If you want to be crafty in angling, you must first learn to make your tackle, that is, your rod, your lines of different colours. After that, you must know how you should angle, in what place of the water, how deep, and what time of day. For what manner of fish, in what weather; how many impediments there are in the fishing that is called angling. And especially with what baits for each different fish in each month of the year. How you shall make your baits breed. Where you will find the baits: and how you will keep them. And for the most crafty thing, how you are to make your hooks of steel and of iron. Some for the artificial fly: and some for the float and the ground-line, as you will hear afterward all these things talked about openly so that you may learn.

And how you should make your rod skilfully, here I shall teach you. You must cut, between Michaelmas and Candlemas, a fair staff of a fathom and a half long and as thick as your arm, of hazel, willow, or ash. And soak it in a hot oven, and set it straight. Then let it cool and dry for a month. Take them and tie it tight with a cockshoot cord, and bind it to a form or a perfectly square, large piece of timber. Then take a plumb wire that is smooth and straight and sharp at one end. And heat the sharp end in a charcoal fire till it is white-hot: and then burn the staff through with it: always straight in the pith at both ends, till they meet. And after that, burn it in the lower end with a spit for roasting birds, and with other spits, each bigger than the last, and always the largest last: so that you make your hole taper. Then let it lie still and cool for two days. Untie it then and let it dry in a house-roof in the smoke until it is thoroughly dry. In the same season, take a good rod of green hazel, and soak it even and straight and let it dry with the staff. And when they are dry, make the rod fit the hole in the staff, into half the length of the staff. And to make the other half of the top section, take a fair shoot of blackthorn, crabtree, medlar, or juniper, cut in the same season: and well soaked and straight. And bind them together neatly so that the top section may go exactly all the way into the said hole. Then shave your staff down and make it taper. Then bind the staff at both ends with long hoops of iron or fasten in the neatest manner, with a spike in the lower end fastened with a catch so that you can take your top section in and out. Then set your upper section a handbreadth inside the other end of your staff in such a way that the thickness of the sections matches. Bind your top section at the other end as far down as the joint with a cord of six hairs. Fix the cord and tie it firmly at the top, with a loop to fasten on your fishing line. And so you will make yourself a rod so secret that you can walk with it, and no one will know what you are doing. It will be light and well balanced to fish with as you wish. And for your greater convenience, here is a picture of it as an example:

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