Piscator Well, scholar, and I shall be then right glad to hear them. And
I will, as we walk, tell you whatsoever comes in my mind, that I think
may be worth your hearing. You may make another choice bait thus: take a
handful or two of the best and biggest wheat you can get; boil it in a
little milk, like as frumity is boiled; boil it so till it be soft; and
then fry it, very leisurely, with honey, and a little beaten saffron
dissolved in milk; and you will find this a choice bait, and good, I
think, for any fish, especially for Roach, Dace, Chub, or Grayling: I
know not but that it may be as good for a river Carp, and especially if
the ground be a little baited with it.
And you may also note, that the SPAWN of most fish is a very tempting
bait, being a little hardened on a warm tile and cut into fit pieces.
Nay, mulberries, and those black-berries which grow upon briars, be good
baits for Chubs or Carps: with these many have been taken in ponds, and
in some rivers where such trees have grown near the water, and the fruit
customarily drops into it. And there be a hundred other baits, more than
can be well named, which, by constant baiting the water, will become a
tempting bait for any fish in it.
You are also to know, that there be divers kinds of CADIS, or
Case-worms, that are to be found in this nation, in several distinct
counties, in several little brooks that relate to bigger rivers; as
namely, one cadis called a piper, whose husk, or case, is a piece of
reed about an inch long, or longer, and as big about as the compass of a
two-pence. These worms being kept three or four days in a woollen bag,
with sand at the bottom of it, and the bag wet once a day, will in three
or four days turn to be yellow; and these be a choice bait for the Chub
or Chavender, or indeed for any great fish, for it is a large bait.
There is also a lesser cadis-worm, called a Cockspur, being in fashion
like the spur of a cock, sharp at one end: and the case, or house, in
which this dwells, is made of small husks, and gravel, and slime, most
curiously made of these, even so as to be wondered at, but not to be
made by man, no more than a king-fisher's nest can, which is made of
little fishes' bones, and have such a geometrical interweaving and
connection as the like is not to be done by the art of man. This kind of
cadis is a choice bait for any float-fish; it is much less than the
piper-cadis, and to be so ordered: and these may be so preserved, ten,
fifteen, or twenty days, or it may be longer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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