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Side 65 av 113
And now I shall tell you that which may be called a secret. I have been
a-fishing with old Oliver Henly, now with God, a noted fisher both for
Trout and Salmon; and have observed, that he would usually take three
or four worms out of his bag, and put them into a little box in his
pocket, where he would usually let them continue half an hour or more.
before he would bait his hook with them. I have asked him his reason,
and he has replied, " He did but pick the best out to be in readiness
against he baited his hook the next time ": but he has been observed,
both by others and myself, to catch more fish than I, or any other body
that has ever gone a-fishing with him, could do, and especially
Salmons. And I have been told lately, by one of his most intimate and
secret friends, that the box in which he put those worms was anointed
with a drop, or two or three, of the oil of ivy-berries, made by
expression or infusion; and told, that by the worms remaining in that
box an hour, or a like time, they had incorporated a kind of smell that
was irresistibly attractive, enough to force any fish within the smell of
them to bite. This I heard not long since from a friend, but have not
tried it; yet I grant it probable, and refer my reader to Sir Francis
Bacon's Natural history, where he proves fishes may hear, and,
doubtless, can more probably smell: and I am certain Gesner says, the
Otter can smell in the water; and I know not but that fish may do so too.
'Tis left for a lover of angling, or any that desires to improve that art, to
try this conclusion.
I shall also impart two other experiments, but not tried by myself,
which I will deliver in the same words that they were given me by an
excellent angler and a very friend, in writing: he told me the latter was
too good to be told, but in a learned language, lest it should be made
common.
"Take the stinking oil drawn out of polypody of the oak by a retort,
mixed with turpentine and hive-honey, and anoint your bait therewith,
and it will doubtless draw the fish to it." The other is this: " Vulnera
hederae grandissimae inflicta sudant balsamum oleo gelato,
albicantique persimile, odoris vero longe suavissimi". "'Tis supremely
sweet to any fish, and yet assa foetida may do the like."
But in these I have no great faith; yet grant it probable; and have had
from some chymical men, namely, from Sir George Hastings and
others, an affirmation of them to be very advantageous. But no more of
these; especially not in this place.
I might here, before I take my leave of the Salmon, tell you, that there is
more than one sort of them, as namely, a Tecon, and another called in
some places a Samlet, or by some a Skegger; but these, and others
which I forbear to name, may be fish of another kind, and differ as we
know a Herring and a Pilchard do, which, I think, are as different as the
rivers in which they breed, and must, by me, be left to the disquisitions
of men of more leisure, and of greater abilities than I profess myself to
have.
And lastly, I am to borrow so much of your promised patience, as to tell
you, that the trout, or Salmon, being in season, have, at their first taking
out of the water, which continues during life, their bodies adorned, the
one with such red spots, and the other with such black or blackish
spots, as give them such an addition of natural beauty as, I think, was
never given to any woman by the artificial paint or patches in which
they so much pride themselves in this age. And so I shall leave them
both; and proceed to some observations of the Pike.
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