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
fastned your hook to a line, which if it be not fourteen yards long,
should not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow
neer to a hole where a _Pike_ is, or is likely to lye, or to have a
haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line,
except a half 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, then so much of it as
you intended; and chuse 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 clift or nick in which it was gently fastened, will have line
enough to go to his hold and powch 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 shoare 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 tyle, or a turfe in
a string, and cast it into the water, with the forked stick to hang
upon the ground, to be as an 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
tryal of.
Or if you bait your hooks thus, with live fish or Frogs, and in a windy
day fasten them thus to a bow or bundle of straw, and by the help of
that wind can get them to move cross a _Pond_ or _Mere_, you are like
to stand still on the shoar and see sport, 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 on the shore along with them, and are still in
expectation of sport. The rest must be taught you by practice, for time
will not alow me to say more of this kind of fishing with live baits.
And for your dead bait for a _Pike_, for that you may be taught by one
dayes going a fishing with me or any other body that fishes for him,
for the baiting your hook with a dead _Gudgion_ or a _Roch_, and moving
it up and down the water, is too easie a thing to take up any time to
direct you to do it; and yet, because I cut you short in that, I will
commute for it, by telling you that that was told me for a secret: it
is this:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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