The other way is called bobbing for Eels, which is thus: take the largest garden worms, scour them well, and with a needle run a very strong thread or silk through them from end to end; take so many as that at last you may wrap them about a board, for your hand will be too narrow, a dozen times at least, then tie them fast with the other two ends of the thread or silk, that they may hang in so many long bouts or hanks; then fasten all to a strong cord, and something more than a handful above the worms, fasten a plumb of lead, of about three quarters of a pound, making your cord sure to a long and strong pole; with these worms thus ordered, you must fish in a muddy water, and you will feel the Eels tug strongly at them; when you think they have swallowed them as far as they can, gently draw up your worms and Eels, and when you have them near the top of the water, hoist them amain to land; and thus you may take three or four at once, and good ones, if there be store.
1. When you angle at ground, keep your line as straight as possible, suffering none of it to lie in the water, because it hinders the nimble jerk of the rod; but if, as sometimes it will happen, that you cannot avoid but some little will lie in the water, yet keep it in the stream above your float, by no means below it.
2. When you angle at ground for small fish, put two hooks to your line, fastened together thus: lay the two hooks together, then draw the one shorter than the other by nine inches, this will cause the other end to over-reach as much, as the other is shorter at the hooks, then turn that end back, and with a water-knot, in which you must make both the links to fasten, tie them so as both links may hang close together, and not come out at both ends of the knot. Then upon that link which hangeth longest, fasten your lead near a foot above the hook; put upon your hooks two different baits, and so you may try, with more ease and less time, what bait the fish love best; and also very often, as I have done, take two fish at once with one rod. You have also, by this experience, one bait for such as feed close upon the ground, as Gudgeon, Flounder, &c. and another for such as feed a little higher, as Roach, Dace, &c.
3. Some use to lead their lines heavily, and to set their float about a foot or more from the end of the rod, with a little lead to buoy it up, and thus in violent swift streams, they avoid the offence of a float, and yet perfectly discern the biting of the fish, and so order themselves accordingly; but this has its inconvenience, viz. the lying of the line in the water.
4. Give all fish time to gorge the bait, and be not over hasty, except you angle with such tender baits as will not endure nibbling at, but must upon every touch be struck at, as sheep’s blood and flies, which are taken away at the first pull of the fish, and therefore enforce you, at the first touch, to try your fortune.
Now we are to speak next of baits, more particularly proper for every fish, wherein I shall observe this method, first to name the fish, then the baits, according as my experience hath proved them grateful to the fish; and to place them as near as I can in such order as they come in season, though many of them are in season at one instant of time, and equally good. I would not be understood, as if when a new bait comes in, the old one were antiquated and useless; for I know the worm lasts all the year, flies all the Summer, one sort of bob-worm all the Winter, the other under cow-dung, in June and July; but I intimate that some are found when others are not in rerum natura.
CHAP. V.
OF ALL SORTS OF BAITS FOR EACH KIND OF FISH, AND HOW TO FIND AND KEEP THEM.
