line is to be fastened with a peg or pin, 
even and close with the bullet ; and, about half a foot above 
that, a branch of line, of two or three handfuls long, or more 
for a swift stream, with a hook at the end thereof, baited with 
some of .the forenamed worms, and, another, half a foot above 
that, another armed and baited after the same manner, but with 
another sort of worm, without any lead at all above : by which 
means you will always certainly find the true bottom in all 
depths ; which with the plumbs upon your line above you can 
never do, but that your bait must always drag whilst you are 
sounding, (which in this way of angling must be continually,) 
by which means you are like to have more trouble, and perad- 
venture worse success. And both these ways of angling at the 
bottom are most proper for a dark and muddy water, by I'eason 
that, in such a condition of the stream, a man may stand as near 
as he will, and neither his own shadow, nor the roundness of 
his tackle will hinder his sport. 

The third way of angling by the hand with a ground-bait, 
and by much the best of all other, is, with a line full as long, or 
a yard and a half longer, than your rod ; with no more than one 
hair next the hook, and for two or three lengths above it ; and 
no more than one small pellet of shot for your plumb ; your 
hook, little ; your worms, of the smaller brandlings, very well 
scoured ; and only one upon your hook at a time, which is thus 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 293 

to be baited : The point of your book is to be put in at the very 
tag of his tail, and run up his body quite over all the arming, 
and still stripped on an inch at least upon the hair ; the head and 
remaining part hanging downward. And with this line and 
hook, thus baited, you are evermore to angle in the streams, 
always in a clear, rather than in a troubled water, and always 
up the river, still casting out your worm before you with a light 
one-handed rod, like an artificial fly, where it will be taken, 
sometimes at the top, or witliin a very little of the superficies 
of the water, and almost always before that light plumb can sink 
it to the bottom ; both by reason of the stream, and also that 
you must ahvays keep your worm in motion by drawing still 
back towards you, as if you were angling vdih a fly. And 
believe me, whoever will try it, shall find this the best way of 
all other to angle with a worm, in a bright water especially. 
But then his rod must be very light and pliant, and very true 
and finely made, wliich, -with, a skilful hand, will do wonders, 
and in a clear stream is undoubtedly the best way of angling for 
a Trout or Grayling with a worm, by many degrees, that any 
man can make choice of, and of most ease and delight to the 
angler. To which let me add, that if the angler be of a consti- 
tution that wall suffer liim to wade, and will slip into the tail 
of a shallow stream, to the calf of the leg or the knee, and so 
keep off the bank, he shall almost take what fish he pleases. 

The second way of angling at the bottom is ^^dth a cork or 
float. And that is also of two sorts, — with a worm, or with a 
gi'ub, or cadis. 

With a worm, you are to have your line \\'ithin a foot, or a 
foot and a half, as long as your rod ; in a dark water with two, 
or, if you will, Mith three, but in a clear water, never with 
above one hair next the hook, and two or three for four or five 
lengths above it ; and a worm of what size you please : your 
plumbs fitted to your cork, your cork to the condition of the 
river (that is, to the SNA-iftness or slowness of it,) and both, 
when the water is very clear, as fine as you can ; and 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 %Wth 
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 that posture. If 
for a Grayling, you are then to fish farther from the bottom ; 
he being a fish that usually swims nearer to 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 



294 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

of line, or if it be all out as long as your rod, it is not tbe 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 ash-grub 
commonly grows tougher, and udll better endure baiting ; though 
he is yet so tender, that it vnll be necessary to warp in a piece 
of a stiff hair vnth 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 choose ; which, itself, Mdll 
resemble and shine like that bait, and, consequently, mil 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 in 
under the head, or chaps, of the bait, and guided dovni the 
middle of the belly, Avithout suffering it to peep out by the way, 
(for then the ash-grub especially wall 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 

* These are both beetle grubs, and any beetle gnib will do for this pur- 
pose, particularly the grub of the cock-chafer, whach is too common.— J. R. 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 295 

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 point of the hook ; but is always to be 
angled %^'ith 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 
w^hich every angler may in his o\mi place make his own obser- 
vation; 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 gentle- 
man, a fair angler. And so much for the second sort of angling 
for a Trout at the bottom. 

Viator. 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 to compel them to bite 
at the bait ? 

Piscator. 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 ospray, oil of ivy, 
camphor, 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 beUeve 
there is any thing 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, Adth the same kind of 
worms I had, in m.y 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 NA-ill, 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. 

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

* There can be no doubt of this fact, well known to all anglers, and 
depending, it shoiild seem, on some peculiar skill. In 1830 1 oncevvcnt out 
bird's nestinar, with three others, and one of the?e found from ten to one 
nests with the others, even after they had searched the same bushes. — J. R. 



296 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 

CHAPTER XII. 

OF ANGLING IN THE MIDDLE FOR TROUT OR GRAYLING. 

Piscator. Angling in the middle, then, for 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 direction, 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 for his artificial one ; * for though we do it with a counter- 
feit fly, methinks it should hardly be expected that a man should 
deceive a fish with a coimterfeit fish. Which having said, I 
shall only add, (and that out of my own experience,) that I do 
believe a Bull-head, with his gill-fins cut off, at some times ot 
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 Miimow ; 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 it 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 wdth 
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 \\\\\ certainly rise at, and some- 
times take, a Minnow, though it wall 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 oncQ 

« See vol. i. p. 99, - * 



THE CO.>ri'LETE ANGLER. 297 

did, and within so few paces of me, that I am as certain of it as 
I can be of any thing 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 overgrown Trout, and afterwards 
recovering his fish with his tackle : for though I am satisfied 
ne has sometimes done it, because he says so, yet I have found 
it quite otherwise : and though I have taken ^\dth the angle, 
I may safely say, some thousands of Trouts in my life, my 
top never snapped, though my line still continued fast to the 
remaining part of my rod, by some lengths of line curled round 
about my top, and there fastened, with wax 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 Mmself 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 drawai into the water, the fish 
cleared and was 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, %\ath the 
hook fast sticking in him ; but then it is to be supposed he had 
gorged it, which a Trout wdll do, if you be not too quick Avith 
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 ^^dth any hook that has so much as one 
handful of fine 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 first 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 Gra\ling ; 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. 



298 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 

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. 

And now, sir, I have said all I can at present think of 
concerning angling for a Trout and Grayling, and, I doubt not, 
have tired you sufficiently : but I will give you no more trouble 
of this kind whilst you stay, which I hope will be a good while 
longer. 

Viator. That will not be above a day longer ; but if I live 
till May come twelvemonth, you are sure of me again, either 
with my master Walton or without him ; and in the mean- 
time shall acquaint him how much you have made of me for his 
sake, and I hope he loves me well enough to thank you for it. 

Piscator. I shall be glad, sir, of your good company at the 
time you speak of, and shall be loath to part with you now ; 
but when you tell me you must go, I will then wait upon you 
more miles on your way than I have tempted you out of it, and 
heartily wish you a good journey. 



A SHORT DISCOURSE, 



BY WAY OF 



POSTSCRIPT, 

TOUCHING THE LAWS OF ANGLING.^ 



My Good Friend, 
I CANNOT but tender my particular thanks to you, for that you have 
been pleased, by three editions of your Complete Angler, freely to 
dispense your dear-bought experience to all the lovers of that art ; and 
have thereby so excellently vindicated the legality thereof, as to divine 
approbation,, that if I should go about to say more in that behalf, it 
indeed were to light a candle to the sun. But since all pleasures, 
though never so innocent in themselves, lose that stamp, when they 
are either pursued with inordinate affections, or to the prejudice of 
another, therefore, as to the former, every man ought to endeavour, 
through a serious consideration of the vanity of worldly contentments, 
to moderate his affections thereunto, whereby they may be made of 
excellent use, as some poisons allayed are in physic ; and, as to the 
latter, we are to have recourse to the known laws, ignorance whereof 
excuseth no man, and therefore, by their directions, so to square our 
actions, that we hurt no man, but keep close to that golden rule, *' To 
do to all men as we would ourselves be done unto." 

Now, concerning the art of angling, we may conclude, sir, that as 
you have proved it to be of great antiquity, so I find it favoured 
by the laws of this kingdom ; for where provision is made by our 
statutes, primo Elizabeth, cap. 17, against taking fish by nets that be 
not of such and such a size there set down, yet those law-makers had 
so much respect to anglers, as to except them, and leave them at liberty 
to catch as big as they could, and as little as they would catch. And 
yet, though this apostolical recreation be simply in itself lawful, yet no 
man can go upon another man's ground to fish without his licence, but 
that he is a trespasser. But if a man have a licence to enter into a close 
or ground for such a space of time, there, though he practise angling all 
that time, he is not a trespasser, because his fishing is no abuse of his 

* This Discourse was first published with, and was printed at the end 
of, the third edition of Walton's book : but, as the subject matter of it 
relates as well to Cotton's part as the other, it was thoug^ht proper to 
transpose it. 



300 THE LAWS OF ANGLING. 

licence: but this is to be understood of running streams, and not of 
ponds, or standing pools; for in case of a pond, or standing pool, the 
owner thereof hath a property in the fish, and they are so far said to 
be his, that he may have trespass for the fish against anyone that shall 
take them without his licence, though it be upon a common, or adjoin- 
ing to the King's highway, or adjoining to another man's ground, 
who gives licence. But in case of a river, where one or more 
have liberia pi<caria only, it is otherwise ; for there the fishes 
are said to be fera natura ; and the taking of them with an angle is 
not trespass, for that no man is said to have a property in them till he 
have caught them ; and then it is a trespass for any to take them from 
him. But this is not to be understood of fishes confined to a man's 
own ground, by gates or otherwise, so that they cannot pass away, but 
may be taken out or put in at pleasure ; for in that case the pai ty hath 
a property in them, as in the case of a standing pool. 

But where any one hath separalis piscaria, as in Child and Green- 
hill's case in Trin. 15, Car. I, in the King's Bench, there it seemeth 
that the fish may be said to be his, because no man else may take them 
whilst they are within his several fishing. Therefore what is meaqt 
by a several fishing is necessary to be considered. And though the 
difference between a free fishing and a several fishing be often ti-eated 
of in the ancient books of the law ; and some opinions will have the 
difference to be great, and otbers small, or notiiing at all, yet the 
certainest definition of a several fishing is, " Where one hath the 
royalty, and owneth the ground on each side of the water;" which 
agreeth with Sir William Calthorp's case, where an action was brought 
by him agamst another for fishing in his several fishing, &c. ; to which 
the defendant pleaded, that the place wherein the trespass was supposed 
to be done, contained ten perches of land in length, and twenty perches 
in breadth, which was his own freehold at the time when the trespass 
was supposed to be done, and that he fished there as was lawful for him 
to do; and this was adjudged a good plea by the whole court: and, 
upon argument in that very case, it was agreed, that no man could 
have a several fishing but in his own soil, and that free fishing may be 
in the soil of another man, which was all agreed unto by Littleton, our 
famous English lawyer. So thnt from all this may be drawn this short 
conclusion, that if the angler take care that he offend not with his feet, 
there is no great danger of his hands. 

But there are some covetous rigid persons, whose souls hold no sym- 
pathy with those of the innocent anglers, having either got to be lords 
of royalties, or owners of lands adjoining to rivers ; and these do, by 
some apted clownish nature and education for the purpose, insult and 
domineer over the innocent angler, beating him, breaking his rod, or 
at least taking it from him,* and sometimes imprisoning his person as 

» There is no reading this passage without figuring to one's imagination 
the poor, humble, patient angler, standingstill and defenceless, while the 
merciless lord of the manor is laying on him with a stick, perhaps the butt 
of his own rod, or a worse wciipon. I will not dispute with the author, 
whether the meekness and submission of the poor fisher upon this occasion 
are very becoming or not : but thi>: sort of passive valour is rather to be 
admired than imitated. Yet has the angler his remedy, as the reader wiU* 
see a few lines below. 



THE LAWS OF ANGLING. 301 

if he were a felon. "Wliereas a true bred gentlein an scorn? those spider- 
like attempts, and will rather refresh a civil stranger at his table, than 
wain him from coming on his ground upon so innocent an occasion. 
It would therefore be considered how far such furious drivers are war- 
ranted by the law, and what the angler may in case of such violence, 
do in defence of himself. If I come upon another man's ground with- 
out his licence, or the licence of the law, I am a trespasser, for which 
the owner may have an action of trespass against me : and if I continue 
there after warning to depart by the owner, or his servant thereunto 
authorized, the owner, or his servant by his command, may put me off 
by force, but not beat me but in case of resistance by me, for then I, 
by resisting, make the assault ; but if he beat me, I not resisting, in 
that case he makes the assault, and I may beat him in defence of myself, 
and to free myself from his violence.* And in case I shall leave my 
rod behind in his ground, he may take it damage feasant, but he can 
neither take it from my person by force, nor break it, but he is a 
trespasser to me; which seems clear by the case of Reynell and 
Champernoon,f where Reynell brought an action of trespass against 
Champernoon for taking and cutting hfs nets. The de?'endant justified, 
for that he was seized in fee of a several fishing; and that the plaintiff, 
with others, endeavoured to row upon his water, and with the nets to 
catch his fish ; and that, for the safeguard of his fishing, he took and 
cut the nets and oars ; to which plea the plaintiff demurred, and then 
it was adjudged by the whole court, that he could not by such colour 
cut the nets and oars ; and judgment was thereupon given for the 
plaintiff. 

Doubtless our forefathers well considered, that man to man was a 
wolf, I and therefore made good laws to keep us from devouring one 
another ; and, amongst the rest, a very good statute was made in the 
three-and-fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth, whereby it is provided, 
that in personal actions in the courts at Westminster, (being not for 
land or battery,) when it shall appear to the judges (and be so by them 
signified) that the debt or damages to be recovered amount not to the 
sum of forty shdlings, or al)ove, the said judges shall award to the 
plaintiff no more costs than damages, but less, at their discretion. 

And now, with my acknowledgment of the advantage I have had, 
both by your friendship and your book, I wish nothing may ever be 
that looks like an alteration in the first, nor any thing in the last, 
unless, by reason of the useful pleasure of it, you had called it the 
Arcadia of Angling, for it deserves that title ; and I would deserve the 
continuance of your friendship. 

* Agreeable to the rule contained in this barbarous distich : 
Res dare pro rebus, pro verbis verba solemus, 
Pro bufis bufas, pro trufis reddere trufas. 
Things must be recompenst with things, buffets with blowes, 
And wordi with words, and taunts wiih mocks and mowes. 

Dalto.n's Country Justice, chap. 72. 
+ Mich. 7. Car. 1. Cro. Car. 228. 

; A meluiuholy truth so universally acknowlrdcrrd as to hnve gireu 
«^(.asion to the proverb, " Homo homini lupus." \ide Erasmi Adagio. 



302 THE LAWS OF ANGLING. 



CONTINCATION OF THE DISCOURSE BY SIR JOHN HAWKINS. 

Since the writing the foregoing Discourse, the laws of this country, 
relative to fish and fishing, have undergone such alterations as would 
alone justify an addition to it : but as it has, of late, been objected to 
all laws that assign an exclusive right in any of the creatures of God 
to particular ranks or orders of men, that they savour of barbarism, 
and are calculated to serve the purposes of tyranny and ambition, it 
was thought necessary to trace the matter farther back, and shew from 
whence laws of this kind derive their force. And though it is not 
imagined that speculative arguments will operate upon men of licentious 
principles, yet, as the general tenor of this work supposes the angler to 
be endued with reason, and under the dominion of conscience, it may 
not be amiss to state the obligation he is under to an observance of 
such laws, and to point out to him the several instances where he can- 
not pursue his recreation without the risk of his quiet. 

Property is universally allowed to be founded on occupancy, the 
very notion of which implies industry, or some act in the occupant of 
which no stranger has a right to avail himself: he that first took pos- 
session of an uncultivated tract of land, provided it was no more than 
necessary for the subsistence of himself and his family, became thereby 
the proprietor of such land. 

Mv Locke illustrates this doctrine by an elegant instance : " The 
water running in the fountain," says he, " is every one's, but that in 
the pitcher is his who draws it." On Government, book ii. chap. v. 
sect 29. 

And, if this reasoning be admitted in the case of land, which is ranked 
among the immoveable objects of property, it is much stronger in favour 
of things moveable, the right of which is at once claimed, and fortified 
by an actual possession and separation from that common mass in 
which they were originally supposed to exist. 

But, notwithstanding the innumerable appropriations which, in the 
present civilized state of the world, appear to have been made, there are 
many things which may yet be said to be in common, and in a state of 
natural liberty; in this class we may rank creatures /er<E naturdt 
beasts of chase, many kinds of fowl, and all fish. The fisherman in 
Plautus admits, that none of the fish were his while they remained in 
their proper element, and insists only in his right to those which he 
had caught. Rudens, act iv. scene 3. And both the Jewish and 
Roman lawyers assert, that wild beasts and fish belong only to those' 
who take them.* 

This notion has led many persons to imagine that, even now, there 
subsists a general community of these creatures ; and that, at this day, 
every one has a right to take them to his own use, wherever he finds 
them. Not to insist, that if all men promiscuously were permitted 
the exei-cise of this right, it would be of veiy little benefit to any, it 

* Seld. De Jure Nat. et Gent, juxta Discip. Ebraeor. lib. iv. cap. 4 
Instit. lib. ii. tit. i. " De rerum divisione et acquirendo earum Dominic." 
However, this is to be understood only in cases wherein there is no law to. 
forbid it. Grot. De Jure Belli ac Pacie, lib. ii. cap. 2. sect. 6. 



THE LAWS OF ANGLING. 303 

may suffice to say, that there are few civilized countries that have not 
found it necessary, either for promoting some public good, or averting 
some public mischief, to control it by express prohibitions; and 
how far such prohibitions are deemed lawful and binding on the 
consciences of those on whom they are imposed, will appear by con- 
sulting the authorities on the margin.* And it is worth noting, that 
laws made to prohibit the taking of creatures /ircE natura, by persons 
unqualified, do not take from a man any thing which is his own ; but 
they barely forbid the use of certain methods of acquisition, which the 
law of nature might, perhaps, allow of. Puffendorf, de Jure Nat. et 
Gent. lib. iv. cap. 6. sec. 6.f 

Agreeable to the principles here laid down, we find that the laws 
of most countries, at least of this, have assigned the property in the 
creatures in question to particular persons. Thus to royal fish, which 
are Whales and Sturgeons, the king is entitled by his prerogative ; ^ 
and the property of fish in rivers, or, at least, a right to take them, is, 
in many places, given to corporations ; as, with us, the fishery cf the 
river Thames is granted to the city of London ; and the townsmen of 
Hungerford, in Berkshire, claim a right of fishing in that part of the 
river Kennet, called their common water, under a grant from John of 
Gaunt, who, we may suppose, derived it from the crown : § but in 
most instances fish belong to the owner of the soil. 

These principles being recognized, and property once settled, it is 
easy to see the. necessity and the j)istice of fencing it with positive laws. 
Accordingly, in this country, judicial determinations have, from time 
to time, been made, ascertaining the rights of persons to fisheries; 
and these, together with the several statutes enacted to prevent the 
destruction of fish, compose the body of laws relating to fish and 
fishing : the former, by way of supplement to the foregoing DiscoursCf 
are here laid down, and the latter will be referred to. 

The property which the common law gives in river fish uncaught, 
is of that kind which is called special, or qualified property : which 
see defined by Lord Coke, in his Reports, part vii. fo. 17, b. and is 
derived out of the right to the place or soil where such fish live : so 
that supposing them, at any given instant, to belong to one person, 
whenever they resort to the soil or water of another, they become his 
property, and so in infinitum. 

And to prove that this notion of a fluctuating or transitorj' property 
is what the law allows, we need only apply it to the case of the water 

* Pufl'endorf, De jure Nat. et Gent. lib. iv. cap. 6. sect. 6. Gudelin, De 
Jure novissimo, lib. ii. cap. 2. D. lib. xli. tit. 2. " De acquircnd. vel. 
admittend. Possess." See also Garcilasso de la Vega, Coram. Keg. lib. vi, 
cap. 6; where it is said, that in Peru, hunting, by the inferior sort, is pro- 
hibited, lest, says the author, " men betaking themselves to the pleasure of , 
the tield, should delight in a continued course of sports, and so neglect the 
necessary provision and maintenance of their families." 

f See also Arnold. Vinn. ad sect. 13. De Ker. Divis. and Ziegler on 
Grotius, lib. ii. cap. ii. sect. 5. 

X 7 Coke, 16. The case of swans. 

\ The townsmen of Hungerford have a horn, holding about a quart, tJie 
inscription whereon affirms it to have been given by John of Gaunt, with 
the Rial-fishing, (so it is therein expressed,) in a certain part of the river. 
Gibs. Camden, 166. 



304 THE LAWS OF ANGLING. 

in a river ; which is so constantly passing from the soil of one to 
another, that no man can, in strictness, be said to go twice to the 
same river ; and yet, by a grant of any quantity of land covered with 
water, which is the only legal designation of a river, not only a certain 
ti-act of the river, but the fish contained in it, shall pass. See Coke 
on Littleton, 4. a. 

In the Register, a very ancient law book, we find two writs relating 
to fish : the one, for the unlawful taking of fish in a several fishery, 
and the other, in a free fishery. And of these in their order. 

A several fishery is that which a man is entitled to in respect of his 
being the owner of the soil, and is what no one can have in the land 
of another, unless by special grant or prescription ; and whoever shall 
fish in such a several fishery, without a licence, is liable to an action of 
trespass, in which the plaintiff may well demand " wherefore, in the 
plaintiiT's several fishery, the defendant was fishing, and his fishea 
took," &c. for though the fish heferce naturd, yet being taken in the 
water of the owner of the river, they are said to be his fish, without 
saying in his soil, or water, Sd Coke's Reports, bbQ. Child and 
Greenhill's case : but he must set forth the nature and number of the 
fish taken, 5 Coke's Reports, .35. Playter's case, and 3d Coke, 18. 

A free fishery is a right to take fish in the water and soil of another, 
and is derived out of a several fishery. If one seized of a river, grants, 
without including the soil, a several fishery, or, which amounts to no 
more than that, his water, a right of fishing passes, and nothing else. 
Pluwden's Commentary, 154, b. Coke on Littleton, 4. b. And the 
word several, in such case, is synonymous with sole, and that in so 
strict a sense, that by such a grant not only strangers, but even the 
owner of the soil is excluded from fishing there. Co. Lit. 122, a. 
And farther, where one prescribes to have a several fisheiy in a water, 
which prescription always supposes a grant precedent, the owner of 
the soil, as much as a stranger, is liable to an action if he fishes there: 
2 Roll. 258, the case of Foriston and Catchrode in the Common Pleas. 
Mich. 29 and 80 Eliz. But here the writ shall vary from that in the 
case of a several fishery, and demand " wherefore the defendant, in the 
free fishery of the plaintiff, at N., without the licence and consent of 
the plaintiff, was fishing," &c. expressing the nature and number of 
the fish taken : but becau«e the soil does not pass by such a grant, and 
the fish are ferce naturd, he shall not call them his fish, as in the 
former instance. See the case of Child and Greenhill, above cited. 

The doctrine deducible from these principles is, that that which, 
united with the soil, would be a several fishery, when severed by grant, 
though the grant be of a several, or sole, and not of a free fishery, in 
terminis, becomes a free fishery. 

There is yet another case that I shall mention, which will give the 
intelligent reader a clear notion of this matter. A man grants to one, 
or more, a liberty of fishing:* here nothing but a naked right to 

* I find in Dndg-. Warw. 1142, in margine, an arconnt of the following- 
grant, Avhich for its siiigiilaiity deserves rioticp. 31 Hen. 111. "Thomas 
de Clinton, of Aininton, levied a fine to Phil. Marmion, that he and his 
heirs, his wife, and their heirs, miglit, A^hen they came to Tamworth, or to 
their castle at Middleton, fish with a boat anywhere in his water of Aniin- 
to-n, with one net^ called a fieu-net, and a tramil and saynaj for whicU 
Hberty he gave him six marks of silver." 



THE LAWS OF ANGLING. 305 

fish passes, and the remedy against a trespasser is not severed from the 
soil ; the owner whereof, and not the grantee, may maintain an action, 
and may also fish himself. Co. Lit. 122 a. 

As common of fishing may be appendant to land, so also there may 
be a joint tenancy, or a tenancy in common of a fishery. 1 Inst. 
186 b. 

Having thus shewn in what cases the angler, in the pursuit of his 
recreation, may become a trespasser, let us next consider how far he is, 
by taking fish, in danger of committing larctny ; for that the taking 
fish out of a pond, without the consent of the owner, falls within 
my Lord Coke's definition of that crime, no one can doubt that reads 
it. His words are, "Larceny is, the felonious and fraudulent tak- 
ing and carrjing away, by any man or woman, of the mere personal 
goods of another ; neither from the person, nor by night in the house 
of the owner." 3d. Inst. 107. And a little after, 109, he expressly 
says, " Larceny may be committed of fishes in a pond. " 

Now, though to make the taking any personal thing felonious, 
reason and the law require that the party should do it animo fu- 
randi, (see Bracton, lib, 3. fol. 150. Fleta hb. 1. cap. .36, which we 
will suppose no angler to be possessed with, ) yet, whether by the 
word pond, we are to understand ponds at large, is perhaps of some 
consequence for him to know. 

It is a rule in law, that personal goods, and things severed from 

the freehold, shall go to the executors, and not to the heir Went- 

worth's Offi-ce of an Executor, chap. 6. And so shall fish in a tank, 
or the like. — .Ibid. But Lord Coke, in his Commentary on Littleton, 
fol. 8, tells us, that fish in a pond shall go with the inheritance- 
" Because," says he, " they were at their liberty, and could not be 
gotten without industry, as by nets or engines." 

From hence we may conclude, that fish in ponds cannot be said to 
be mere personal goods ; and then it follows as a consequence, that of 
such fish larceny cannot be committed : and we may farther conclude, 
that the word ponds, in the above passage, must mean only stew- 
ponds, cisterns, or ether such small receptacles of fish. 

Many wholesome laws have from time to time been enacted, to 
prevent the destruction of fish ; but they are so numerous, that I 
must refer the reader to the Statutes at large, or to the Abridgment 
pubhshed by a late worthy and learned friend of mine, John Cay, 
Esq. deceased. 

He may also see, a Discourse on the Laws concerning Angling, 
and for Preservation of Fish, at the end of the Angler's Sure Guide, 
written, as it seems, by the author of that book, with the learning 
and accuracy of an able lawyer. 

U 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



No. I. 

( Referred to from the end of Part I.) 

A SYNOPSIS OF AQUATIC INSECTS, COVERING 
THEMSELVES WITH CASES. 



Water insects 
that cover 
themselves 
\^'ith cases, 
have a case 
either 



ri 



.-; <i Or 710 straivs 
adherinar, 
but small 
stones, or 
fine sand ; 
which are 
either 



Immoveable, being affixed PTtll 'SL^^l^ *^""^'"^' 

lodvSei ^"^ ^^^^ H^^".-dmte^^ompressed, 
body either |_ .vitliout little threads. 

Or 7no%;eahle, portable andmigratory, called"PAn/^a?2€a," 
r!/^g'. " acad-case," which is furnished with little threads, 
as well on the back as the sides, by means whereof 
they adhere firmly to their cases, excepting only their 
head and feet ; with three small protuberances pro- 
jecting beyond the feet, which they can erect, or put 
forth at pleasure, to hinder their cases from pressing 
down on their heads as they creep, and troubling 
L them. 

<f^Y/7/•. acr ['''rrn^Stn 1 "^^6 greater being two inches long, 
giudnatd:,! iu'g two V'^IITJJ^^ ^^'' ^«"°^°"' "^^'"'^ 
Ind those i species; J ^trau-.uvrms. 

either | Or transverse and shorter, with sometimes small 

L ftonrs and shells intermixed. 
{'Round, with little worms within, called coc?-/'<»'^, 
I f With somewhat larger stones adhering 

to the sides of the case, but never to 
the fore or back part of it ; whence 
it necessarily appears flat and com- 
Or flat and pressed. 

compress- \ Or with no stones adhering to the 

ed, either 1 sides ; but with a case extending on 

I each side into a narrow margin, or 

border, like wings ; and the case is 

I more flat and compressed than the 

_ _ L former. 

Or crooked, or rather resembling a horn : for the cases of these are 
crooked, and one extremity is larger, the other less. Of these I 
have known four diflerent species, viz. the black, large and small ; 
and ash colour, large and small. 

All these produce flies with large wings, like those of butterflies. The 
nymphce of these fMliirh are to spring from those small worms, and which, 
like tortoises, carry their houses about with them, within which they turn 
into nymphce, from which nympha afterwards spring little flies ) Dr 
Swammerdam refers to his fourth order of transmutations, whereas, in 
my opinion, they belong to the third, because they change their skin twice. 

Another translation of this Synopsis, too copious to be here inserted, 
together with many curious particulars concerning aquatic insects, is to 
found in the Natuial Hixiory of Narfhamptons/iire, by the Rev. John 
Morton, chap. vii. 



310 APPENDIX. 

No. II. 

[Referred to from Part II. p. 275, 7iote.2 

February. Peacock Hackle. Peacock's herl alone, or interclianged 
with ostrich herl ; warping, red silk ; red cock's hackle over all. It 
inay be varied by a black cock's hackle and silver twist. Taken 
chiefly from nine to eleven in the morning, and from one to three in 
the afternoon. 

This, and the several other hackles which we have here and here- 
after described, being most tempting baits, should always be first tried 
when the angler comes to a strange river ; and not changed till he 
has found out, and is certain, what particular fly is upon the water. 

March. Green Peacock Hackle. Greenish herl of a peacock ; 
warping, green silk ; a black hackle over all. Taken from eight to 
eleven in the morning. 

Ahh coloured Dun. Dub with the roots of a fox-cub's tail ; warp 
with pale yellow silk. Vv'ing, of the pale part of a starling's feather. 
Taken from eight to eleven, and from one to three. 

This fly, which is also called the Violet Dun, and Slue Dun, is to 
be found on almost every river ; ?ome particulars of it have been 
mentioned in the note, part ii. p. 275 ; but here follow some observa- 
tions on it, which deserve to be attended to. It varies much in its 
colour, according to the season of tlie year ; in March and September 
it is called, and that very properly, the violet dun, for it has often that 
hue ; and therefore, in the passage above referred to, we have directed 
the mixing blue-violet crewel with the fox-cub dowm. In April it 
assumes a pale ash colour ; and in ]\Iay is of a beautiful lemon colour, 
both body and wings. In June and July it is blue-black; and from 
July it insensibly varies, till it becomes of its primitive colour, violet 
dun, which it never fails to do by September. 

ArRiL. Pearl colour, or Heron Dun. Dub ^vith the yellowish, 
or ash-coloured herl of a heron ; warp with ash-coloured silk. Wing, 
from the short feather of a heron, or fi"om a coot's wing of an ash- 
colour. IMorning and afternoon. 

Blue Dun. Dub with the fur cf a water-rat ; warp with ash-colour. 
Wing, of a coot's feather. Morning and evening. 

May. Silver Twist Hackle. Dub with the herl of an ostrich 
feather ; warp with dark green, silver twist, and black cock's hackle 
over all. Taken from nine to eleven, especially in a showery day 

Sooty Dun. Dub with black spaniel's fur, or the herl of an ostrich ; 
warp with green. Wing, the dark part of a land-rail or coot. Taken 
Lest in a showery day, as also in April or June. 

Light Flaming or Spring JBroivn. Dub with light brown of a 
calf; warp with orange colour. Wing, of a pale gray mallard's feather. 
Taken chiefly before sunset in a warm evening : a good fly. 

Although much is said in the first part of the foregoing dialogues, 
(p. Ill,) of the oak-fly, the author has given but a very superficial 
description of it, and his directions for making it are extremely 
imperftct ; we would therefore recommend the making it after the 
natural fly, and that according to the follojting directions : 



APPENDIX. 311 

Oak Fly. By some called the ash-fly (by others, erroneously, the 
hawthorn-fly.) The head, which is large, of an ash colour ; the upper 
part of the body grayish, with two or three hairs of bright brown 
mixed, and a very little light blue, and sometimes a hair or two of 
light green; the tail part is gravish mixed with orange; wing, of a 
mottled brown feather of a woodcock, partridge, or brown hen ; hook 
No. 8 or 9. This is the fly which is seen much in March, April, INIay, 
and June, on the body of ash-trees, oaks, willows, and thorns growing 
near the water, standing with its head downwards. It is an excellent 
fly, but difficult to imitate, biding of many colours, unequally mixed. 
It takes chiefly in the morning : it does not seem to come from any 
cadis, for it never drops in great numbers on the v/ater ; and the wings 
are short, and lie flat on the back, like the blue-bottle, or large 
flesh-fly. 

Orange-tawny, Orange-hrown, Camlet-fly, Alder-fly, Withy-fly , 
or Ba tard Cadis. Dub with dark brown spaniel's hair, or calf's 
hair that shines, or barge-sail ; w^arp with deep orange : black hackle 
under the wing. Wing, of a darkish feather of a mallard or starling. 
Taken chiefly in a morning, before the green-drake comes upon the 
water. 

Huzzard, Dub with pale lemon-coloured mohair, or ostrich 
feather dyed yellow ; warp with yellow ; gold twist and yellow hackle 
over all.' Wing, of a very pale mallard's feather dyed of a lemon 
colour; the wings large, and longer than the body, lying flat on the 
back. Taken in a blus'-ering day, before the May-fly comes in : a fly 
little known, but the most beautiful of the insect species that frequent 
the water. It is larger than the green-drake ; of a beautiful lemon 
colour, both bodv and wings, which are four in number, and He close 
to its back. It'is to be met with in but few rivers, and is therefore 
esteemed a great curiosity : in those rivers that produce them, they 
appear in great numbers about the latter end of April ; at which time, 
^.nd afterward, the Trouts rise at them very eagerly. Doubtless this is 
a true water-fly ; it is supposed to be produced from a very large cadis. 

Death Drake. The body, one herl of black ostrich and two cf 
peacock ; silver twist ; black hackle. Wing, of the dark feather of a 
mallard, of a copper colour. Taken chiefly in an evening, when the 
May-fly is almost gone. 

Yelloio Miller,^ or Oid-Fly. The body of a yellow martern's fur, 
or ostrich herl dyed buff colour. Wing, of the ruddy feather of a 
young peacock's wing, or pale brown chicken. Taken from sunset till 
ten at night, and from two till four in the morning. 

June. The May-flies, most of them, as above. 

July. Middling Brown. INIade of calf's hair, twisted upon pale 
yellow silk, for the silk to appear. Wing, of a mallard's feather. 

Dark Brown. Warp with red silk, with a deep orange tag at the 
tail. Wing, of a mallard's feather. 

Willoio Cricket, or Small Peacock Fly. A herl of a green pea- 
cock's feather; warp with green silk. Wing, of a starling's feather 
longer than the body. A morning fly, especially for Grayling in rapid 
rivers. 

Pismire. The body, some few reeves of a cock-pheasant's tail- 
feather, or ruddy barge-sail, or brown carpet, or old bear's hair, 



312 APPENDIX. 

towards the roots, tanned with the weather ; one peacock's herl may 
be twisted with it : warp with ruddy silk. Wing, the light part of 
a starling's feather, left longer than the body. A killing fly after an 
emmet-flight, but not before. 

August. The Pismire through this month; as also the other flies 
of the last month. 

September. Large fcRtid Light Brown. The body of light calf 
or cow's hair, or seal's tur dyed of the colour ; warp with ruddy or 
orange-coloured silk. Wing, of a ruddy brown chicken large and long. 
A killing fly in a morning. This fly is much upon Hackney river, and 
is much ruddier there than elsewhere. In the Thames, I have caught 
with it Dace of the largest size, and in great numbers. Somewhat of 
its history is given in the notes, p. 195. 



No. III. 
[Referred to from Part II. p. 275, note.1 

January. Spring Black. Body, black wool of a sheep's face, 
with or without a greenish peacock's herl; warp with brown silk. 
Wing, the gray feather of a mallard. 

Second Spring Black. Body, the very blackest part of the darkest 
hare's scut you can procure ; with or without a greenish peacock's 
herl; warp with ash-coloured silk. Wing, of a fieldfare's feather. 
This and the other spring black are best taken in bright weather. 

Bloa* Herl. Body, black rabbit's scut ; black of a hai-e's scut ; 
greenish peacock's herl ; warp with brown silk. Wing, the light part 
of a fieldfare's feather. 

Black Hackle. Body, pale yellow silk ; with a black cock's hackle 
turned about it. 

Dun Hackle. Body, dun-coloured silk ; with a dun cock's hackle. 

February. The same flies as are directed for the preceding month. 

March. The same flies as are directed for the preceding months, 
and also the 

Turkey Fly, or March Fly. Body, brown foal's hair, tops of the 
wings of a woodcock, some ruddy, others gray, well mixed together ; 
warp with pink and yellow, or pink and light-coloured brown silk, 
twisted together. Wing, of a pheasant-cock's feather. 

N.B. — This, it is supposed, is the cob-fly, so much cried up in Wales. 

April. Light Bloa. Body, light fox-cub fur, a little light foal's 
hair ; a little squirrel's bloa, and the whitish yellow of the same, all 
these well mixed together ; warp with yellow silk. Wing, of a light 
fieldfare's feather. 

Dun. Body, dunnest filmart,f or martern's fur, Indian fox-dun, 
light dun fox-cub, coarse hair of the stump of a squirrel's tail, of a 

* This is a north-country word, and, as I am told, signifies a colour resembling that of 
a mole's back, which has a bluish gloss. I find it is thus explained, in a catalogue of 
local words communicated in a letter from Mr Thoresby, of Leeds, to Mr Ray : " Bloa, 
black and blue." Philosophical Letters, between the learned Mr Ray, and several of his 
ingenious correspondents, octavo, 1718, p. 321. 

+ Filmart. This is the animal which Walton, chap. i. p. 48. calls the fulimart ; but the 
former is a name by which it is very well known at the furriers. 



APPENDIX. 313 

briglitish brown or yellowish, cast ; warp with yellow silk. Wing, the 
light feather of a fieldfare. 

Plain Hackle. Body, black ostrich herl, with red or black cock's 
hackle over it ; and, in hot weather, add gold twist. 

Red Hackle. Body, red silk and guld twist, and a red cock's 
hackle, till June : afterward use orange silk for the body. An excel- 
lent fly. 

N. B. — This is more properly the orange-fly. It resembles in colour a Seville orange. 
Wings may be added, either of a ruddy hen or chicken, or of the softest feather of a rook's 
wing : thefirst will give it an orange, the latter a dunnish hue. It has four wings, two 
next the body, of a very dark gray colour, and two serving as a case over them, sometimes 
of a dirty blackish colour, and sometimes of an orange colour. 

Bloa Walchet,* Is a small fly, and appears on the water in a cold 
day, (Hook, No. 9 or 10. ) The body, far of a watur-rat, black part 
of a hare's scut, the pale roots cut off, a very little brown bear's hair ; 
warp with pale brown or oUve-coloured silk. AVing, of a hen black- 
bird. 

Yellow Watchei. Body, water-rat's fur, the blackest part of a 
hare's scut, greenish yellow crewel for feet ; warp with green silk. 
Wing, the lightest part of a blackbird's feather. Hook, No. 9 or 10. 

Knotted Gray Gnat. Body, darkest part of a hare's scut, dark 
brown foal's hair, dark fur of the black of an old fox; warp with gray 
silk. Wing, the bloa feather of a fieldfare. 

Green-Tail. Body, dark part of a hare's scut, and darkest bloa 
fur of an old fox ; light part of a squirrel's tail, and a hair or two of 
the coarse brow.iish part of it for feet ; warp with ash-coloured silk. 
Wing, of a hen pheasant. 

Sand Fly. Body, dark brown foal's hair, a little bloa sOjuirrel's fur, 
and the whitish yellow of the same ; warp with yellow silk. Wing, 
the light part of a fieldfare's feather. 

May. The nine foregoing flies Ciirected for April : and also the Bloa 
Herl. Body, fox's fur, dark part of a hare's scut, greenish herl of a 
peacock, (if the weather is warm for the season, otherwi-e little or 
none of the greenish herlj) warp with brown silk. Wing, of a star- 
ling's feather. 

I)un. Body, dunnish bloa fur of an old fox, mixed with pale 
yellow, the ends of the hairs of an old fox almost red, some coarse hairs 
taken out of the tail, or brush ; warp with yellow. Wing, starling's 
feather. 

Stone Gnat. Body, the roots of the darkest part of a hare's scut, 
the top or ends being cut oiF; warp with ash-coloured silk. Wing, a 
blackbird's feather. 

Light Bloa. Body, light fur of an old fox, mixed with pale yellow 
crewel ; warp with pale yellow silk. Wing, light feather of a jay. 

Orange Brown. Body, orange-coloured wool, with bright brown 
bear's h.iir mixed ; warp with orange silk. Wing, of a starling's 
feather. 

Peacock Hackle. Body, peacock's ruddy herl ; red cock's hackle ; 
warp with red silk. 

Black Herl. Body, black herl of an ostrich, and ruddy herl of a 

* Watchet; color cceruleia albicans, Skinner. Pale or sky-blue. 



314 APPENDIX. 

peacock, twisted together ; warp with brown silk. Wing, the light 
feather of a fieldfare. 

Peicet, or Lapwing's Topping. Body, peacock's herl, and that of 
a lapwing's crown feather, twisted together; warp with red silk. 
Wing, the red feather of a partridge's tail. 

Red Herl. Body, two herls of a peacock, twisted together; warp 
with ruddy silk. Wing, the red feather of a partridge's tail. 

June. The dun, stone-gnat, light bloa, orange brown, peacock 
hackle, black herl, pewet's topping, and red herl of the last month, go 
also through this. There are likewise taken the 

Whitterish. Body, the root end of the white part of a hare's scut, 
light gray foal's hair, or camel's hair, towards the tail, the dark part 
of a hare's scut with some brown hairs mixed ; peacock's herl for the 
head ; warp with white silk. Wing, the feather of a sea-mew. 

Light Gray. Body, fur of the inner part of a rabbit's leg, the 
lightest of the dark part of a hare's scut ; warp with ash-coloured silk. 
Wings, light gray mallard's feather. 

July. The peacock hackle, black herl, pewet's topping, and red 
herl of May and June, and the whitterish and light gray of the last 
month, serve also for this. And to those add the 

Brown. Body, hair of a very light brown or reddish calf or spaniel, 
and light bear's hair, mixed; warp with pale orange. Wing, the 
feather of a land-rail. 

August. The peacock hackle, and the three following flies of May 
and the two subsequent months, and the brown of the last month, 
serve also for this : in which also are taken the 

Gray Fly. Body, lio;ht gray foal's hair mixed with the dark part 
of a hare's scut ; warp with gray silk. Wing, a hen pheasant's feather. 

Slack Ant-fly. Body, darkest part of a hare's scut, and dark brown 
wool, or sheep's russet, equally mixed, and one single ruddy herl of a 
peacock, all twisted together ; warp with copper-coloured silk. Wing, 
a fieldfare's featlier. 

Brown Ant-fly. Body, bright brown bear's hair, much weather- 
beaten. Almost of an orange colour towards the tail ; and, therefore, 
a few hairs, of a light brown, or flame-coloured calf or spaniel's hair, 
to be added in the tail part ; warp with orange-coloured silk. Wing, 
the light feather of a fieldfare or starling. 

Note. — The black and the brown ant-fly, I have studied to imitate with other mate- 
rials, (and have found them succeed very well,) made as follows : 

Black Ant. Brown bear's hair, and a little gray squirrel's hair next 
the roots, peacock herl ; warp with copper colour or ash. 

Broxon Ant. Light barge-sail, seal's fur and brown bear's hair, 
peacock's herl; warp with orange. Wings of this and the former, 
starling's feather ; longer than the body. 



No. IV. 

(Referred to from Part II. page 275, note.) 

February. Prime Dun. Dubbinof, of the down of a fox-cub, 
warped with sad ash-coloured silk. Wings, of the feather got frpm 



APPENDIX. 315 

the quill of a shepstare's * wing. This fly is made little: but there is 
another, made of the same dubbing, larger by far. 

March. The same flies as are taken in February will be taken in 
March ; and also those hereafter mentioned. 

Moorish Brown. Dubbing, of the wool of a black sheep, warped 
with red silk, ^yings, of the leather got from a partridge wing. 

Palm Fly. Dubbing, of the hair of a brown spaniel, got on the 
outside of the ear, and a little sea-green wool mixed ; warped with 
brown cloth-coloured silk. Wings, of a shepstare's quill feather. 

Green- Tail. Dubbing, of the brown hair of a spaniel, got on the 
outside of the ear; but a little, in the end of the tail, must be all of 
sea-green wool, without mixture. Wings, as the last. 

April. Briiiht Bear. Dubbing, of bright bear's hair, warped with 
sad cloth-coloured silk. Wings, of a shepstare's quill feather. Others 
dub the body with yellow silk, which is better. 

Yellow Jbun. Dubbing, of yellow wool, and ash-coloured fox-cub 
down mixed together ; dubbed with yellow silk. Wings, of the feather 
of a shepstare's quill. Others dub it with dun bear's hair, and the 
yellow fur got from a martern's skin, mixed together, and with yellow 
silk. Wings, of a shepstare's quill feather. 

]\Iake two other flies, their bodies dubbed as the last ; but in the one 
mingle sanded hog's down, and to the other black hog's down. Wings, 
of a shepstare's quill feather. 

And there is also taken an excellent fly, made of dun bear's hair, 
yellow martern's fur, sanded hog's down, and black hog's down, all 
mixed in equal proportion together ; warped with yellow silk. Wings, 
of the feather of a shepstare's quill. 

These several flies, mentioned for April, are very good, and will be 
taken all the spring and summer. 

Mav. Thorn-fiy. Dubbing, of black lambs' wool; warped with 
black silk. Wings, of a mallard's light gray feather. 

l^ote. That in all instances where mallard's feathers are directed to be used for 
wings, they must be those of the wild, and not the tame mallard. 

K.nojp Fly, Dubbing, of the down of an otter-cub and theherl of 
a peacock ; warped with black silk. Wings, of the light gray feather 
of a mallard. 

Fern Bud. This fly is got on fern, and the natural one is very 
good to dib with. It has a short thick body, of a very sad greenish 
colour, and two pair of wings ; the uppermost are hard, and sometimes 
taken ofl", but the undermost diaphanous. And it is dubbed with the 
herl of a peacc^ck, and very sad green silk. Wings, of the feather of a 
fieldfare's quill got out of the wing. 

Little Dun. Dubbing, of an otter's fur ; warped with ash-coloured 
silk. Wings, of a shepstare's quill feather. 

Yellow May-fly. Dubbing, of yellow wool, mixed with yellow fur 
of a martern ; warped with yellow silk. Wings, of the lightest 
coloured feather of a throstle. 

June. Black Midge, ox Gnat. Dubbing, of the down of a mole; 
warped with black silk. Wings, of a light gi-ay shepstare's quili 
feather. 

Gray Midge, or Gnat. Dubbing, of the down of a sad gray cat. 

are words STnonvmous : 



316 APPENDIX. 

or sad gray camel's hair ; warped with gray silk. Wings, of the gray 
feather of a mallard. 

Purple Fly. Dubbing, of purple wool, and a little bear's hair 
mixed, sometimes no bear's hair at all. Wings, of a shepstare's quill 
feather. Warped with purple silk. 

Sand Fly. Dubbing, of the wool gotten oflf the flank of a black 
sheep ; warped with black silk. Wings, of the sad-coloured feather of 
a throstle quill. Others make the body of the feather of a heron's 
neck. 

Mackerel, Dubbing, of light brown camel's hair, warped with black 
silk. Wings, of a red cock's feather. 

July. Blue Dun. Dubbing, of the down of a water-mouse, and 
the bluish dun of an old fox, mixed together; warped with sad ash- 
coloured silk. Wings, of a shepstare's quill feather. 

August. JBuss Brown. Dubbing, of the light brown hair of a 
cur. The head, black. Wings, of the feather of a red hen. Warped 
with orange-coloured silk. 

Hearth Fly, Dubbing, of the wool of an old black sheep ; with 
some gray hairs in it for the body and head. Wings, of a light shep- 
stare's quill feather ; warped on with black silk. 

Pismire Fly. Dubbing, of bright brown bear's hair ; warped with 
red silk. Wings, of the saddest coloured shepstare's quill feather. A 
good fly. 

September. Little Blue Dun. Dubbing, of the down of a mouse, 
for body and head ; warped with sad ash-coloured silk. Wings, of a 
sad-coloured shepstare's quill feather. 

No. V. 

(Referred to from Part II. page 288, note.) 

TEN YEARS, ONE MONTH, AND FIVE DAYS' ANGLING. 

Fish taken in the counties of Carmarthen and Glamorgan, 
commencing 11th April, 1753, to the 10th April, 1754, 
inclusive, ...... 6272 

Ditto in the counties of Pembroke, Carmarthen, Glamorgan, 
and Derby, from 11th April, 1754, to 24th October 
following, ...... 3758 

1756 Ditto in tne counties of York, Salop, and Glamorgan, 3739 

1757 Fish taken in the county of Glamorgan, . . 9272 

1758 Ditto in the counties of Glamorgan, Brecon, Radnor, and 

Hereford, 7762 

1759 Ditto in the same counties, . . . 3490 

1760 Ditto in the county of Glamorgan, . . . 2150 

1761 Ditto in the same county, . . . 2522 

1762 Ditto in the counties of Glamorgan and Carmarthen, 3183 

1763 Ditto in the county of Carmarthen, . . . 3158 

1764 Ditto in the county of Carmarthen, to 23d July, being 

my last day's angling in the principality, . 1814 

The whole given to the public, 47120 



APPENDIX. 317 

The rich, the poor, the sick, and the healthy, have tasted of the 
labour of my hands. 

In the first nine months in the year 1751, I took, in the counties of 
Pembroke and Carmarthen, above a thousand Trouts : and though I 
have taken Trouts in every month in the. year since, yet I could not, 
in any one year, reach that number. Perhaps I have done it before 
1751 ; but i did not then keep an account all the year round, only 
noted those days in which I had diversion more than common. 

N. B. There were some Pike and Chub, Eel and Flounder taken, 
which are not noted in the above account.* 



No. VI. 

Additional Rules and Cautions. 

1. When you have hooked a fish, never suffer him to run out with 
the line ; but keep your rod bent, and as near perpendicular as you 
can ; by this method the top phes to every pull he makes, and you 
prevent the straining of your line for the same reason. 

2. Never raise a large' fish out of the water by taking the hair to 
which your hook is fastened, or indeed any part of the line, into your 
hand ; but either put a landing-net under him, or, for want of that, 
your hat: you may, indeed, in fly-fishing, lay hold of your Hne to 
draw a fish to you, but this must be done with caution. 

3. Your silk for whipping hooks and other fine work must be very 
smaU ; use it double, and wax it, and indeed any other kind of binding, 
with shoemaker's wax, which of all wax is the toughest, and holds 
best ; if your wax is too stiff, temper it with tallow. 

4. If for strong fishing you use gi-ass, which, when you can get it 
fine, is to be preferred to gut, remember ahvays to soak it about an 
hour in water before you use it ; this will make it tough, and prevent 
its kinking. 

5. WTienever you begin fishing, wet the ends of the joints of your 
rod, which, as it makes them swell, will prevent their loosening. And, 

6. If you happen with rain or otherwise to wet your rod, so that 
you cannot pull the joints asunder, turn the ferule a few times round 
in the flame of a candle, and they will easily separate. 

7. Before you fix the loop of bristle to your hook in order to make 
it fly, to prevent its drawing, be sure to singe the ends of it in the 
flame of a candle ; do the same by the hair to which at any time you 
whip a hook. 

8. Make flies in warm weather only, for, in cold, your waxed silk 
will not draw. 

9. In rainy weather, or when the season for fishing is over, repair 
whatever damage your tackle has sustained. 

« If I had the honour of an acquaintance with this keen and laborious sportsman, I 
might possibly at times have checked him in the ardour of his pursuit, by reminding him 
of that excellent maxim, " Ne quid nimis," i. e. " Nothing too much." The pleasure of 
angling consists not so much in the number of fish we catch, as in the exercise of o>ir art, 
the gratification of our hopes, and the reward of our skill and ingenuity. Were it possible 
f-}T an anpler to be sure of every cast of his fly, so that for six hours together his hook 
should never come home without a fiih at it, angling would be no more a recreation 
than the sawing of stone or the pumping of water. 



318 APPENDIX. 

10. Never regard what bunglers and slovens tell you ; but believe 
tliat neatness in your tackle, and a nice and curious hand in all your 
work, especially in fly-making, are absolutely necessary. 

1 1 . Be ever so provided as to be able to help yourself in all exigencies ; 
nor deem it a small incivility to interrupt your companion in his 
sport, by frequently calling to him to lend you a plummet or a knife, 
or to supply you with a hook, a float, a few shot, or any thing else 
that you ought to be furnished with before you set out for your 
recreation. 

12. Never fish in any water that is not common, without leave of 
the owner, which is seldom denied to any but those who do not 
deserve it. 

13. If at any time you happen to be overheated with walking, or 
other exercise, avoid small liquors, especially water, as you would 
poison, and rather take a glass of rum or brandy ; the instantaneous 
effects whereof, in cooling the body and quenching drought, are 
amazing. 

14. Never be tempted in the pursuit of your recreation to wade, 
at least not as I have seen some do, to the waist. This indiscreet 
practice has been known to bring on fevers that have terminated in 
abscesses, and endangered the loss of a limb. 

15. Never, to preserve the character of an expert angler, be guilty 
of that mean practice of buying fish * of such of your fellow sportsmen 
as have had better success than yourself; thereby giving occasion for 
that bitter sarcasm, the more bitter for being true, " They were 
caught with a silver hook." 

16. Remember that the wit and invention of mankind were bestowed 
for other purposes than to deceive silly fish ; and that however 
delightful angling may have been made to appear by the foregoing 
pages, it ceases to be innocent when used otherwise than as a mere 
recreation, f 

17. Lastly, when seated under a shady tree, on the side of a pleasant 
river, or moving about on the banks of it, thou art otherwise pursuing 
thy recreation ; when the gliding of waters, the singing of birds, the 
bleating of flocks, the lowing of cattle, and the view of delightful 
prospects, and the various occupations of rural industry, shall dispose 
thee to thought and reflection ; let the beauties of Nature, the power, 
wisdom, and goodness of the Almighty, as manifested in the production 
of his creatures, the order and course of his providence in their 
preservation, the rewards of a good life, and the certainty of thy end, 
be the subjects of thy meditation. 

* There are others to whom this caution against buying; fish may be useful. One of 
the greatest temptations to the lishing with unlawful nets in the Thames, near London, 
is the high price which by an artifice some of the scaly kinds of fish, that is to say, 
Roach and Dace, are made to fetch ; for the takers of such first scrape off the scales, and 
sell them by the pound to the necklace-makers, (who make thereof a kind of amalgama, 
with which they cover wax beads, and thereby imitate pearls ;) and having so done, they 
cry the smallest and very refuse of the fish about the streets, and sell them to ignorant 
housekeepers for Gudgeons. 

+ Some will be disposed to dispute the correctness of this conclusion. — S. 



APPENDIX. 



319 



No. VII. 

ECLOGA PISCATORIA. 

(a metastasio, ut dicitur.) 



Candida vitse, 
Gaud) a nescit 
Ah miser ! ille, 
Qui requievit 
Littore nunquam 
Mollis arenae 
Pone reclinis ; 
Grata Favoni 
Quot micat ardens 
Ignibus aether 
Unda relucet, 
Fractaque Phoebes 
^quore glauco 
Ludit imago 
Lactea, splendet 
Sub tremebundo, 
Lumine pontus ; 
Et tua, Triton, 
Buccina torta 
Nocte silenti 
Littora complet, 
(Blanda palustris 
Fistula cede, 
Pan, licet Areas 
Inflet avenam !) 
Saxaque late 
Reddere discunt 
Doridos ignes, 
Leucothoesve, 
Vel Galathese 
Grata Sicano 
Furta sub antro, 
Quae fovet ulnis 
Acida Divum ; 
Dumque natanti 
Lumine languens 
Murmure leni, 
Basia sugens 
Comprimit arete 
Pectore pectus 
Aurea nymphs ; 
Spretus amator 
(Ardua moles) 
Heu fremit atrox 
Ore cruento, 



Quum levis aura, 
Vespere sero 
Fluftibus orta, 
Flaiaine leni 
Peetora muleens 
iEquora erispat : 
Nox ubi fuscis 
Evolat alis, 
Turn furibundis 
Passibus errans, 
Sanguinolentum 
Luminis orbem 
Ssev^ volutans 
Singula lustrat, 
Cernere si qua 
I^ossit amantes. 
Raptaque dextra 
Pallida membra 
Fulminis instar 
Fragens heu ! heu L 
Vindiee saxo. 
Ergo age tandem 
Spernere mitte 
Gurgitis almi 
Littora grata, 
Gratior ipsa 
Rustiea Phylli, 
Ipsa Dione, 
Ipsa puelli 
Arcitenentis 
Aurea mater, 
Aurea quae nunc 
Ore nitenti 
Numina captat ; 
Blanda marinae 
Filia spumse 
Edita ponto est : 
Nunc quoque pontum 
(iEthere spreto) 
Saep6 revisens 
Alite curru 
Diva serenis 
Labitur undis, 
Collaque olorum 
Floribus atque 



820 



APPENDIX. 



Cunctaque late 
Voce tonanti 
Semifer implet: 
( Scylla relatrat 
Mtna, remugit) 
Alme Favoni, 
Purpureisque 
Exsilis alis, 
Moxque reportans 
Coajugis liorto 
Sive rosarura 
Vel hyacinth! 
Fundis odores. 
Grandia cete 

Gaudia vasta 
Saltibus edunt 
Incorapostis, 
O Venus alma, 
Teque salutant, 
Et maris eequor 
Impete laeto 
Sydera ad alta 
Naribus efflant. 

O mea vita, 
Ocyus adsis, 
Molle latusque 
Littore fulta, 
Prospice mecum 
Colle propinquo 
Subsili antes 
Lanigerarum 
Ubera circum 

Molliter agnas ; 



Flectit habena ; 
Mdlus Euro 
Lora frementi 
Contrahit arct^ j 
At tibi laxat, 
Pendula lino 
Et tibi dextram 
Armet arundo ; 
Haraus aduncus 
Fluctuet unda : 
Mox genus ecce 
Omne natantum 
(Squaramea pubes 
Ex latebrosis 
Advena fundis) 
Preepete pinna 
Trans maris aequor 
TJltro requiret 
Humida nostrae 
Lina puellae; 
Crine madentes 
Et tibi fundent 
Naiades udse 
Divite dextra, 
Mille colorum 
Munera conchas, 
Sanguine multo 
Tincta coralla 
Gurgitis imi 
Splendida dona, 
Doridos almse 
Laeve tributum. * 



* This Eclog:ue, which on account of its excellence Is here inserted, was 
communicated by a learned friend to the editor of this work, (1760 ;) but 
it does not occur in any of the editions of Metastasio's Works. 



INDEX. 



Adonis, a fish so called, 60. 

Adopting sons, practice of, 238, note. 

Agues, to what ascribed, 51. 

Air, praise of the element of, 44. 

Alfred, King, alters the course of 
the river Lee, 201, note. 

Aldrovandus, his opinion of some 
kinds offish, 122. 

Amos, the prophet, an angler, 63. 

Angler, the Complete, character of, 
6 ; its reception, 12 ; character 
of the Second Part, 16, 229. 

Angler, qualifications for one, 53 
equipments of, 190, 191, note 
dress of, in the last age, 207, note 
rudely treated sometimes, 300. 

Angler's song, 93; wish,. 114. 

Anglmg, old writers on, 6, note ; 
how to be taught, 33 ; like poetry, 
53; antiquity of, 54; commen- 
dation of, 55 ; allowed to clergy- 
men, 64 ; examples of learned 
men, lovers of, 64 ; lines in praise 
of, by J. Davors, 67 ; songs on, 
176, 177; practised by ladies, in 
St James's Park in Charles XL's 
reign, 205, note ; ways of angling 
at the bottom, 291 ; in" the 
middle, 296 ; prodaCe of ten vcars, 
316. 

Angling, laws of, discourse on, 299. 
Ant, the, keeps no store for winter^ 
48, note. 

Ant-fly, blackish, mode of keeping 

for bait, 186. 
Ant-flv, 2.S5 ; 286. 



Antony and Cleopatra made ang- 
ling a recreation, 64. 
Antonia, wife of Drusus, favourite 

Lamprey of, 120. 
April, artificial flies for, 276. 
Apostles, four of them fishermen, 

62. 
Aquatic insects having cases, syn- 
opsis of, .309. 
Aristotle, credit due to, as a natu- 
ralist, 61, note. 
Artificial Minnow, directions for 

making, 99. 
Artificial flies, diff"erent kinds of, for 
dilTerent seasons, 104, 271 ; direc- 
tions for making, 107, 265 ; 
materials for, 103; superior to 
natural ones in windv weather, 
283. 
Ashborn, Derbyshire, 241. 
Ash-coloured Dun, 276, note. 
Ash-grub, 294. 
Ashmole, Elias, 57. 
Asafoetida has the property of 

making baits attractive, 129. 
Astonfield church, 252. 
August, artificial flies for, 283. 

Bag, 109. 

Bag-rods, description of, 207, note. 

Bait, several kinds of, 192. 

Baits, the oil of ivy-berries, &c. 
put upon them, said to attract 
fish, 128, 129 ; effects of using 
improper, 129, note ; winter, 187. 

Balaena, Pliny's account of the, 57. 



322 



INDEX. 



Barbel, its care of its spawn, 61 ; 
observations on, 168 ; its spawn 
dangerous, 169 ; how to fish for, 
170; difficulty of landing one, 
171, note ; anecdotes I'elating to, 
ib. 

Barker, Mr Thomas, account of, 
16 ; his directions for fly-fishing, 
105, note ,■ his poetical directions, 
111. 

Barm-fly, 284. 

Barnes, or Berners, Dame Julyans, 
compiler of the Hook of St Al- 
ban's, 7. 

Bede, venerable, quoted, 161. 

Beggars, curious division of money 
by, 115; dispute of, 116. 

Beggars' song, 1 1 7. 

Beggar's daughter of Bethnal-green, 
incidents of that ballad, 21 7, note. 

Bently Brook, plenty of Trout in, 
247. 

F.eresford Hall, 247. 

Birds, their usefulness to man, 45. 

Bishop-Fish, story of the, 69. 

Black fly, 278, 284. 

Black huckh, 285. 

Bleak, description of, and how to 
fish for, 174. 

Bloa herl-fly, 312. 

Blue dun, great, 273 ; black, 285. 

Book for fishing materials, 191, note. 

Boots and shoes. Barker's recipe for 
anointing, 190, note. 

Boteler, Dr, a saying of, 114. 

Bowerbanks, Tottenham, 214. 

Bowlker, Richard, 110, note. 

Boyle, Hon. Robert, his tract on 
angling, 19. 

Bream, observations on, 149 ; ac- 
counted a luxury in Henry V.'s 
time, 150, note ; how to catch, 
150; haunts of, and baits for, 
154, note. 

Brown gnat, how to make, 285. 

Browne, Moses, his Piscatory 
Eclogues recommended, 180, 
note. 

Bull-trout, where found, 82. 

liutterflies, kin^s of Persia used to 
hawk after, 45, yiote. 

Butterfly, painted, 102. 



Cadis worms, divers kinds of, 193; 
method of preserving, ib. note. 

Cadis, yellow, how to bait with, for 
Trout, 195. 

Camel-brown-fly, 286. 

Camlet-fly, 259, 284. 

Carp, observations on, 142; when 
brought to England, 143; amaz- 
ing size of in Germany, 144, note; 
destroyed by frogs, 145 ; age of, 
ib. ; spawning of, 1 46 ; how to 
fish for, ib. ; haunts of, and baits 
for, 148, note ; how to dress, 148 ; 
thrive best in ponds along with 
Tench, and no other fish, 204. 

Casaubon, Dr, 57. 

Caussin, Nicholas, a saying of his, 
213. 

Chalkhill, John, Esq. 23 ; his song 
on the countryman, 92 ; song, 
" Oh, the gallant fisher's life," 
176. 

Char, where taken, 167 ; described, 
ib- 

Chub, the, 73 ; how to dress, 74 ; 
how to fish for, 76, 77. 

Coble, basket so named, 124, note. 

Cockspur-worms described, 193. 

Colne, ruff-coat, or straw-worm, 
found in that river, 195, note. 

Colours, importance of in fly-fishing, 
265. 

Commendatory verses, 34. 

Company, importance of good, 72. 

Contentment, reasons foi", 210. 

Cony -fish, 58. 

Coriate, Tom, account of, 251, note. 

Coridon's song, 91 

Cork, or float-fishing, 196, note. 

Cotton, Charles, senior. Lord Cla- 
rendon's character of, 224. 

Cotton, Charles, junior, writes a 
second part to the Complete An- 
gler, 15 ; his poetical invitation 
to Walton, 25, tiote ; song on 
angling, 177, note ; account of 
his life and writings, 223; sent 
to college, 224 ; the great im- 
prover of the art of angling, 
226 ; works published by, ib. ; 
intimacy with Walton, 228; the 
first instance of a gentlemaB by 



INDEX. 



323 



birth writing for a subsistence, 
231 ; his pecuniary distress, 232; 
estimate of his character, 234 : 
Wordsworth's opinion of his poe- 
try, 235, 7wte ; his letter to Wal- 
ton, 237. 

Cow-dung-flv, 279. 

Cow-lady-fly^ 279. 

Crusians, a kind of fish like Carp, 
198, note. 

Cuttle-fish, its mode of catching 
prey, 59. 

Dace, how to fish for, 185 ; same 
baits as Roach, 186, 189, note; 
haunts of, ib. yiote ; when in sea- 
son, ib. 

Daping, dabbing, or dibbing, 259. 

Dark brown fly, 273 ; little, 277. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, his vindica- 
tion of fishing, 66, note. 

Dead-bait for Pike, 138. 

December, artificial flies for, 287. 

Derbyshire, famous for Trout, 243 ; 
account of the principal rivers 
in, 247. 

Dew-worm, 95. 

Diogenes, a saying of, 211. 

Dock-worm, 96. 

Dogs, excellent qualities of, 49. 

Donne, Dr John, Walton writes his 
life, 4 ; lines by Walton, under an 
engraving cf, 21 ; his lines on 
fishing, 159. 

Dove Dale, scenery of, 247, note. 

Dove, river, course of the, 247 ; 
famous for Trout and Grayling, 
249, 268. 

Drake-fly, dark, when used, 105 ; 
green, 279. 

Drayton, INlichael, lines of, 126. 

Du Bartas, lines of, 58, 60, 102. 

Dubbing to form the body of flies, 
materials for, 108, note, 265. 

Dubravius, Janus, 134. 

Ducks destroy the spawn and young 
fry in fish ponds, 203. 

Dun-fly, the great, 105, 273; the 
blue, ib. ; the little, 278. 

Dun cut-fly, 279. 

Dun-grasshopper, 285. 

Earth, commendation of the, 48. 



Eel, the large one caught at Peter- 
borough, 165. 

Eels, observations on, 160 ; breeding 
of, 162, note, 166, note; winter 
in the sea, 162, note; column of 
young observed running up the 
Clyde, ib. ; several kinds of, 163; 
how to fish for, ib. ; destructive ; 
to young ducks, 164, note; how 
to dress, 165 ; haunts of, and 
baits for, 165, note ; accounted 
dangerous food, 165. 

Emanuel College, Cambridge, a 
Carp of a great age at, 145. note. 

Ephemeron, authors treating of the, 
219. 

Espernon, Duke d', Cotton writes 
the fife of, 2-27. 

Falcon, bold flight of the, 45. 

Feathers principally used in fiy- 
making, 108. 

February, artificial flies for, 272. 

Fence months, what, 71 

Fern-bud flv, 312. 

Fern-fly, 286. 

Fields near Leominster, peculiarity 
of, 121. 

Fish, their sight, 53, note ; statutes 
against the destruction of, 71 ; 
hearing of, 119; furnished with 
parts of generation, 161, riote ; 
property allowed by law in river, 
303. 

Fish, a strange, dissected by Dr 
Wharton, 202. 

Fishes, time of breeding various, 33; 
how they dispose of their eggs, 61. 

Fish-hooks, by whom mentioned in 
the Old Testament, 63. 

Fishing with the dead rod, 113. 

Fishing at the top, 265 ; continued, 
270. 

Fishing, unlawful ways of, 288. 

Fishing-house, description of Cot- 
ton's, 256. 

Fish ponds, how to make and 
manage, 203, 205, note. 

Flesh-fly, 285. 

Fletcher, Phiceas, author of Pisca- 
tory JEclogues, extracts from, ISO. 

Flies, the kind used for Trout- 
fishing, 99 ; best natural, for 
fishing with, 259 ; to ascertain 



324 



INDEX. 



the suitable, 273 ; list of, and 
directions about, 310. 

Flies of prey, 101. 

Float-fishiag, rules for, 196, note. 

Flounder, how to catch, 167; rarely 
taken with the rod, 167, riote. 

Fly, kinds noticed by Walton, 105 ; 
to know what one is taken, 273. 

Fly, artificial, how to make, 263, 
265 ; materials for, 108, note. 

Fly-fishing for Trout, directions for, 
1 10 ; Cotton's directions for, 259 ; 
how to throw the line, 261 ; in 
windy weather, best in the stili 
deeps, 289. 

Fordidge Trout, account of, 80. 

Fox seized by a Pike, amusing story 
of a, 132, note. 

Frogs, destructive to Pike, 134 j 
divers kinds of, 134. 

Fulimart, or fumait, 48. 

F'uller, Dr Thomas, his lively con- 
versation with Walton, 13 ; facts 
recorded hy him relating to 
angling, 64, note ; 65, note ,• 163, 
note. 

Garrick, Mrs, 144, tiote. 

Gay, John, a lover of angling, 182, 

note; extract from his Rural 

Sports, ib. 
Genei'ation, the doctrine of equivo- 
cal, exploded, 100, 7iote. 
Gentles, a bait for Carp, 148 ; 

method of breeding and keeping, 

187. 
George, the Lesser, preserved by 

Walton, 20. 
Geneva, large Trouts in the lake of, 

79. 
Gipsies, a curious division of money 

by a gang of!, 115. 
Gnat, bright dun, 272. 
Gnat, little black, 276, 285. 
Gold and Silver fish, 198, note. 
Grass, Indian, how to use, 209, note. 
Grasshopper, the, voracity of, 80 ; 

a bait for Trout, 111. 
Grasshopper, how to make a green, 

285 ; a dun, ib. 
Graves, what, and how used for bait, 

170, note. 
Grayling, or Umber, directions how 



to fish for, 123; baits for, ib. 

note; when in season, 268, 271. 
Gray-drake fly, 281. 
Great dun-fly, 273. 
Great blue dun-fly, 273. 
Great whirling dun-fly, 275, note. 
Great hackle-fly, 272.' 
Green peacock hackle, 310. 
Green drake fly, 279 ; how to make 

an artificial, 281. 
Green grasshopper, 285. 
Green-tail fly, 313, 315. 
Ground- bait, for Bream, 152; 

angling with, 291. 
Grub, good bait for Roach, Dace, 

and Chub, 187. 
Gudgeon, the, description of, 1 72 ; 

how to fish for, 173. 

Hackle-fly, several kinds of, 272; 

to make, 274. 
Hairs, how to twist, 208, note; 

how to dye, 209. 
Hakewill, Dr, 120. 
Halifax, Marquis of, his high 

opinion of Cotton's Montaigne, 

230. 
Hampshire, abounds with good 

trouting streams, 119. 
Hanson Toot, hill of that name, 

252. 
Harry-long-legs fly, of what made, 

286. 
Harvie, Cli. his verses on the book 

of Common Prayer, 1 13. 
Hawks, two kinds of, 47 ; names of 

several, 47. 
Hawthorn-fly, where found. 111. 
Hearing offish, 119. 
Hearth-fly, 316. 
Henmoor, or Schoo Brook, affords 

Trout and Grayling, 245. 
Herbert, George, Walton's life of, 

14; verses by, 68, 112. 
Hermit fish, account of the, 69. 
Hern, or Heron, caught with a hook 

baited, 175. 
Herrings, where plentiful, 202. 
Hind, James, the English Gusman, 

account of, 116, note. 
Hook, how to bait one with n, 

worm, 97, 292 ; with a Minnow, 



INDEX. 



325 



98 ; directions for whipping on 

one, 191,710^6. 
Hooker, Richard, Walton writes 

his life, 14. 
Hooks, best, 192, note. 
Horse-flesh fly, 277. 
Hortensius weeps at the death of a 

Lamprey, 162. 
Hunting, commendation of, 48; 

forbid to clergymen, 64. 
Huzzard fly, 811. 

Indian grass for hook-lines, 209, 

note. 
Insects, reference to works on, 219; 

aquatic, 309. 
Ireland, voyage to, specimen of 

Cotton's, 227. 
Isabella colour described, 276, note. 

Jacks, Pike so called, 138, note. 
James I. an enemy to tobacco, 254, 

note. 
January, artificial flies for, 271. 
Jerome, Saint, his three wishes, 5] . 
Jonson, Ben, his sarcasms against 

smoking, 254, note. 
July, artificial flies for, 285, 311. 
June, artificial flies for, 284. 

Kemble pipe, what, 254, note. 

Kennet river affords good Trout, 
121, note. 

King, Dr Henry, Bishop of Chi- 
chester, his opinion of Walton's 
Lives, 4, 14, 22. 

Kipper, meaning of the term, 125. 

Kirby, Charles, a famous maker of 
hooks, 192, note. 

Knop-fly, 315. 

Knot, how to tie a water, 192, note. 

Knotted gray gnat, 31 3. 

Lamprey, great age of a tame, 162. 
Last- Spring, a species of Trout, 1 29, 

note. 
Latkin, remarkably clear stream, 

248 ; yields the finest Trout, ib. 
Laws of Angling, 299. 
Lea River, much frequented by 

Walton, 3. 
Lead, how much required for a line 

with worm, 104. 



Leather-mouthed fish, what, 77. 
Lebault, Dr, his directions fur 

making fish-ponds, 203. 
Ledger bait, 135. 
Lesser hackle-fly, 272. 
Lessius, Leonard, his remark on 

fasting, 104. 
Lever, Sir Ashton, 57, note. 
Line, directions for making, 206 ; 

how to throw in fly-fishing, 261. 
Live baits fur Pike, 135. 
Live snap, method of taking Pike, 

140, note. 
Loach, description of the, 197 ; 

hov/ to catch, 198; good bait for 

Trout, 296. 
Lob-worm, 95. 
Luce, or Pike, observations on, arid 

directions how to fish for, MO. 
Lucian, the father of scoffers, 34. 

Mackerel fly, 316. 

Macrobius, Aurelius, 51. 

March, artificial flies for, 275 

jMarkham, Gervaise, on the quali- 
ties of an angler, 53, note. 

Marlow, Chi'istopher, account of, 
85. 

^Martial, epigram of, on tame fishes, 
120. 

^Materials for fly-making, 108, note. 

INJay, artificial flics for, 278. 

Mav-fly, how to make an artificial, 
107 ;' different kinds of, 279. 

Medway river, 201. 

Metastasio, Ecloga Piscatoria, a- 
scribed to, 319. 

Milkmaid's song, 87 ; wish, 88. 

Milkmaid's mother's answer, 88. 

Miller's Thumb, or Bull-head, de- 
scribed, 19S ; how to catch, ib. 

Minnow, or Penk, when found, 9S ; 
how to bait with, 98; desciip-- 
tion of, and how to catch, 197. 

Monk Fish, 59, note. 

Montaigne, his speculations about 
his cat, 43 ; his Essays, traiisla- 
ted by Cotton, 230. 

Moorish fly, 105. 

More-Lands, 253. 

Moss, best kind of, 97. 

Moulin, Peter du, observation of 
his, 55. 



326 INE 

jMullet, chastity of the, 61 ; changes 
colours, 78 ; best of sea-fish, 79. 
Music, lines in praise of, 181. 

Natural fly, of fishin? with a, 111, 

259; best kind of,' -269. 
New River, the best Eels taken in, 

166, note. 
Night fishing for Trout, 118. 
Nightingale, its singing described, 

46. 
North, Hon. Roger, Discourse of 

Fish and Fish-ponds, 206, note. 
Northumberland Trout, 82. 
November, artificial flies for, 287. 
Nowel, Dr, dean of St Paul's, 

particulars concerning, 64. 

Oak- fly, 110, 111; how to make, 
311. 

Oak-worm, 96. 

October, artificial flies for, 286. 
Ofiiey, J. Esq. dedication to, 31. 
Oils, 'put upon baits, 128, 129, 148 ; 

whether useful, 295. 
Orange-fly, 285. 
Otter, the, destructive to fish, 42 ; 

observations on, 69. 
Owl-fly, 284. 

Palmer-fly, account of, 100; how 

to make, 274, 278. 
Palmer worm, 101 ; when used for 

fishing, 107. 
Parrot-Fish, 68. 
Pastes, for Chub, 78 ; for Carp, 

147 ; for Bream, 150 ; for Tench, 

156 ; for Roach and Dace, 185. 
Paternoster line, what, 174, 7iote. 
Patience, anecdotes of an angler's, 

64, 7iote. 
Peacock-fly, 279, 286. 
Pearl-colour, or heron dun, 310. 
Penk, or Minnow, observations on, 

98, 197. 
Perch, observations on, 166 ; 

esteemed very wholesome, 167 ; 

how to fish for, 158; additional 

directions about, 158, note. 
Peucerus, Caspar, fabulous story 

told by, 1 18. 
Pigeons used to carry letters, 46. 
Pike-fishing, ancient mode of, 9. 



Pike -pool, description of, 269. 

Pike, or Luce, observations on, 130 ; 
longevity of, 131 ; boldness and 
voracity of, ib. ; bite of, veno- 
mous, 133; breeding of, ib. ; 
said to be destroyed by frogs, 
134; how to fish for, 135; 
haunts of, and baits for, 138, 
note ; directions for roasting, 141 . 

Piper cadis, where found, 194, note. 

Piscator's song in praise of fishing, 
176. 

Pismire fly, 311, 316. 

Plain hackle-fly, 313. 

Poison-fish, 58. 

Pond-fishing, 205, note. 

Pope, or Rufie, description of the, 
173. 

Prime dun-fly, 314. 

Prison, lines inscribed on the wall 
of a, 232. 

Purple-fly, 316. 

Red-brown fly, 271 ; lesser, 272. 

Red hackle-fly, 313. 
j Red herl-fly, 314. 
' Reliquiae Wottonianse, 5, 215. 

Retirement, the, stanzas addressed 
to Walton, 239. 

Rivers, wondrous properties of some, 
66 ; observations on several, 200. 

Rivers in England, principal, des- 
cribed in a sonnet of Michael 
Drayton's, 201. 

Roach, description of the, 183 
better in rivers than ponds, 184 
largest caught in the Thames, ib. 
season for catching, ib. note ; how 
to fish for, 185 ; baits for, 186, 
189, note ; haunts of, ib. note. 

Rod, directions for colouring, 206, 
210 ; choice of, and how to 
make, 206, note; best made in 
Yorkshire, length of, 260. 

Roe, Nat. and R. friends of Wal- 
ton's, 3, 33. 

Rosicrusians, 188. 

Royal merchant, comedy of the, 
116. 

Ruddy-fly, 105. 

Ruff-coat, a species of cadis, 193. 

Ruffe, or Pope, description of, and 
how to fish for, 173. 



INDEX. 



327 



Rules and cautions in fishing, 

317. 
Running line, description of, 97; 

materials to make, 208. 

Saddler, an account of Mr, 42. 

Sad yellow fly, 105. 

Salmon, tlie, observations on, 124 ; 
migration of, 125, note ; age and 
growth of, 126 ; how to fish for, 
127 ; baits for, 128, note ; beauti- 
ful appearance of, on coming out 
of the water, 130. 

Salmon spawn, an excellent bait for 
most fish, 100, note. 

Salmon-leap, mention of places so 
called, 126. 

Salmon-trout, where found, 82. 

Salviani, Hippolito, 123. 

Samlet, or Skegger Trout, 79. 

Sanderson, Dr Robert, 19. 

Sand-fly, 313. 

Scale-fish, how to fish for, 190, 
note. 

Schoo brook, 245, note. 

Seals fond of music, 57, note. 

Sea monster resembling a man, 59, 
note. 

Sea-grass for hook lines, 209, 7iote. 

September, artificial flies for, 286. 

Severn, the, its course, 200. 

Shawford brook, 114. 

Shell-fly, 105, 285. 

Shepperton and Hampton frequent- 
ed by the Londoners, 184, 7iote. 

Silk-worm, her mode of spinning, 
211, note. 

Silver-twist hackle, 310. 

Simple men, in what sense anglers 
are, 44. 

Small bright brown fly, 277. 

Snakes, breeding of, 135. 

Snapping for Pike, 140, note. 

Snigliug for Eels, 164. 

Soil, quality of Trout depends on, 
121. 

Spawn of most fish a tempting bait, 
193. 

Sooty dun-fly, 310. 

Stanzes Irreguliers addressed to 
Izaak Walton, 239. 

Sticklebag, the, good bait for Trout, 
199. 



Stone-fly, how made, 105, 284; 

description and use of, 283. 
Straw-worm described, 194. 
Swans, penalty for stealing, 60, 

note. 

Tackle requisite for an angler, 190, 
191, note. 

Tawny-fly, 105. 

Templars, the knights, curious and 
once characteristic device of, 2. 

Tench, observations ou, 154 ; the 
physician of fishes, ] 54 ; cure 
performed by the application of, 
155 ; directions how to catch, 
156 ; haunts of, and baits for, 
ib. note. 

Tliames, origin of the name, 200; 
its course, ib. ; lines in praise of, 
ib. 

Thames fishing, 184, note. 

Thatched house in Hodsden, 41. 

Theobald's, account of that place, 
41. 

Thorn-fly, 315. 

Thorntree-fly, 275. 

Toads not venomous, 132, note. 

Tobacco, King James the First's 
hatred of, 254, note ; mischiefs 
of, ib. 

Top of fishing-rod, how to mend, 
191, note. 

Tradescants, account of the, 57. 

Treatyse of Fysshynge with an 
angle, 7. 

Trent, River, origin of the name, 
200, 248. 

Trolling for Pike, directions for, 
139, note. 

Trout, directions for catching, 77, 
95 ; observations on the nature 
and breeding of, 79 ; varieties of, 
82 ; when in season, and what 
kind best, 83 ; not proper to 
catch one till the middle of March, 
107 ; catching Ijy torch light, 
119 ; haunts of, and time of 
spawning, 121, note. 

Trout or Grayling, how to angle 
for, 258 ; to dress, 289 ; to an- 
gle at the bottom for, 291 ; ang- 
ling by hand for, ib. ; angling 



328 INDEX 



in tlie middle for, 296 ; Loach a 

good bait for, ib. 
Trout, Wandle variety of, 90. 
Trout-lice, description of, 83. 
Trouts have a favourite stone to 

lie near in a river, 259, note. 
Turkey-fly, 278. 
Turtle-dove, common mistake about, 

60, note. 
Tweed river, 201. 
Tyne river, 201. 

Umber, or Grayling, observations 
on, 122 ; bow to fish for, 123 ; 
haunts of, and baits for, 123, 
note ; when in season, 268. 

Varro, M. Terentius, his aviary, 

46; fish, 51. 
Violet dun-fly, 310. 
Violet-fly, 277. 

Walking-bait, 135. 

Waller, Ed. lines of, 182. 

Walton, Izaak, the life of, 1 ; his 
character, 11 ; conversation with 
Fuller, 13 ; intimacy with many 
eminent men, 20 ; death, 23 ; 
epitaph, ib. ; family, ib. ; will, 
27 ; his letter to Cotton, 238 ; 
adopted Cotton for his son, ib. 
note. 

Walton, Mrs, account of, 3; her 
epitaph, 4. 

Wa^>p-fly, 105, 285. 

Water, the element of, commended, 
49. 

Wharton, Dr, 51. 



Whirling dun-fly, 277 ; little, ib. 
note. 

White dun-fly, 285. 

White gnat, 279. 

White hackle, 286. 

White miller, or owl-fly, 284. 

Whitish dun-fly, 275. 

V/hitterish-fiy, 314. 

Whole Duty of Man, authorship of 
22, note. 

Weirs, or kidels, 185, note. 

Wind, observations on the best for 
fishing, 109. 

Windy day best for fly-fishing, 105. 

Withy-fly, 311. 

Worms, divers kinds of, 95 ; how- 
to keep, 96 ; method of making 
them rise, 97 ; cadis, 193 ; cock- 
spur, ib. ; straw, ib. ; how to 
preserve cadis, ib. note ; how 
to bait with, 293. 

Wotton, Sir Henry, 4, 5 ; his love 
of angling, 65 ; his verses on 
spring, 66 ; verses in praise of 
angling, from the Reliquiae 
WottoniancB, 215 ; farewell to 
the vanities of the world, 216. 

Wye river, in Monmouthshire, 
when fish in season there, 127, 
249, note. 

Yellow, or gi'eenish fly, 105. 
Yellow dun-fly, 277. 
Yellow may-fly, 284. 
Yellow miller, or owl-fly, 284. 
Yellow watchet -fly, 313. 
Yelvers, the name for young Eels, 
161. 



THE END. 



EDINBURGH: 

Printed by Andrew Shoutrede, Thistle Lane,