And your paste must be thus made: take the flesh of a rabbit, or cat,
cut small; and bean-flour; and if that may not be easily got, get other
flour; and then, mix these together, and put to them either sugar, or
honey, which I think better: and then beat these together in a mortar,
or sometimes work them in your hands, your hands being very clean; and
then make it into a ball, or two, or three, as you like best, for your
use: but you must work or pound it so long in the mortar, as to make it
so tough as to hang upon your hook without washing from it, yet not too
hard: or, that you may the better keep it on your hook, you may knead
with your paste a little, and not too much, white or yellowish wool.
And if you would have this paste keep all the year, for any other fish,
then mix with it virgin-wax and clarified honey, and work them together
with your hands, before the fire; then make these into balls, and they
will keep all the year.
And if you fish for a Carp with gentles, then put upon your hook a small
piece of scarlet about this bigness, it being soaked in or anointed with
oil of petre, called by some, oil of the rock: and if your gentles be
put, two or three days before, into a box or horn anointed with honey,
and so put upon your hook as to preserve them to be living, you are as
like to kill this crafty fish this way as any other: but still, as you
are fishing, chew a little white or brown bread in your mouth, and cast
it into the pond about the place where your float swims. Other baits
there be; but these, with diligence and patient watchfulness, will do
better than any that I have ever practiced or heard of. And yet I shall
tell you, that the crumbs of white bread and honey made into a paste is
a good bait for a Carp; and you know, it is more easily made. And having
said thus much of the Carp, my next discourse shall be of the Bream,
which shall not prove so tedious; and therefore I desire the continuance
of your attention.
But, first, I will tell you how to make this Carp, that is so curious to
be caught, so curious a dish of meat as shall make him worth all your
labour and patience. And though it is not without some trouble and
charges, yet it will recompense both.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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