, that he may continue long alive:

Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from about the
middle of _April_ till _August_, and then the _Frogs_ mouth grows up
and he continues so for at least six months without eating, but is
sustained, none, but he whose name is Wonderful, knows how. I say, put
your hook, I mean the arming wire, through his mouth and out at his
gills, and then with a fine needle and Silk sow the upper part of his
leg with only one stitch to the armed wire of your hook, or tie the
_frogs_ leg above the upper joint to the armed wire, and in so doing
use him as though you loved him, that is, harme him as little as you
may possibly, that he may live the longer.

And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your ledger
hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell you, how
your hook thus baited must or may be used; and it is thus: Having
fastned your hook to a line, which if it be not fourteen yards long,
should not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow
neer to a hole where a _Pike_ is, or is likely to lye, or to have a
haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line,
except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick
with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from
any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as
you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may
keep the _fish_ or _frog_ from pulling the forked stick under the water
till the _Pike_ bites, and then the _Pike_ having pulled the line forth
of the clift or nick in which it was gently fastened, will have line
enough to go to his hold and powch the bait: and if you would have this
ledger bait to keep at a fixt place, undisturbed by wind or other
accidents which may drive it to the shoare side (for you are to note
that it is likeliest to catch a _Pike_ in the midst of the water) then
hang a small Plummet of lead, a stone, or piece of tyle, or a turfe in
a string, and cast it into the water, with the forked stick to hang
upon the ground, to be as an Anchor to keep the forked stick from
moving out of your intended place till the _Pike_ come. This I take to
be a very good way, to use so many ledger baits as you intend to make
tryal of.

Or if you bait your hooks thus, with live fish or Frogs, and in a windy
day fasten them thus to a bow or bundle of straw, and by the help of
that wind can get