Piscator. Give me your hand; from this time forward I will be your Master, and teach you as much of this art as I am able; and will, as you desire me, tell you somewhat of the nature of most of the fish that we are to angle for, and I am sure I both can and will tell you more than any common angler yet knows. The third day-continued How to fish for, and to dress, the Chavender of Chub Chapter III Piscator and Venator Piscator. The Chub, though he eat well, thus dressed, yet as he is usually dressed, he does not. He is objected against, not only for being full of small forked bones, dispersed through all his body, but that he eats waterish, and that the flesh of him is not firm, but short and tasteless. The French esteem him so mean, as to call him Un Villain; nevertheless he may be so dressed as to make him very good meat; as, namely, if he be a large Chub, then dress him thus: First, scale him, and then wash him clean, and then take out his guts; and to that end make the hole as little, and near to his gills, as you may conveniently, and especially make clean his throat from the grass and weeds that are usually in it; for if that be not very clean, it will make him to taste very sour. Having so done, put some sweet herbs into his belly; and then tie him with two or three splinters to a spit, and roast him, basted often with vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, with good store of salt mixed with it. Being thus dressed, you will find him a much better dish of meat than you, or most folk, even than anglers themselves, do imagine: for this dries up the fluid watery humour with which all Chubs do abound. But take this rule with you, That a Chub newly taken and newly dressed, is so much better than a Chub of a day's keeping after he is dead, that I can compare him to nothing so fitly as to cherries newly gathered from a tree, and others that have been bruised and lain a day or two in water. But the Chub being thus used, and dressed presently; and not washed after he is gutted, for note, that lying long in water, and washing the blood out of any fish after they be gutted, abates much of their sweetness; you will find the Chub, being dressed in the blood, and quickly, to be such meat as will recompense your labour, and disabuse your opinion. Or you may dress the Chavender or Chub thus: