I shall next tell you a winter-bait for a Roach, a Dace, or Chub; and it is choicely good.About All-hallantide, and so till frost comes, when you see men ploughing up heath ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards, then follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm, as big as two maggots, and it hath a red head: you may observe in what ground most are, for there the crows will be very watchful and follow the plough very close: it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is, in Norfolk and some other counties, called a grub; and is bred of the spawn or eggs of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the ground under cow or horse dung, and there rests all winter, and in March or April comes to be first a red and then a black beetle.Gather a thousand or two of these, and put them, with a peck or two of their own earth, into some tub or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm that the frost or cold air, or winds, kill them not: these you may keep all winter, and kill fish with them at any time; and if you put some of them into a little earth and honey, a day before you use them, you will find them an excellent bait for Bream, Carp, or indeed for almost any fish.
And after this manner you may also keep gentles all winter; which are a good bait then, and much the better for being lively and tough.Or you may breed and keep gentles thus: take a piece of beast's liver, and, with a cross stick, hang it in some corner, over a pot or barrel half full of dry clay; and as the gentles grow big, they will fall into the barrel and scour themselves, and be always ready for use whensoever you incline to fish;and these gentles may be thus created till after Michaelmas.But if you desire to keep gentles to fish with all the year, then get a dead cat, or a kite, and let it be flyblown; and when the gentles begin to be alive and to stir, then bury it and them in soft moist earth, but as free from frost as you can; and these you may dig up at any time when you intend to use them: these will last till March, and about that time turn to be flies.
But if you be nice to foul your fingers, which good anglers seldom are, then take this bait: get a handful of well-made malt, and put it into a dish of water; and then was]l and rub it betwixt your hands till you make it clean, and as free from husks as you can; then put that water from it, and put a small quantity of fresh water to it, and set it in something that is fit for that purpose, over the fire, where it is not to boil apace, but leisurely and very softly, until it become somewhat soft, which you may try by feeling it betwixt your finger and thumb; and when it is soft, then put your water from it: and then take a sharp knife, and turning the sprout end of the corn upward with the point of your knife, take the back part of the husk off from it, and yet leaving a kind of inward husk on the corn, or else it is marr'd and then cut off that sprouted end, I mean a little of it, that the white may appear; and so pull off the husk on the cloven side, as I directed you; and then cutting off a very little of the other end, that so your hook may enter; and if your hook be small and good, you will find this to be a very choice bait, either for winter or summer, you sometimes casting a little of it into the place where your float swims.
And to take the Roach and Dace, a good bait is the young brood of wasps or bees, if you dip their heads in blood; especially good for Bream, if they be baked, or hardened in their husks in an oven, after the bread is taken out of it; or hardened on a fire-shovel: and so also is the thick blood of sheep, being half dried on a trencher, that so you may cut into such pieces as may best fit the size of your hook; and a little salt keeps it from growing black, and makes it not the worse, but better: this is taken to be a choice bait, if rightly ordered.
There be several oils of a strong smell that I have been told of, and to be excellent to tempt fish to bite, of which I could say much.But Iremember I once carried a small bottle from Sir George Hastings to Sir Henry Wotton, they were both chemical men, as a great present: it was sent, and receiv'd, and us'd, with great confidence; and yet, upon inquiry, I found it did not answer the expectation of Sir Henry; which, with the help of this and other circumstances, makes me have little belief in such things as many men talk of.Not but that I think that fishes both smell and hear, as I have express in my former discourse:
but there is a mysterious knack, which though it be much easier than the philosopher's stone, yet is not attainable by common capacities, or else lies locked up in the brain or breast of some chemical man, that, like the Rosicrucians, will not yet reveal it.But let me nevertheless tell you, that camphire, put with moss into your worm-bag with your worms, makes them, if many anglers be not very much mistaken, a tempting bait, and the angler more fortunate.But I stepped by chance into this discourse of oils, and fishes smelling; and though there might be more said, both of it and of baits for Roach and Dace and other float-fish, vet I will for bear it at this time, and tell you, in the next place, how you are to prepare your tackling: concerning which, I will, for sport sake, give you an old rhyme out of an old fish book; which will prove a part, and but a part, of what you are to provide.
My rod and my line, my float and my lead, My hook and my plummet, my whetstone and knife, My basket, my baits, both living and dead, My net, and my meat, for that is the chief:
Then I must have thread, and hairs green and small, With mine angling purse: and so you have all.
But you must have all these tackling, and twice so many more, with which, if you mean to be a fisher, you must store yourself; and to that purpose I will go with you, either to Mr.Margrave, who dwells amongst the book-sellers in St.Paul's Church-yard, or to Mr.John Stubs, near to the Swan in Goldinglane: they be both honest, an, and will fit an angler with what tackling he lacks.