And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your
ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell you, how
your hook thus baited must or may be used; and it is thus: having
fastened your hook to a line, which if it be not fourteen yards long
should not be less than twelve, you are to fasten that line to any bough
near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt;
and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except half
a yard of it or rather more; and split that forked stick, with such a
nick or notch at one end of it as may keep the line from any more of it
ravelling from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. And
choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or
frog from pulling the forked stick under the water till the Pike bites;
and then the Pike having pulled the line forth of the cleft or nick of
that stick in which it was gently fastened, he will have line enough to
go to his hold and pouch the bait. And if you would have this ledger-bait
to keep at a fixt place undisturbed by wind or other accidents which may
drive it to the shore-side, for you are to note, that it is likeliest to
catch a Pike in the midst of the water, then hang a small plummet of
lead, a stone, or piece of tile, or a turf, in a string, and cast it
into the water with the forked stick to hang upon the ground, to be a
kind of anchor to keep the forked stick from moving out of your intended
place till the Pike come: this I take to be a very good way to use so
many ledger-baits as you intend to make trial of.
Or if you bait your hooks thus with live fish or frogs, and in a windy
day, fasten them thus to a bough or bundle of straw, and by the help of
that wind can get them to move across a pond or mere, you are like to
stand still on the shore and see sport presently, if there be any store
of Pikes. Or these live baits may make sport, being tied about the body
or wings of a goose or duck, and she chased over a pond. And the like
may be done with turning three or four live baits, thus fastened to
bladders, or boughs, or bottles of hay or flags, to swim down a river,
whilst you walk quietly alone on the shore, and are still in expectaion
of sport. The rest must be taught you by practice; for time will not
allow me to say more of this kind of fishing with live baits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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