Part 16

And if you fish for a Carp with Gentles, then put upon your hook a small piece of Scarlet about this bigness {breadth of two letters}, it being soked in, or anointed with Oyl of Peter, called by some, Oyl of the Rock; and if your Gentles be put two or three dayes 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 craftie fish this way as any other; but still as you are fishing, chaw a little white or brown bread in your mouth, and cast it into the Pond about the place where your flote swims. Other baits there be, but these with diligence, and patient watchfulness, will do it as well as any as I have ever practised, or heard of: and yet I shall tell you, that the crumbs of white 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 shal be of the Bream, which shall not prove so tedious, and therefore I desire the continuance of your attention.

CHAP. IX.

Pisc. 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, where, if he likes the aire, 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 then wholesome; this fish is long in growing, but breeds exceedingly in a water that pleases him, yea, in many Ponds so fast, as to over store them, and starve the other fish.

The Baits good for to catch the Bream are many; as namely, young Wasps, and a Paste made of brown bread and honey, or Gentels, or especially a worm, a worm that is not much unlike a Magot, which you will find at the roots of Docks, or of Flags, or of Rushes that grow in the water, or watry places, and a Grashopper having his legs nip'd off, or a flye that is in June and July to be found amongst the green Reed, growing by the water side, those are said to bee excellent baits. I doubt not but there be many others that both the Bream and the Carp also would bite at; but these time and experience will teach you how to find out: And so having according to my promise given you these short Observations concerning the Bream, I shall also give you some Observations concerning the Tench, and those also very briefly.

The Tench is observed to love to live in Ponds; but if he be in a River, then in the still places of the River, he is observed to be a Physician to other fishes, and is so called by many that have been searchers into the nature of fish; and it is said, that a Pike will neither devour nor hurt him, because the Pike being sick or hurt by any accident, is cured by touching the Tench, and the Tench does the like to other fishes, either by touching them, or by being in their company.

Randelitius sayes in his discourse of fishes (quoted by Gesner) that at his being at Rome, he saw certaine Jewes apply Tenches to the feet of a sick man for a cure; and it is observed, that many of those people have many Secrets unknown to Christians, secrets which have never been written, but have been successsively since the dayes of Solomon (who knew the nature of all things from the Shrub to the Cedar) delivered by tradition from the father to the son, and so from generation to generation without writing, or (unless it were casually) without the least communicating them to any other Nation or Tribe (for to do so, they account a profanation): yet this fish, that does by a natural inbred Balsome, not only cure himselfe if he be wounded, but others also, loves not to live in clear streams paved with gravel, but in standing waters, where mud and the worst of weeds abound, and therefore it is, I think, that this Tench is by so many accounted better for Medicines then for meat: but for the first, I am able to say little; and for the later, can say positively, that he eats pleasantly; and will therefore give you a few, and but a few directions how to catch him.

He will bite at a Paste made of brown bread and honey, or at a Marsh-worm, or a Lob-worm; he will bite also at a smaller worm, with his head nip'd off, and a Cod-worm put on the hook before the 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 Scholer may, and be ever fortunate when hee fishes.

Viat. I thank you good Master: but I pray Sir, since you see it still rains May butter, give me some observations and directions concerning the Pearch, for they say he is both a very good and a bold biting fish, and I would faine learne to fish for him.

Pisc. You say true, Scholer, the Pearch is a very good, and a very bold biting fish, he is one of the fishes of prey, that, like the Pike and Trout, carries his teeth in his mouth, not in his throat, and dare venture to kill and devour another fish; this fish, and the Pike are (sayes Gesner) the best of fresh water fish; 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 Poe, and in England, (sayes Randelitius) then other parts, and have in their brain a stone, which is in forrain parts sold by Apothecaries, being there noted to be very medicinable against the stone in the reins: These be a part of the commendations which some Philosophycal brain have bestowed upon the fresh-water Pearch, yet they commend the Sea Pearch, which is known by having but one fin on his back, (of which they say, we English see but a few) to be a much better fish.

The Pearch grows slowly, yet will grow, as I have been credibly informed, to be almost two foot long; for my Informer told me, such a one was not long since taken by Sir Abraham Williams, a Gentleman of worth, and a lover of Angling, that yet lives, and I wish he may: this was a deep bodied fish; and doubtless durst have devoured a Pike of half his own length; for I have told you, he is a bold fish, such a one, as but for extreme hunger, the Pike will not devour; for to affright the Pike, the Pearch will set up his fins, much like as a Turkie-Cock wil sometimes set up his tail.

But, my Scholer, the Pearch is not only valiant to defend himself, but he is (as you said) a bold biting fish, yet he will not bite at all seasons of the yeer; he is very abstemious in Winter; and hath been observed by some, not usually to bite till the Mulberry tree buds, that is to say, till extreme Frosts be past for that Spring; for when the Mulberry tree blossomes, many Gardners observe their forward fruit to be past the danger of Frosts, and some have made the like observation of the Pearches biting.

But bite the Pearch will, and that very boldly, and as one has wittily observed, if there be twentie or fortie in a hole, they may be at one standing all catch'd one after another; they being, as he saies, like the wicked of the world, not afraid, though their fellowes and companions perish in their sight. And the baits for this bold fish are not many; I mean, he will 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 scowred in Moss or Fennel; and if you fish for a Pearch with a Minnow, then it is best to be alive, you sticking your hook through his back fin, and letting him swim 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 light one: and the like way you are to fish for the Pearch 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 advise, that you give the Pearch time enough when he bites, for there was scarse ever any Angler that has given him too much. And now I think best to rest my selfe, for I have almost spent my spirits with talking so long.

Viat. 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 & enjoy one another. Come, come the other fish, good Master.

Pisc. But Scholer, have you nothing to mix with this Discourse, which now grows both tedious and tiresome? Shall I have nothing from you that seems to have both a good memorie, and a cheerful Spirit?

Viat. Yes, Master, I will speak you a Coppie of Verses that were made by Doctor Donne, and made to shew the world that hee could make soft and smooth Verses, when he thought them fit and worth his labour; and I love them the better, because they allude to Rivers, and fish, and fishing. They bee these:

_Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove, Of golden sands, and Christal brooks, With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the River wispering run, Warm'd by thy eyes more then the Sun; And there th'inamel'd fish wil stay, Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath, Each fish, which every channel hath Most amorously to thee will swim, Gladder to catch thee, then thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, beest loath By Sun or Moon, thou darknest both; And, if mine eyes have leave to see, I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with Angling Reeds, And cut their legs with shels & weeds, Or treacherously poor fish beset, With strangling snares, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest, The bedded fish in banks outwrest, Let curious Traitors sleave silk flies, To 'witch poor wandring fishes eyes.

For thee, thou needst no such deceit, For thou thy self art thine own bait; Tha fish that is not catch'd thereby, Is wiser far, alas, then I_.

Pisc. Well remembred, honest Scholer, I thank you for these choice Verses, which I have heard formerly, but had quite forgot, till they were recovered by your happie memorie. Well, being I have now rested my self a little, I will make you some requital, by telling you some observations of the Eele, for it rains still, and (as you say) our Angles are as money put to use, that thrive when we play.

CHAP. X.

It is agreed by most men, that the Eele is both a good and a most daintie fish; but most men differ about his breeding; some say, they breed by generation as other fish do; and others, that they breed (as some worms do) out of the putrifaction of the earth, and divers other waies; those that denie them to breed by generation, as other fish do, ask, if any man ever saw an Eel to have Spawn or Melt? And they are answered, That they may be as certain of their breeding, as if they had seen Spawn; for they say, that they are certain that Eeles have all parts fit for generation, like other fish, but so smal as not to be easily discerned, by reason of their fatness; but that discerned they may be; and that the Hee and the She Eele may be distinguished by their fins.

And others say, that Eeles growing old, breed other Eeles out of the corruption of their own age, which Sir Francis Bacon sayes, exceeds not ten years. And others say, that Eeles 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 dayes is by the Suns heat turned into Eeles. I have seen in the beginning of July, in a River not far from Canterbury, some parts of it covered over with young Eeles about the thickness of a straw; and these Eeles did lye on the top of that water, as thick as motes are said to be in the Sun; and I have heard the like of other Rivers, as namely, in Severn, and in a pond or Mere in Stafford-shire, where about a set time in Summer, such small Eeles abound so much, that many of the poorer sort of people, that inhabit near to it, take such Eeles out of this Mere, with sieves or sheets, and make a kind of Eele-cake of them, and eat it like as bread. And Gesner quotes venerable Bede to say, that in England there is an Iland called Ely, by reason of the innumerable number of Eeles that breed in it. But that Eeles 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 Suns heat and the rotten planks of an old Ship, and hatched of trees, both which are related for truths by Dubartas, and our learned Cambden, and laborious Gerrard in his Herball.

It is said by Randelitius, that those Eeles that are bred in Rivers, that relate to, or be neer to the Sea, never return to the fresh waters (as the Salmon does alwaies 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 Bief is a most excellent bait to catch an Eele: and S'r. Francis Bacon will allow the Eeles life to be but ten years; yet he in his History of Life and Death, mentions a Lamprey, belonging to the Roman Emperor, to be made tame, and so kept for almost three score yeers; and that such useful and pleasant observations were made of this Lamprey, that Crassus the Oratour (who kept her) lamented her death.

It is granted by all, or most men, that Eeles, for about six months (that is to say, the six cold months of the yeer) stir not up and down, neither in the Rivers nor the Pools in which they 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 six cold months); and this the Eele and Swallow do, as not being able to endure winter weather; for Gesner quotes Albertus to say, that in the yeer 1125 (that years winter being more cold then usual) Eeles did by natures instinct get out of the water into a stack of hay in a Meadow upon dry ground, and there bedded themselves, but yet at last died there. I shall say no more of the Eele, but that, as it is observed, he is impatient of cold, so it has been observed, that in warm weather an Eele has been known to live five 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 Eeles, as the Silver-Eele, and green or greenish Eel (with which the River of Thames abounds, and are called Gregs); and a blackish Eele, whose head is more flat and bigger then ordinary Eeles; and also an Eele whose fins are redish, and but seldome taken in this Nation (and yet taken sometimes): These several kinds of Eeles, are (say some) diversly bred; as namely, out of the corruption of the earth, and by dew, and other wayes (as I have said to you:) and yet it is affirmed by some, that for a certain, the Silver-Eele breeds by generation, but not by Spawning as other fish do, but that her Brood come alive from her no bigger nor longer then a pin, and I have had too many testimonies of this to doubt the truth of it.