which is better. then wash your barrel
with water and honey; and having put into it a quantity of earth and
grass roots, then put in your flies, and cover it, and they will live a
quarter of a year. These, in any stream and clear water, are a deadly bait
for Roach or Dace, or for a Chub: and your rule is to fish not less than a
handful from the bottom.
I shall next tell you a winter-bait for a Roach, a Dace, or Chub; and it is
choicely good. About All-hallantide, and so till frost comes, when you
see men ploughing up heath ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards,
then follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm, as big as two
maggots, and it hath a red head: you may observe in what ground most
are, for there the crows will be very watchful and follow the plough
very close: it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is, in
Norfolk and some other counties, called a grub; and is bred of the
spawn or eggs of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the
ground under cow or horse dung, and there rests all winter, and in
March or April comes to be first a red and then a black beetle. Gather a
thousand or two of these, and put them, with a peck or two of their own
earth, into some tub or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm that
the frost or cold air, or winds, kill them not: these you may keep all
winter, and kill fish with them at any time; and if you put some of them
into a little earth and honey, a day before you use them, you will find
them an excellent bait for Bream, Carp, or indeed for almost any fish.
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