Next, let me tell you, you shall fish for this Roach in Winter, with
paste or gentles; in April, with worms or cadis; in the very hot months,
with little white snails; or with flies under water, for he seldom takes
them at the top, though the Dace will. In many of the hot months,
Roaches may also be caught thus: take a May-fly, or ant-fly, sink him
with a little lead to the bottom, near to the piles or posts of a
bridge, or near to any posts of a weir, I mean any deep place where
Roaches lie quietly, and then pull your fly up very leisurely, and
usually a Roach will follow your bait up to the very top of the water,
and gaze on it there, and run at it, and take it, lest the fly should
fly away from him.
I have seen this done at Windsor and Henley Bridge, and great store of
Roach taken; and sometimes, a Dace or Chub. And in August you may fish
for them with a paste made only of the crumbs of bread, which should be
of pure fine manchet; and that paste must be so tempered betwixt your
hands till it be both soft and tough too: a very little water, and time,
and labour, and clean hands, will make it a most excellent paste. But
when you fish with it, you must have a small hook, a quick eye, and a
nimble hand, or the bait is lost, and the fish too; if one may lose that
which he never had. With this paste you may, as I said, take both the
Roach and the Dace or Dare; for they be much of a kind, in manner of
feeding, cunning, goodness, and usually in size. And therefore take this
general direction, for some other baits which may concern you to take
notice of: they will bite almost at any fly, but especially at
ant-flies; concerning which take this direction, for it is very good.
Take the blackish ant-fly out of the mole-hill or ant-hill, in which
place you shall find them in the month of June; or if that be too early
in the year, then, doubtless, you may find them in July, August, and
most of September. Gather them alive, with both their wings: and then
put them into a glass that will hold a quart or a pottle; but first put
into the glass a handful, or more, of the moist earth out of which you
gather them, and as much of the roots of the grass of the said hillock;
and then put in the flies gently, that they lose not their wings: lay a
clod of earth over it; and then so many as are put into the glass,
without bruising, will live there a month or more, and be always in
readiness for you to fish with: but if you would have them keep longer,
then get any great earthen pot, or barrel of three or four gallons,
which is better, then wash your barrel with water and honey; and having
put into it a quantity of earth and grass roots, then put in your flies,
and cover it, and they will live a quarter of a year. These, in any
stream and clear water, are a deadly bait for Roach or Dace, or for a
Chub: and your rule is to fish not less than a handful from the bottom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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