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 hurting 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.

Ven. But, good master, did you not say even now, that some frogs were venomous; and is it not dangerous to touch them?

Pisc. Yes, but I will 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 brown: the green frog, which is a small one, is, by Topsel, taken to be venomous; and so is the paddock, or frog-paddock, which usually keeps or breeds on the land, and is very large and boney, 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* Cardanus' undertakes to give a reason for

In his 19th Book
De Subtil, ex,

(1) Hieronymus Cardanus, an Italian physician, naturalist, and astrologer, well known by the many works he has published: he died at Rome, 1576. It is said that he had foretold the day of his death; and that, when it approached, he suffered himself to die of hunger, to preserve his reputation. He had been in England, and wrote a character of our Edward VI,

the raining of frogs: 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 that the Pike ever likes best.

use your frog, that he may continue long alive:

And thus

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 sow 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 possibly, 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 line, 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,

(1) There are many well-attested accounts of the raining of frogs: but Mr. Ray rejects them as utterly false and ridiculous; and demonstrates the impossibility of their production in any such manner. Wisdom of God in the Creation, 310. See also Derham's Phys. Theol. 244. and Pennant's Zoology, 4to. Lond. 1776. vol. iv. p 10.

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 split 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 fixt 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 it 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 windy day, fasten them thus to a bough 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 shore and see sport presently, 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 chaced over a pond.' And the like may be done

(1) A rod twelve feet long, and a ring of wire,
A winder and barrel, will help thy desire

In killing a Pike: but the forked 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 luck :

with turning three or four live baits thus fastened to bladders, or boughs, or bottles of hay or flags, to swim 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 will 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 therewith anoint your dead bait for a Pike; and then cast it into 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 an hern is a great temptation to any fish.

These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of note, that pretended to do me a courtesy.' But

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."
Barker's Art of Angling.

(1) 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 sometimes shoot out into the clear 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.

if this direction to catch a Pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain this direction how to roast him when he

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 off below the fins; a small jack; a lob-worm; and in winter, the fat of bacon. And notwithstanding what Walton and others say against baiting with a pearch, it is confidently asserted, that Pikes have been taken with a small pearch, 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 take with you in a tin-kettle, chauging the water 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 suffered to pouch or swallow the 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 trolling-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 commou 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 the right line, but incline so much inwards as that they with a 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 eighth 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.

This latter kind of hook is to be thus ordered, viz. put the lead into the mouth of the bait-fish, and sew it up; the fish 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 troll with a dead-bait, as some do, for a reason which the angler will be glad to know, viz. 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: