But if you be nice to foul your fingers, which good anglers seldom are,
then take this bait: get a handful of well-made malt, and put it into a
dish of water; and then wash and rub it betwixt your hands till you
make it clean, and as free from husks as you can; then put that water
from it, and put a small quantity of fresh water to it, and set it in
something that is fit for that purpose, over the fire, where it is not
to boil apace, but leisurely and very softly, until it become somewhat
soft, which you may try by feeling it betwixt your finger and thumb; and
when it is soft, then put your water from it: and then take a sharp
knife, and turning the sprout end of the corn upward with the point of
your knife, take the back part of the husk off from it, and yet leaving
a kind of inward husk on the corn, or else it is marr'd and then cut off
that sprouted end, I mean a little of it, that the white may appear; and
so pull off the husk on the cloven side, as I directed you; and then
cutting off a very little of the other end, that so your hook may enter;
and if your hook be small and good, you will find this to be a very
choice bait, either for winter or summer, you sometimes casting a little
of it into the place where your float swims.
And to take the Roach and Dace, a good bait is the young brood of wasps
or bees, if you dip their heads in blood; especially good for Bream, if
they be baked, or hardened in their husks in an oven, after the bread is
taken out of it; or hardened on a fire-shovel: and so also is the thick
blood of sheep, being half dried on a trencher, that so you may cut into
such pieces as may best fit the size of your hook; and a little salt
keeps it from growing black, and makes it not the worse, but better:
this is taken to be a choice bait, if rightly ordered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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