And in August you may
fish for them with a paste made only of the crumbs of bread, which
should be of pure fine manchet; and that paste must be so tempered
betwixt your hands till it be both soft and tough too: a very little water,
and time, and labour, and clean hands, will make it a most excellent
paste. But when you fish with it, you must have a small hook, a quick
eye, and a nimble hand, or the bait is lost, and the fish too; if one may
lose that which he never had. With this paste you may, as I said, take
both the Roach and the Dace or Dare; for they be much of a kind, in
manner of feeding, cunning, goodness, and usually in size. And
therefore take this general direction, for some other baits which may
concern you to take notice of: they will bite almost at any fly, but
especially at ant-flies; concerning which take this direction, for it is
very good.
Take the blackish ant-fly out of the mole-hill or ant-hill, in which place
you shall find them in the month of June; or if that be too early in the
year, then, doubtless, you may find them in July, August, and most of
September. Gather them alive, with both their wings: and then put them
into a glass that will hold a quart or a pottle; but first put into the glass a
handful, or more, of the moist earth out of which you gather them, and
as much of the roots of the grass of the said hillock; and then put in the
flies gently, that they lose not their wings: lay a clod of earth over it;
and then so many as are put into the glass, without bruising, will live
there a month or more, and be always in readiness for you to fish with:
but if you would have them keep longer, then get any great earthen pot,
or barrel of three or four gallons.
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