Second paragraph of third chapter of The Compleat Angler (on how to cook the chub):

First scale him, and then wash him clean, and then take out his guts; and to that end make the hole as little and near to his gills as you may conveniently, and especially make clean his throat from the grass and weeds that are usually in it (for if that be not very clean, it will make him to taste very sour); having so done, put some sweet herbs into his belly, and then tye him with two or three splinters to a spit, and rost him, basted often with vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, with good store of salt mixt with it.

I am not an angler myself, though one of my uncles made a living out of it for many years and has published a book on the subject of trout flies. So I had no particular expectations of the well-known seventeenth-century guide to the craft. As I expected, it is detailed and full of loving advice on how to catch (and cook) many of the fish species that live in England, told through dialogue between three travellers, one of whom knows what he is talking about.

It’s also firmly rooted in the geography of the Lea Valley between Tottenham and Ware in Hertfordshire, though Walton himself grew up in Stafford and there are references also to the River Dove in the Peak District. The other bit of context lurking between the lines is that the book was published in 1653, under Puritan rule, and Walton had been a Royalist in the recently concluded Civil War. Fishing is explicitly a means of escape into nature from the turmoil of the human world.

You can get The Compleat Angler here, including a final chapter by Charles Cotton which is much more technical (and probably of more practical use, if you want to treat the book as a manual).

I also got hold of a lovely graphic novel adaptation by Gareth Brookes. The first two frames of its third chapter (also about catching the chub) are:

For the casual reader, this is much more digestible than the original text – Brookes admits that he has abridged and rearranged the text ruthlessly, but the result is a stunning homage to Walton’s original work, done through linocuts on bamboo paper and bringing the seventeenth century prose alive. It’s a thing of beauty. You can get The Compleat Angler: A Graphic Adaptation here.

The Compleat Angler was my top unread non-fiction book. Next on that pile is Raising Hare, by Chloe Dalton.