Now you are to take notice, that in
several countries, as in Germany, and in other parts, compared to ours,
fish do differ much in their bigness, and shape, and other ways; and so
do Trouts. It is well known that in the Lake Leman, the Lake of Geneva,
there are Trouts taken of three cubits long; as is affirmed by Gesner, a
writer of good credit: and Mercator says, the Trouts that are taken in the
Lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandize of that famous city.
And you are further to know, that there be certain waters that breed
Trouts remarkable, both for their number and smallness. I know a little
brook in Kent, that breeds them to a number incredible, and you may
take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater than about the
size of a Gudgeon. There are also, in divers rivers, especially that relate
to, or be near to the sea, as Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor, a
little Trout called a Samlet, or Skegger Trout, in both which places I
have caught twenty or forty at a standing, that will bite as fast and as
freely as Minnows: these be by some taken to be young Salmons; but in
those waters they never grow to be bigger than a Herring.
There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a Trout called there a
Fordidge Trout, a Trout that bears the name of the town where it is
usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish; many of them near
the bigness of a Salmon, but known by their different colour; and in
their best season they cut very white: and none of these have been
known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught
by Sir George Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God: and he
hath told me, he thought that Trout bit not for hunger but wantonness;
and it is the rather to be believed, because both he, then, and many
others before him, have been curious to search into their bellies, what
the food was by which they lived; and have found out nothing by which
they might satisfy their curiosity.
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