And now Scholer, lets go to my Rod. Look you Scholer, I have a fish too, but it proves a logger-headed Chub; and this is not much a miss, for this wil 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 wil ev'n retire to the Sycamore tree, and there I wil give you more directions concerning fishing; for I would fain make you an Artist.
Viat. Yes, good Master, I pray let it be so.
CHAP. V.
Pisc. Wel, Scholer, now we are sate downe and are at ease, I shall tel 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 then the best are out of their holds; and the manner of taking them is on the top of the water with a great Lob or Garden worm, or rather two; which you are to fish for in a place where the water runs somewhat quietly (for in a stream it wil not be so well discerned.) I say, in a quiet or dead place neer to some swift, there draw your bait over the top of the water to and fro, and if there be a good Trout in the hole, he wil take it, especially if the night be dark; for then he lies boldly neer the top of the water, watching the motion of any Frog or Water-mouse, or Rat betwixt him and the skie, which he hunts for if he sees the water but wrinkle or move in one of these dead holes, where the great Trouts usually lye neer to their hold.
And you must fish for him with 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; nay he will sometimes rise at a dead Mouse or a piece of cloth, or any thing that seemes to swim cross 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 dayes as these that we now injoy, afford an Angler.
And you are to know, that in Hamp-shire, (which I think exceeds all England for pleasant Brooks, and store of Trouts) they use 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; this kind of way they catch many, but I would not believe it till I was an eye-witness of it, nor like it now I have seen it.
Viat. But Master, do not Trouts see us in the night?
Pisc. Yes, and hear, and smel too, both then and in the day time, for Gesner observes, the Otter smels a fish forty furlong off him in the water; and that it may be true, is 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 two stones together very deep under the water, those that stand on a bank neer to that place may hear the noise without any diminution of it by the water. He also offers the like experiment 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 wel observed and demonstrated, as it is by that learned man, has made me to believe that Eeles unbed themselves, and stir at the noise of the Thunder, and not only as some think, by the motion or the stirring of the earth, which is occasioned by that Thunder.