Nobbes, Robert

The Compleat Troller, or the Art of Trolling. London: Printed by Thomas James for Thomas Helder, 1682



8vo (5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in.; 140 x 83 mm). 2 woodcut illustrations of fish hooks; moderate text browning and foxing. Modern full calf, spine lettered gilt, gilt dentelles; bookplate on front pastedown roughly removed, evidence of another on front free endpaper.

Pforzheimer 2:771; Westwood & Satchell 156; Wing N-1193

First edition by the "father of trollers," first issue with the break in the lowest leg of the letter "E" in the fourth line of the title. While Venables, Walton, Barker, and Mascall had all touched on the subject, Nobbes was the first to treat the subject of trolling comprehensively. Nobbes wrote this work "not [for] any desire either of profit or credit," but because of his own passion for the sport and because of the lack of any substantial literature on the subject, criticizing Walton's Compleat Angler which "hints the most at it." Nobbes provides detailed instructions on the nature of the pike, the use of bait, the "Pouch hook," the trolling line and pole, how to properly bait, hook, and play the line. He concludes with a description of the best trolling rivers in England and Wales, and a short recipe for serving boiled pike in a claret sauce.

The author's only published work, it was reprinted several times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while a counterfeit issue printed in smaller and lighter type was published the same year as the original edition.