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Juliana Berners
Being a facsimile reproduction of the first book on the subject of fishing printed in England by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1496
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Then follow directions how to dye and make lines and hooks. There were evidently no manufacturers of hooks in the fifteenth century: each angler made his own. The casting of plummets and forming of floats succeed. The six methods of angling and the mode of playing a fish are next treated, and the latter alone shows that Dame Juliana must herself have been a proficient in the craft. No one but a thoroughly good fisher could have summed up the art of playing a fish in the words—“kepe hym euer vnder the rodde, and euermore holde hym streyghte : soo that your lyne may susteyne and beere his lepys and his plungys wyth the helpe of your croppe & of your honde.” The place, the time of day, and the weather in which to fish, are next particularly described after the exactitude peculiar to fishing manuals of the olden time. These paragraphs are well worth the consideration of a modern angler, especially the charge, “yf the wynde be in the Eest, that is worste For comynly neyther wynter nor somer ye fysshe woll not byte thenne.”
The following part of the treatise, with what baits and how to angle for each kind of fish, together with a brief description of each, certainly furnished Walton with a model for some of his chapters. This portion of her book is regarded by the authoress as most necessary to be known and proficiency in carrying out her rules “is all the effecte of the crafte.” She adds amusingly, “for ye can not brynge an hoke in to a fyssh mouth wythout a bayte.” A few of the quaint receipts of her age succeed; how to keep live baits, to make pastes and the like, ending with a rule which is often given to flyfishers for trout at the present day: “Whan ye haue take a grete fysshe : vndo the mawe, & what ye fynde therin make that your bayte : for it is beste.”
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