And, to this, add a
little thyme cut exceedingly small, or bruised into the butter. The
Cheven thus dressed hath the watery taste taken away, for which so
many except against him. Thus was the Cheven dressed that you now
liked so well, and commended so much But note again, that if this
Chub that you eat of had been kept till to-morrow, he had not been
worth a rush. And remember, that his throat be washed very clean, I say
very clean, and his body not washed after he is gutted, as indeed no fish
should be.
Well, scholar, you see what pains I have taken to recover the lost credit
of the poor despised Chub. And now I will give you some rules how to
catch him: and I am glad to enter you into the art of fishing by catching
a Chub, for there is no fish better to enter a young Angler, he is so
easily caught, but then it must be this particular way:
Go to the same hole in which I caught my Chub, where, in most hot
days, you will find a dozen or twenty Chevens floating near the top of
the water. Get two or three grasshoppers, as you go over the meadow:
and get secretly behind the tree, and stand as free from motion as is
possible. Then put a grasshopper on your hook, and let your hook hang
a quarter of a yard short of the water, to which end you must rest your
rod on some bough of the tree. But it is likely the Chubs will sink down
towards the bottom of the water, at the first shadow of your rod (for
Chub is the fearfullest of fishes), and will do so if but a bird flies over
him and makes the least shadow on the water; but they will presently
rise up to the top again, and there lie soaring till some shadow affrights
them again.
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