Now of these water-frogs, if you intend to fish with a frog for a Pike,
you are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for that the Pike ever
likes best. And thus use your frog, that he may continue long alive:
Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from the middle
of April till August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he
continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained,
none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how: I say, put your
hook, I mean the arming-wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills;
and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with
only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg,
above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and, in so doing, use him as
though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly,
that he may live the longer.
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.
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