powch the bait and if you would have this ledger bait to keep at a fixt place, undisturbed by wind or other accidents, which may drive it to the shoare 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 tyle, or a turfe in a string, and caste it into the water, with the forked stick to hang upon the ground, to be as an 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 tryal of.

Or if you bait your hooks thus, with live fish or frogs, and in a windy day fasten them thus to a bow or bundle of straw, and by the help of that wind can get them to move cross a pond or mere, you are like to stand still on the shoar and see sport, if there be any store of Pikes; or these live baits 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 with turning three or four live baits thus fastned to bladders, or boughs, or bottles of hay, or flags, to swim down a river, whilst you walk quietly on the shore along with them, and are still in expectation of sport. The rest must be taught you by practice, for time will not alow 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 dayes going a fishing with me or any other body that fishes for him, for the baiting your hook with a dead Gudgion or a Roch, and moving it up and down the water, is too easie 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 ivie in oyle of spike, and therewith annoint your dead bait for a Pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has layen 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 you with more than common eagerness.

This has not been tryed by me, but told me by a friend

of note, that pretended to do me a courtesie: but if this direction to catch a Pike thus do you no good, I am certaine this direction how to roste him when he is caught, is choicely good, for I have tryed it, and it is somewhat the better for not being common; but with my direction you must take this caution, that your Pike must not be a smal one.

First, open your Pike at the gills, and if need be, cut also a little slit towards his belly; out of these, take his guts, and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small with time, sweet margerom, and a little wintersavoury; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovis, both these last whole (for the anchovis 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 mixt, with a blade or two of mace, must be put into the Pikes belly, and then his belly sowed up; then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth out at his tail; and then with four, or five, or six split sticks or very thin laths, and a convenient quantitie of tape or filiting, these laths are to be tyed round the Pikes body, from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit; let him be roasted very leisurely, and often basted with claret wine, and anchovis, and butter mixt together, and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan: when you have rosted him sufficiently, you are to hold under him (when you unwind or cut the tape that ties him) such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of, and let him fall into it with the sawce that is rosted in his belly; and by this means the Pike will be kept unbroken and complete; then to the sawce, which was within him, and also 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 sawce a hogoe,

let the dish (into which you let the Pike fall) be rubed with it; the using or not using of this garlick is left to your discretion.

This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers or honest men; and, I trust, you wil prove both, therefore I have trusted you with this secret. And now I shall proceed to give you some observations concerning the Carp.

CHAP. VIII.

Pisc. THE Carp is a stately, a good, and a subtle fish, a fish that hath not (as it is said) been long in England, but said to be by one Mr. Mascall (a gentleman then living at Plumsted in Sussex) brought into this nation and for the better confirmation of this, you are to remember I told you that Gesner sayes, there is not a Pike in Spain, and that except the Eele, which lives longest out of the water, there is none that will endure more hardness, or live longer than a Carp will out of it, and so the report of his being brought out of a forrain nation into this, is the more probable.

Carps and Loches are observed to breed several months in one year, which most other fish do not, and it is the rather believed, because you shall scarce or never take a Male Carp without 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, 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, if there be no Pikes nor Pearch to devour their spawn, when it is cast upon grass, or flags, or weeds, where it lies ten or twelve dayes 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 above a yard long; though I never saw one above thirty three inches, which was a very great and goodly fish.

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 decayes also very mysterious; I have both read it, and been told by a gentleman of tryed honestie, that he has knowne sixtie or more large Carps put into several ponds neer to a house, where by reason of the stakes in the ponds, and the owners constant being neer to them, it was impossible they should be stole 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 has almost watched his 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 forborn longer to fish the said pond, but that he saw in a hot day in summer, a large Carp swim neer to the top of the water with a 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 would not bee got off without 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.

But I am faln 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 Sr. Francis Bacon (in his history of life and death) observed to be but ten years; yet others think they live longer: 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 sayes, Carps have no tongues like other fish, but a piece of flesh-like-fish in their mouth like to a tongue, and may be so called, 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 bee once stuck into his chaps.

I told you, that Sir Francis Bacon thinks that the Carp lives but ten years; but Janus Dubravius (a Germane as I think) has writ a book in Latine of fish and fish ponds, in which he sayes, that Carps begin to spawn at the age of three yeers, and continue to do so till thirty; he sayes 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 spawn, which sticks fast to the weeds, and then they let fall their melt upon it, and so it becomes in a short time to be a living fish; and, as I told you, it is thought the Carp does this several months in the yeer, and most believe that most she breed after this manner, except the Eele: and it is thought that all Carps are not bred by generation, but that some breed otherwayes, as some Pikes do.

Much more might be said out of him, and out of Aristotle, which Dubravius often quotes in his discourse, but it might rather perplex than satisfie you, and therefore I shall rather chuse to direct you how to catch, than spend more time in discoursing either of the nature or the breeding of this Carp, or of any more circumstances con