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 THE PIKE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ESOX LUCIUS: 
 PICKEREL JACK GEDD LUCE. 
 
 " The pike, or lucit, is a mercenary ; 
 Or anglers seem among themselves to vary ; 
 He loves no streams, but hugs the silent deeps, 
 And eats all hours, and yet no house he keeps." 
 
 THEOPHILUS FRANCK, A.D. 1658. 
 
 THE Pike, or Jack, is a species of the 
 Teleostean fishes classed as Malacopterygii 
 abdominales, from the ventral fins being abdo- 
 minal in position. Only one species of pike 
 Esox lucius is found in the waters of Great 
 Britain, or known in Europe, it being the typical 
 representative of the Esocida family, in which 
 the dorsal fin is set far back in the body and 
 nearly opposite or perpendicular to the anal fin. 
 Its other characteristics are : an elongated body 
 nearly uniform in depth from head to commence- 
 ment of back-fin, rounded back, sides compressed 
 and covered with small scales ; length of head as 
 one to four when compared with the extreme 
 
 B 
 
 1076133
 
 2 THE PIKE. 
 
 length of fish from nose to tail ; head flattened but 
 long, the lower jaw longest, with extensive gape, 
 with numerous small teeth round the front, and five 
 or six large and very sharp teeth on each side ; 
 upper jaw blunt and rather duck-billed in shape ; 
 the vomer and palatine bones furnished with teeth of 
 various sizes, a veritable phalanx of bristling 
 " pikes " pointing inwards and downwards towards 
 the throat ; these terrible weapons have hinged 
 and movable bases of attachment, and are so 
 arranged that while they favour the entry of the 
 pike's prey, any attempt at escape is impossible, for 
 they then fly up like so many harpoon blades, and 
 hold it the firmer ; but no teeth are on the 
 maxillary bones. The eyes are placed high and 
 nearly on the top of the head, so that pike may 
 be better able to see the prey swimming over 
 them. 
 
 The tail is large and rather forked ; the pectoral 
 and ventral fins are small ; there are mucous 
 orifices in pairs on the head ; also some in single 
 rows in the lower jaw-bones ; the cheeks and 
 upper parts of gill-covers have scales on them. 
 Pike are silvery white on the belly, but their other 
 colourings vary according to location and season of 
 the year. In spring and summer, while aquatic 
 vegetation is green, they are mottled with white, 
 yellow, and green ; in autumn and winter, olive 
 brown mottled with green, thus assimilating to the 
 surrounding conditions of decaying weeds and 
 sedges the head and back are dark olive brown ; 
 tail, dorsal, and anal fin dark brown, mixed with 
 red and dark green on the fin-rays ; the pectoral 
 and ventral fins are pale brown, and the gills a 
 vivid red.
 
 AMERICAN SPECIES. 3 
 
 There are known to be several species of pike 
 in America, including the mascalonge (Esox estor} 
 and the northern pickerel (Esox lucioides] both 
 found in the great lakes ; the common pickerel 
 {Esox reticulatus] of the ponds and streams ; the 
 Long Island pickerel (Esox fasciatus\ also the 
 white and the black pickerel of the western waters ; 
 in a work recently published at New York, 1 Mr. 
 A. N. Cheney gives a coloured plate of each, 
 showing different marking and colouring; but he 
 admits that colouring and marking are no sure 
 guides in identification. 
 
 I confess that I have always held the belief 
 that pickerel, pike, and mascalonge were simply 
 small, large and larger specimens of one and the 
 same kind of fish ; but the following authoritative 
 explanation, communicated by Mr. Cheney to the 
 Fishing Gazette (July 3, 1897), proves that I was 
 mistaken, and that, while in Europe we have but 
 one species of pike, in America there are no less 
 than five. 
 
 " The common names of our five members of the pike 
 family are in order, beginning with the fish of largest growth: 
 mascalonge, pike, pickerel, little pickerel, and banded 
 pickerel, the two last named growing to about 12 in. in 
 length. Following Dr. Jordan's description, I will give the 
 common and specific names, fin formulae, scales, comparative 
 measurements, &c., from his recent work, Fishes of North 
 and Middle America (Jordan and Evermann). That all 
 your readers may understand the signs used, I will explain 
 that B. means branchiostegals ; D., dorsal fin ; A., anal fin. 
 ' Head 4 ' or ' depth 4 ' mean that the length of the head 
 in the one case, or the greatest depth of the body in the 
 other, is contained four times in the length of the fish, 
 
 1 First Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, 
 Game, and Forests, of the State of New York. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE PIKE. 
 
 measured from the tip of the snout to end of the last caudal 
 vertebra, the caudal fin not being included. So in Eye 5 it 
 means that the horizontal diameter of the eye is one-fifth of 
 the length of the head. In Dr. Jordan's latest classification, 
 the pikes constitute the family Luciidce. Your pike is Esor 
 lucius, while ours, although the same fish, is by this classifi- 
 cation Lucius lucius. 
 
 " MASCALONGE {Lucius masquinongy). Head, 3? ; depth, 
 6 ; eye, 4 to 6 in snout ; B., 17 to 19 ; D., 17 ; A, 15 ; scales, 
 1 50. These fish are hatched artificially by the State of New 
 York, and this year a 60 Ibs. fish was taken in the nets at 
 Chantanque Lake, where the hatchery is situated. They 
 reach a weight of 100 Ibs. 
 
 " PIKE (Lucius lucius). Head, 3^ ; depth, 5 ; eye, 6J in 
 head, 3^ in snout ; B., 14 to 16 ; D., 16 or 17 ; A., 13 or 14 ; 
 scales, 123. They grow to a weight of 50 Ibs. 
 
 " PICKEREL (Lucius reticulatus). Head, 3^ ; depth, 6 ; 
 eye, 3^ in snout, 8 in head ; B., 14 to 16; D., 14; A., 13 ; 
 scales, 125. This fish is marked with numerous dark lines 
 and streaks, which are constant, giving it a reticulated 
 appearance; hence the name. It never has the bean-shaped 
 lemon-coloured spots of the pike, and its maximum length is 
 74 in., and weight about 5 Ibs. The average weight is from 
 \\ Ibs. to 2 Ibs. 
 
 "LITTLE PICKEREL (Lucius vermiculatus}. Head, 3^; 
 depth, 5 to 6 ; eye, "2.\ in snout, 6 in head ; B., 12 ; D., n to 
 12 ; A., ii ; scales, 105. This fish has a dark bar from the 
 eye downwards, and vermiculations on the sides. Grows to 
 12 in. in length. 
 
 " BANDED PICKEREL (Lucius americanus}. Head, 3f ; 
 depth, 5^; eye, 5 ; B., 12 or 13; D., II or 12 ; A., u or 12 ; 
 scales 105. The sides of this fish are marked with about 
 twenty distinct blackish curved bars, and has a black bar 
 below the eye. I have omitted much of the colour descrip- 
 tion for the reason that it is not a sure guide to the identi- 
 fication of species, except in connection with the structural 
 formation of the fish. I do not refer to the scale formulas 
 on cheeks and gill-cover, as I have already written about 
 that, and given illustrations in the Fisheries Commission 
 Report. The scale formulas on cheeks and gill-covers, are 
 constant, however, and will alone identify the mascalonge, 
 pike, and pickerel, Reticulatus^ when the little pickerel and
 
 AMERICAN SPECIES. 5 
 
 banded pickerel are absent ; but, as the two last named 
 have the same scales as the Reticulatus, other means of 
 identification must be employed ; but they are of such small 
 size that they are not much regarded by anglers. The 
 colouring of the pike is very constant ; but the mascalonge 
 is variable, being spotted dark spots on light ground in 
 the St. Lawrence River basin, and unspotted in other 
 waters." 
 
 The marking and colouring of British pike differ 
 somewhat according to season and the water they 
 were captured in. The dorsal, caudal, and ventral 
 fins vary, some being uniform in colour, while those 
 
 HEAD OF THIRTY-SIX POUND PIKE. 
 
 fins in other pike are marked with blotches of dark 
 and light browns like tortoiseshell, the fin-rays 
 being streaked with a dark shade of crimson. Mr. 
 Cheney mentions the interesting fact that he hatches 
 upwards of three million mascalonge annually. 
 They are " hatched in boxes sunk in a lake, and 
 provided with double bottoms and tops, so that the 
 eggs are not eaten by other fish through the wire 
 meshes. About 97 per cent, of impregnated eggs 
 are hatched, and with the water at 55 Fahr., they 
 hatch in about fifteen days, and it requires about
 
 6 THE PIKE. 
 
 the same length of time to absorb the umbilical sac 
 of the fry. The fry when first hatched are ex- 
 tremely helpless, and are a prey apparently to 
 every other living thing in the water. The ovaries 
 of a thirty-nine and a half pound mascalonge 
 weighed five pound, and one female of thirty-five 
 pound yielded 265,000 eggs, although all her eggs 
 were not obtained." 
 
 The late Max V. J. Borne, the German fish- 
 culturist, says the pike in Germany goes under 
 different names, such as the speckled pike, dappled 
 pike, and pike-king ; that a spawner of four pound 
 or six pound gives about 100,000 eggs ; that fry 
 hatch out in from one to three weeks, according to 
 the temperature, and have a very large umbilical 
 sac. The late Mr. Frank Buckland mentions 
 a twenty-four pound pike caught in 1879 at 
 Eastwell Park, Kent, that contained 224,640 eggs, 
 also another of twenty-eight pounds caught in 
 1869 in Loch Awe, Scotland, that contained 
 twenty-one ounces of roe, the number of eggs 
 being 292,320. 
 
 Lambwaith (probably the present Lambeth) is 
 the earliest place, and 1 277 the year, where and when 
 pike are first mentioned. Two years after they were 
 found three successive times at the same place, and 
 called " pickerel." 
 
 They were also taken at Cherwell, Gosford, and 
 Oxford. With one exception (Cambridge, 1342) 
 all other pike were taken from the lower portion of 
 the river Cherwell ; they are mentioned in the Act 
 of the sixth year of Richard II., 1382, and also by 
 Chaucer in the well-known lines 
 
 " Full many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe, 
 And many a breme, and many a luce in stewe."
 
 HABITS OF PIKE. 7 
 
 From which early dates, we may infer, I think, 
 that pike are indigenous. 
 
 The pike is undoubtedly a fish of great 
 antiquity, known to several Latin authors, who 
 mention them as being caught of large size in the 
 Tiber ; but it is questionable whether the Esox of 
 Pliny was of the same kind as the British species. 
 
 The earliest date in which Lucius is mentioned 
 in either poetry or prose was in the fourth century 
 of the Christian era, when the poet Ausonius sang 
 of him as 
 
 " The wary Luce, 'midst wrack and rushes hid, 
 The scourge and terror of the scaly brood." 
 
 Pike were highly esteemed on the table in this 
 country during the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
 ries, and frequent mention of them occurs in the 
 bills of fare of that period. " Luce salt," " pyke in 
 harblet or herblade," " in latmer sauce," " in foyle," 
 "in sharpe sauce," occur among the innumerable 
 dishes served at the " inthronizations " of the 
 Archbishop of York in 1467, and of the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury in I5O4- 1 
 
 Pike are monogamous, and by February have 
 paired, so that after this month, where one is 
 caught the other may very often be Habits 
 captured ; the female spawns in March of 
 or early in April, depositing from 50,000 
 eggs to 500,000 by a 32 Ib. fish on submerged 
 rushes, sedges and sub-aqueous weeds, in shallow, 
 quiet bays and ditches ; the eggs, which are 
 small, hatch in from eighteen to twenty-one 
 days. The growth rate of pike no doubt varies 
 according to the conditions under which they live : 
 
 1 Leland's Collectanea (edit. 1774), vol. vi.
 
 8 THE PIKE. 
 
 in stews and lakes where there is plenty of food, 
 such as young carp, roach, bream and other fish, they 
 increase rapidly in weight and size. H. C. Pennell 
 one of the best living authorities, says, " The rate 
 of growth of pike has been by different authors 
 variously estimated at from I to 5 Ibs. a year ; but 
 these estimates do not generally appear to be 
 based on any very reliable grounds, still less upon 
 actual experiment," &c. ; "and experience leads me 
 to believe that the growth-rate is susceptible of 
 very great variation, depending upon the nature of 
 the water and the amount of food supplied to the 
 fish ; but that in the open waters at least in 
 England it seldom averages more than i Ib. a 
 year during the first two years, and from i to 
 2 Ibs. a year afterwards, decreasing again, after 
 eight or nine years, to about the original ratio," &c. 
 " On one point I have fully convinced myself, viz., 
 that during the first year the maximum growth in 
 open waters does not much exceed half a pound. 
 The grounds of this conclusion are as follow : 
 Pike spawn in March or April ; in June, when 
 pike-fishing commences, I have not unfrequently 
 taken, and seen taken, with the net, small jack of 
 about an ounce, or a little more, in weight ; in 
 September, again, I have constantly taken them 
 of three or four ounces with a minnow ; and in 
 January and February, specimens of from five to 
 seven ounces ; whilst I have never within my 
 memory caught the smaller-sized fish at the later 
 periods, or vice versa ; thus pointing clearly to the 
 inference that at these seasons there were young 
 jack of those respective sizes, and none others in 
 other words, that the different sizes represented 
 the different stages of growth. These I believe to
 
 RATE OF GROWTH. 9 
 
 be the fish of about f lb., of the following season," * 
 that is, "yearlings." Bloch, the eminent ichthyo- 
 logist, says pike of three years' age are from 18 to 
 20 in. in length: and there are proofs on record 
 that from this size they, if well supplied with 
 food, will grow at the rate of 4 Ibs. a year for six 
 or seven successive years. " Piscator " (Practical 
 Angler, p. 240) asserts the same, and gives as an 
 instance a pond that held store-pike of 6 or 7 Ibs., 
 that was netted after an interval of seven years, 
 when two pike were caught weighing 36 Ibs. each. 
 But, he says also, "from the result of my own 
 observations in the different waters I have fished, 
 I am inclined to think that an annual increase of 
 about 2 Ibs. is nearer the usual average ; and in 
 small, hungry waters I am certain the growth is 
 much less." To quote Dr. Badham on "the 
 growth of pike," he says that, "under favourable 
 circumstances, during the earlier portion of life, 
 the increase in weight is occasionally at the rate 
 of 4 Ibs. per annum ; after twelve years it 
 diminishes probably to I or 2 Ibs., and lessens still 
 more as age advances ; " and, vide Hofland, " If 
 well supplied with food and suitable water, pike 
 will increase in weight from 3 to 4 Ibs. annually." 
 
 A comparatively recent instance of rapid growth 
 is mentioned by Frank Buckland in his Natural 
 History of British Fishes^ p. 154, viz., " In 
 October, 1874, H.R.H. Prince Christian sent 
 up Mr. Keene, the head fisherman of Windsor 
 Park, with the most splendid pike I had ever be- 
 held. Rapley Lake, Bagshot Park (a carp and 
 tench preserve), had not been cleaned and the 
 water run off for seventeen years, nor dragged for 
 1 The Sporting Fish of Great Britain.
 
 io THE PIKE. 
 
 fifty years. Keenc put in the nets, and brought 
 out a number of carp, tench, &c. ; and he thought, 
 from the jump of something in the net, that he 
 had caught an unusually large fish. When the net 
 shoaled, he was delighted to find a monster pike in 
 it ; the fish darted between his legs and nearly 
 upset him. This magnificent pike (I never saw 
 one in more perfect condition) weighed 35 Ibs. ; 
 length, 3 ft. ioi in. ; girth, 2 ft. The eyes were 
 exceedingly beautiful ; the head shone like smoked 
 mother-o'-pearl ; every scale was perfect, and fins 
 as red as those of a perch. Mr. Keene asked me 
 what I thought the age of the fish ; I guessed off- 
 hand from twelve to fifteen years, and it appears I 
 was not far wrong ; for, about twelve years before, 
 Sir James Clarke's butler put six or eight jack, 
 weighing about i Ib. each, into Rapley Lake." 
 The pike (a female) contained over 43,000 
 eggs ; consequently in October was forward 
 in spawn. From the above record, this fish 
 appears to have increased from i Ib. to 35 Ibs. 
 in twelve years. No doubt it was the excellent 
 quality and quantity of the carp in this pike's 
 larder that enabled her to grow large and lusty 
 in so short a time, for, of course, she would not 
 touch the tench, if Izaac Walton was correct 
 in asserting that 'the pike forbears to devour 
 him (i.e. the tench) be he never so hungry ; ' 
 or the Rev. J. J. Manley was right, when he says, 
 in Notes on Fish and Fishing, p. 252, 'We may 
 take it as a fact, that the omnivorous pike refuses 
 under all circumstances to take tench as food.' " 
 
 He suggests that this may be because tench 
 swim lowest in the water, and out of sight of 
 the pike, which, their eyes being on the top of the
 
 THEIR VORACITY. II 
 
 head, they cannot see and catch the tench. But, 
 like carp, tench in hot weather delight to lie close 
 to the surface of the water, basking in the Tench 
 sunshine. There exists, however, a fond and 
 superstition that accounts for the pike's pl 
 leniency towards the tench on the ground that 
 the latter is the pike's physician ; and Camden, 
 in his Britannia, asserts that he " has seen the 
 bellies of pikes which have been rent open, have 
 their gaping wounds presently closed by the touch 
 of the tench, and by his glutinous slime perfectly 
 healed up." Moses Brown writes in his Piscatorial 
 Eclogues : 
 
 " The pike fell tyrant of the liquid plain, 
 Howsoe'er by raging famine pined, 
 The tench he spares a medicinal kind ; 
 For when, by wounds distrest and sore disease, % 
 He courts the salutary fish for ease, 
 Close to his scales the kind physician glides, 
 And sweats a healing balsam from his sides." 
 
 Whether, as a matter of taste, pike sometimes 
 decline to lunch or dine off tench is, I think, an 
 open question ; I say sometimes, because, in or 
 about the year 1881, when fishing at Kingsfleet, 
 near Felixstowe, the late Mr. John Knechtli caught 
 three pike, from 19 Ibs. to 20 Ibs. each, which were 
 preserved and " set-up " by S. Sanders, who sent 
 me the contents of the pikes' stomachs, which con- 
 sisted of partly digested tench, the heads, tails and 
 vertebrae of some showing they had been, when 
 alive, fish from 2 Ibs. to 3 Ibs. weight. 
 
 That pike, when hungered, will gorge almost any- 
 thing, is well known rats, puppies, kittens, voracity 
 ducks, and fish of their own kind have of P ike 
 often been found inside them ; and there are
 
 12 THE PIKE. 
 
 instances of their having seized and swallowed the 
 heads and necks of swans, and, being unable to 
 disgorge them, both bird and fish were found 
 choked and dead. 
 
 On one of my angling visits to Sonning-on- 
 Thames, the landlord of the inn where I frequently 
 stayed, told me a pike had taken up its quarters 
 just above the bridge, and each morning, as his 
 half-grown ducks swam across the river to feed in 
 the opposite meadow, this pike had swallowed 
 them one by one, until at last, out of a brood of 
 fifteen, it had taken all but three. I was up and 
 out next morning soon after daybreak, and as the 
 surviving ducks swam over the river, there was a 
 bulge in the water, one more duck disappeared, 
 and I noticed where the pike made his home. The 
 landlord came out of doors about seven o'clock ; I 
 told him what had happened, and that I would try 
 to catch the pike. I pushed my punt up stream, 
 a little above bridge, and spun the water over 
 carefully with a small dace on my flight of hooks. 
 The pike came at my lure at once, but missed it, 
 making a swirl close to some sedges. I changed 
 my tackle to paternoster, with a gudgeon for 
 bait, worked it along by the sedges, hooked and 
 landed the pike ; then I caught four more, and 
 went in to breakfast. The landlord doubted I had 
 captured the fish. I rang for the puntsman ; told 
 him to bring in my captures ; there were five pike, 
 the smallest 6 Ibs., the largest weighed 15 Ibs., 
 and, on opening it, we found the duck inside, 
 with the feathers scarcely rumpled. 
 
 Once, when fishing the Dorsetshire Frome, I 
 caught a pike with half of a large eel hanging 
 from its mouth, and, when the fish was opened and
 
 THE BIG PIKE OF BARN MERE. 13 
 
 cleaned, the other half of the eel, partly digested, 
 was inside it ; the eel would have exceeded 3 Ibs. 
 weight when alive, and yet this pike (of about 
 9 Ibs.) took my roach-bait ravenously. 
 
 Bowlker, in his Art of Angling, p. 9, gives the 
 following instance of the exceeding voracity of 
 these fish : " My father catched a pike in Barn 
 Mere, Cheshire ; it was an ell long, and weighed 
 35 Ibs., which he brought to Lord Cholmondeley ; 
 his lordship ordered it to be turned into a canal in 
 the garden, wherein were abundance of several 
 sorts of fish. About twelve months after, the water 
 was drawn off, and it was found that this over- 
 grown pike had devoured all the fish except one 
 large carp that weighed 9 or 10 Ibs., that was 
 bitten in several places. The pike was then put 
 into the canal again, together with abundance of 
 fish for it to feed upon, all of which it devoured in 
 less than a year's time ; and it was observed by 
 the gardener and workmen there to take the ducks 
 and other water-fowl ; whereupon they shot mag- 
 pies and crows, and threw them into the canal, 
 which the pike took before their eyes. Of this 
 they acquainted their lord, who thereupon ordered 
 the slaughterman to fling in calves' bellies, chickens' 
 guts, and such-like garbage to the pike to prey 
 upon ; and, being soon after neglected, it died, as 
 supposed, for want of food." 
 
 The following was inserted in one of the London 
 papers, January 2nd, 1765 : "Extract of a letter 
 from Littleport, December i/th. About ten days 
 ago a large pike was caught in the river Ouse, 
 which weighed upwards of 28 Ibs., and was sold to 
 a gentleman in the neighbourhood for a guinea. 
 As the cook-maid was gutting the fish, she found a
 
 I 4 THE PIKE. 
 
 watch with a black ribbon, and two steel seals 
 annexed, in the body of the pike. The gentleman's 
 butler, upon opening the watch, found the maker's 
 name, Thomas Cranefield, Burn ham, Norfolk. Upon 
 a strict enquiry it appears that the said watch was 
 sold to a gentleman's servant, who was unfor- 
 tunately drowned about six weeks ago, in his way 
 to Cambridge, between this place and South-Ferry. 
 The watch is in the possession of Mr. John Roberts, 
 at the Cross-Keys in Littleport, for the inspection of 
 the public." 
 
 Another characteristic of pike is their pugnacity, 
 for where a large one has taken up its haunt and 
 feeding-place in a river, it seldom, if ever, tolerates, 
 unless they have paired a smaller pike as an 
 interloper, and, as a rule, will attack and try to 
 drive the smaller fish away. To give an instance 
 of this: On February 2nd, 1879, when fishing in 
 the late afternoon at Holme Bridge on the Frome, 
 Dorsetshire, I caught a 15 Ib. pike at the entrance 
 to a favourite backwater ; and, on landing the fish, 
 found it was terribly scored and bitten on the back 
 and sides, from which I concluded it had ventured 
 into the cruising-ground of a much larger fish that 
 had resented the intrusion, and which I decided to 
 try for next morning. Commencing some distance 
 up stream, and gradually fishing down, just outside 
 the backwater in the main stream, my live-bait 
 (a dace) was taken, and I struck a large and power- 
 ful fish. The river was flowing full, and the bridge 
 was only a short distance below, through the small 
 arches of which my punt would not safely pass, so 
 that I had to play the fish heavily ; but my gut- 
 trace was of the best, and after twenty minutes' 
 exciting sport, I gaffed my fish, a 23-pounder, in
 
 PUGNACITY. 15 
 
 splendid condition, and, no doubt, the one that had 
 bitten my pike of the previous afternoon. As a 
 matter of saving time, where 2 and 3 Ib. jack keep 
 taking the lure, it is wise to shift to another place 
 ior experience has taught me that large and small 
 ones do not consort together, and that where small 
 jack abound, large pike are conspicuous by their 
 absence. A well-known angler has said, " The 
 pike is a systematic and professional marauder ; 
 he respects not his own kith and kin ; he prowls 
 up and down, seeking what he may devour ; and 
 he has no claim upon our consideration, except 
 as a furnisher of sport." Nevertheless, the pike 
 ranks high in the estimation of anglers as a 
 game and sporting fish ; for, when hooked on light 
 spinning-tackle, paternoster, or snap, perhaps 
 merely " lipped," and only feeling the restraint of 
 the tether, he fights strongly and pluckily for 
 liberty and life, and, being no mean antagonist, 
 when he does escape, deserves his liberty.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 INCIDENTS, RECORDS, AND TRADITIONS OF 
 PIKE-FISHING. 
 
 IT is an idiosyncrasy with some anglers to 
 think (and perhaps believe) that a fish 
 which ultimately escapes from the hook would 
 have proved the largest of the day. They love to 
 tell how, under very difficult circumstances, and not- 
 withstanding very great skill on their part, their 
 tackle has been broken and carried away by a 
 monster fish. 
 
 On an occasion when I was fishing some grand 
 
 pike water near Maidstone with a companion, he 
 
 hooked a fish on spinning-tackle and lost 
 
 "nd s it in a growth of sedges, into which the 
 
 tradi- fish plunged and broke the trace ; he 
 
 of size declared it was a huge pike, " the biggest 
 
 he ever had on his line." Next morning, 
 
 near the same place, I caught a jack of 6 Ibs. 
 
 on paternoster, with my friend's spinning-flight in 
 
 its mouth. 
 
 A peculiarity of other anglers is, that with 
 their oft-repeated accounts of pike and other fish 
 they have captured, or seen, the weight also of 
 such specimens increases in a marvellous manner, 
 irrespective of their length and girth.
 
 UNTRUSTWORTHY RECORDS. 17 
 
 A Lough Conn pike captured in September, 1894, 
 was forwarded to a London fishing-tackle shop in 
 Great Queen Street, W.C., to be set up in a glass 
 case ; but before it was sent to the taxidermist, the 
 shopkeeper lent the fish to a neighbouring angling 
 society for exhibition at their weekly club meeting ; 
 the members present, instead of weighing the fish, 
 guessed it to be 37^ Ibs. ; the following Sunday it 
 was reported in The People newspaper as 47^ Ibs. ; 
 but its real weight was short of 30 Ibs. In June, 
 1895, a pike of 28 Ibs., netted in Lord Calthorpe's 
 lake, Elvetham Park, Hampshire, was recorded in 
 The People as 36 Ibs., and was stated to have been 
 " sent to a taxidermist for preservation " ; but the 
 fish was buried, after being kept some days for his 
 lordship to see. 
 
 These instances will suffice to show what fishy 
 exaggerations are disseminated by some newspaper 
 angling reporters and correspondents. 
 
 The following query and reply appeared a short 
 while ago in the Fishing Gazette : 
 
 " DEAR SIR, Will you inform me in your next 
 edition whether a pike would weigh less or more 
 eighteen hours after being killed than it did when 
 just taken out of the water, and what would be the 
 increase or decrease in the weight of, say, an n-lb. 
 pike ? " Yours truly, 
 
 "HENRY GREENWAY. 
 
 "TONBRIDGE, KENT." 
 
 " [A pike of 1 1 Ibs. ought in theory to weigh 
 about 1 5 Its. eighteen hours after being caught ; 
 it is a poor pike anyway which cannot do that. 
 ED. Fishing Gazette]? 
 
 C
 
 18 THE PIKE 
 
 " It seems to be the general opinion that fish have 
 developed a most scandalous habit of losing weight 
 after capture. Of course, if this is really so, some- 
 body ought to talk to them very seriously about it, 
 but my experience tells me that the notion is totally 
 unfounded. A young friend of mine caught a pike 
 the other day, and was so pleased with the monster 
 that he had it set up by a very capable taxidermist. 
 About ten minutes after the fish was landed he 
 scaled 1 1 Ibs. 9 oz. ; but, by the time he had matured, 
 and was set up, his weight had so augmented as 
 to be 15 Ibs. 1 1 oz. This is nothing extraordinary ; 
 every fish that has any respect for itself goes on in 
 just the same fashion." Fishing Gazette, May I5th, 
 
 1897- 
 
 Sir John Hawkins, in his fourth edition (1784) of 
 The Complete Angler , at page 136, gives the 
 following extract from a London paper of the 
 25th January, 1765 ; but it and similar accounts of 
 monster pike may (I think) be relegated to the 
 limbo of myths : 
 
 " On Tuesday last at Lillishall Lime Works near 
 Newport, a pool about nine yards deep that had 
 not been fished for ages, was let off by means of a 
 level brought up to drain the works, when an 
 enormous pike was found ; he was drawn out by 
 means of a rope fastened round his head and gills 
 amidst hundreds of spectators, in which service a 
 great many men were employed ; he weighed up- 
 wards of 1 70 Ibs., and is thought to be the largest 
 ever seen. Some time ago the clerk of the parish 
 was trolling in the above pool, when his bait was 
 seized by this furious creature, which by a sudden 
 jerk pulled him in, and doubtless would have 
 devoured him also, had he not by wonderful agility
 
 EYE-OPENERS. 19 
 
 and dexterous swimming escaped the dreadful 
 jaws of this voracious animal." 
 
 " From the days of Gesner downwards," said Mr. 
 Frank Buckland, " more lies have been told about 
 the pike than any other fish in the world," and the 
 Mannheim pike that attained a length of 19 feet 
 and was captured in 1497 at the advanced age of 
 267 years, having in its gills a brass ring on which 
 was engraved in Greek, ' I am the first fish that 
 was placed in this pond (Kaiserwag Lake) by the 
 hand of Frederick II., Governor of the World, on 
 the 5th October, 1230,' may certainly claim to be 
 the most fallacious fish on record." " Its skeleton 
 and ring were long preserved in the cathedral of 
 Mannheim," says Mr. Pennell in his Book of the 
 Pike; "but upon subsequent examination by a clever 
 anatomist it was discovered that the bones had 
 been lengthened to fit the story in other words, 
 that several vertebrae had been added." 
 
 The Loch Ken pike of 72 Ibs, mentioned by 
 Daniel in his Rural Sports^ appears to be of 
 authentic weight. Its head, measuring 9 inches 
 across the back of it, is said still to be preserved at 
 Ken mure Castle, Galloway. There have always 
 been great doubts as to the measurements and 
 weight of Colonel Thornton's 48-lb. pike, and as to 
 where and how it was caught. Hofland says, " The 
 gallant colonel could ' draw the long bow ' ; and it 
 was asserted on the other side of Tweed that the 
 fish was taken on a trimmer ! " There are suspicions 
 also as to the genuineness of a 96-lb. pike said to 
 have been captured in the early part of this century 
 near Killaloe, Ireland ; and of another 6o-lb. pike, 
 washed ashore dead in a storm on one of the Ballina 
 lakes. Putting aside suchlike monsters, that seem 
 
 C 2
 
 20 THE PIKE. 
 
 to be, in the words of Polonius, " very like a whale," 
 most veracious historians agree that pike rarely 
 exceed 40 Ibs. in weight, at all events in these 
 islands. Frank Buckland tells of a pike which was 
 sent to him, caught with rod and line in one of the 
 Norfolk Broads. It weighed 32 Ibs. and measured 
 3 feet 8 inches in length ; the roe weighed 5 Ibs., 
 and contained no less than 595,200 eggs. 
 
 On January 2nd, 1897, Lord Inverurie sought 
 information through The Fishing Gazette relative to 
 Lord In- s P ec i men P^ e f remarkable size caught 
 verurie's within the British Isles, with the waters 
 chronicle w j iere they were captured, modes em- 
 ployed, names of the anglers, authentic weights, 
 and other interesting details. 1 I had the pleasure 
 of furnishing to that angling journal the following 
 list of pike, whose weights had been vouched for, 
 and were beyond dispute ; there are but three 
 Irish fish recorded, it being difficult to verify the 
 reported weights of others caught in Irish waters. 
 
 1869, October, 28 Ibs., caught in Loch Awe, by 
 Mr. G. Rooper. 
 
 1870, April 2, 32 Ibs., caught in Norfolk, captor 
 not known. 
 
 1874, October, 35 Ibs., netted in Rapley Lake, 
 Bagshot Park (see BucklancTs Fishes]. 
 
 1875, January, 26i Ibs., caught with snap-tackle, 
 in Thames, Hampton Deeps, by Mr. Luton. 
 
 1876, January 2, 21 Ibs., caught with snap, in river 
 Frome, Dorset, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1876, July, 20 Ibs., caught with gut perch-pater- 
 noster, in Thames, Marlow, by Mr. Wm. Ritchie. 
 
 1 While these pages are going through the press comes 
 the melancholy news of Lord Inveturie's death at the age 
 \>f twenty years. He was a keen and skilful angler. ED.
 
 AUTHENTIC RECORDS. 21 
 
 1877, January 5, 2i| Ibs., caught with snap, in 
 Thames, Sonning, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1877, February 24, 36 Ibs., caught with snap, at 
 Maidstone, Kent, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1878, January 3, 20 J Ibs., caught with snap, in 
 Thames, Sonning, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1878, January 30, 27^ Ibs., caught with pater- 
 noster, in Thames, Hampton Deeps, by Mr. 
 Barker. 
 
 1878, February, 29 Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Norwich, by Mr. English. 
 
 1878, February^ 22 Ibs., caught with paternoster, 
 in river Frome, Dorset, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1878, February 17, 22 Ibs., caught with gorge 
 tackle, at Bardney, river Witham. 
 
 1878, February 23, 30 Ibs., caught with pike fly, 
 in Lough Erne, Ireland, captor not known. 
 
 1878, February 24, 36 Ibs., caught with snap, 
 near Norwich, by Mr. F. Thorne. 
 
 1878, February 27, 23 Ibs., caught with snap, 
 near Petworth, Sussex, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1878, March 14, 22| Ibs., caught with paternoster, 
 near Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1879, February 14, 2i| Ibs., caught with snap, 
 near Petworth, Sussex, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1879, February, 24 Ibs., caught in Eastwell Park, 
 Kent, by H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh. 
 
 1879, February 28, 24^ Ibs., caught near Chip- 
 penham, by Mr. Pallison. 
 
 1879, September 4, 37 Ibs., caught with snap, 
 near Amersham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1880, March 8, 22* Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Petworth, Sussex, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1880, April 10, 27 Ibs., caught at Halberton, by 
 Mr. Frost.
 
 22 THE PIKE. 
 
 1882, January 3, 23 Ibs., caught with snap, in 
 river Frome, Dorset, by A. Jardinc. 
 
 1882, February 23, 30^ Ibs., caught with pater- 
 noster, near Glynde, Sussex, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1883, July 2, 24 Ibs., caught with worm while 
 barbel fishing in Marlow Pool, Thames, by Mr. J. 
 Bedford. 
 
 1883, November 27, 24! Ibs., caught near Nor- 
 wich, by Mr. English. 
 
 1884, January 19,23 Ibs., caught with paternoster, 
 near Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1884, January 19, 21 Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1884, January 19, 2O\ Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1884, January 19, 19! Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1884, January 19, 19 Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1887, February 15, 26 Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by R. B. Marston. 
 
 1887, February 15, 23 Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by Mr. S. W. Searle. 
 
 1887, February 15, 22 Ibs., caught with pater- 
 noster, near Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1888, November 25, 22 Ibs., caught with snap- 
 tackle, at Maidstone, Kent, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1888, November 25, 19! Ibs., caught with pater- 
 noster, at Maidstone, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1892, 33 Ibs., caught in Lough Mask, Ireland, by 
 Mr. W. F. Laurie. 
 
 1893, 37 Ibs., caught in river Shannon, Ireland, 
 and presented to Mr. R. B. Marston. 
 
 1894, January 16, 25 Ibs., caught with live-dace 
 snap-fishing, near Maidstone, by Mr. J. Sheather.
 
 AUTHENTIC RECORDS. 23 
 
 1896, February 19, 20 Ibs., caught with worm 
 on gut perch-paternoster, near Chippenham, by 
 A. Jardine. 
 
 1896, February 19, 18 Ibs., caught with snap, near 
 Chippenham, by A. Jardine. 
 
 1896, November 22, 30 Ibs., caught in Dagenham 
 Lake, Essex, by Mr. Waller. 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter which 
 appeared in the Fishing Gazette of January 3Oth, 
 1897: " I opine that nowadays a pike of 20 Ibs. 
 may be considered a big fish, and that the 
 capture of one that weight is the ideal which most 
 fishermen set themselves, and hope to accomplish 
 some day. Yours, &c. F. N. S." 
 
 The foregoing list was supplemented by the 
 following captures : 
 
 1884, November 20, 21 J Ibs., caught with spoon- 
 bait in Sowley Pond, near Lymington, Hampshire, 
 by Mr. C. Butler, junior. 
 
 1884, November 20, 28 Ibs., caught with spoon- 
 bait, in Sowley Pond, by Mr. H. Ritchie. 
 
 1888, November 14, 22 Ibs., caught spinning a 
 gudgeon in the Hayward Wide-water, near Stafford, 
 by Mr. H. Evans. 
 
 1890, February I, 2o| Ibs., with snap-tackle in 
 Hayward Wide-water, by Mr. B. Preece. 
 
 1891, December 17, 19^ Ibs., with snap-tackle in 
 Hayward Wide-water, by Mr. William Osborne. 
 
 1892, December I, 22 J Ibs., with snap-tackle in 
 Hayward Wide-water, by Mr. William Osborne. 
 
 1893, November 13, 2i Ibs., with snap-tackle in 
 Hayward Wide-water, by Mr. I. Evans. 
 
 1892, May 27, 26J Ibs., caught trailing with trout 
 in Lough Arrow, co. Sligo, Ireland, by Mr. Roth- 
 well. Note ! pike spawn in April, therefore as this
 
 24 THE PIKE. 
 
 pike was " out of season," the capture was unsports- 
 manlike. 
 
 1894, April, 32 Ibs., caught trailing with "Blue 
 Devon," in Lough Conn, co. Mayo, Ireland, by 
 Mr. E. H. C. Smith, of Clifton College. Note! 
 More flagrantly unsportsmanlike than the previous 
 instance. 
 
 1895, December, 21 Ibs., caught with livebait, in 
 Barratt's Pool, Moire, Leicestershire. 
 
 1895, December, 25 Ibs., caught with snap-tackle 
 in the River Dove, near Tutbury, Staffordshire, by 
 Mr. J. C. Wright. 
 
 When Whittlesea Mere was drained in the early 
 part of this century in order to reclaim the land 
 and place it under cultivation, as the waters 
 receded a huge pike was left nearly "high and 
 dry," and captured ; it weighed 49 Ibs. 
 
 Curious experiences sometimes happen to 
 anglers when pike-fishing, in the shape of singular 
 captures. As an instance of this, two friends 
 were fishing in a lake at Amersham, Buckingham- 
 shire, when one of them had his livebait 
 dents taken, and almost immediately the other 
 in pike had a " run " from a good fish that took 
 line rapidly off his reel ; but the two lines 
 seemed to draw together, and at last converged to 
 one point, when it became evident both anglers 
 had hooked the same fish. The pike was gaffed 
 and landed ; it had taken both baits and was 
 hooked by both tackles. It was a handsome fish 
 of 21 Ibs. I saw it in the evening, when it was 
 christened "The Union Jack." A similar incident 
 occurred twice on the same day to myself and a 
 companion when fishing the Dorset, Frome. One 
 of the pike weighed 17 Ibs., the other 9 Ibs.
 
 UNDIVIDED IN DEATH. 25 
 
 When fishing Loch Tay in 1870, Mr. Cramp 
 saw two pike struggling and fastened together by 
 the insertion of the head of one within the jaws 
 of the other. Whether this was brought about 
 by charging at one another when fighting or by 
 both dashing at the same bait, and having got 
 up steam, had too much way on them to avoid 
 a collision, cannot be determined, but the head 
 of the smaller fish was fixed up to its pectoral 
 fins, in the mouth of the larger ; and so they were 
 gaffed through both their heads by Mr. Cramp's 
 boatman, and sent thus (undivided in death) to 
 Mr. Frank Buckland, who made a cast of them 
 for his fish museum. The two fish weighed 
 19 Ibs. 
 
 Unwary young pickerel have been known to be 
 choked by attempting to swallow sticklebacks ; and, 
 if not completely choked in infancy, get wiser 
 possibly after what Dr. Badham calls an attack of 
 " sticklebackitis." At what size or weight does 
 esox junior become a pike ? Walton says at 2 ft. ; 
 Sir J. Hawkins at 3 Ibs. ; Salter at 3 Ibs. ; Hofland, 
 3 Ibs., or when it exceeds 24 ins. in length ; Piscator 
 {Practical Angler] says 4 Ibs. ; " Ephemera," in his 
 Handbook on Angling, 3 or 4 Ibs. ; Elaine, 4 or 
 5 Ibs. Mr. C. Pennell favours a 3 Ib. qualification, 
 at which jack " might assume the dignities of 
 pikehood." 
 
 Mr. Frank Buckland's opinion (as often expressed 
 by him to me) was 5 Ibs. ; also that jack were infertile 
 and incapable of reproducing their species Age of 
 until they had attained the weight of at P ike 
 least 3 Ibs. ; and the fact that so many young fish 
 under this weight, or say 24 ins. in length, are
 
 26 THE RIKE. 
 
 caught and retained, also that where there was one 
 angler twenty years ago, there are scores at the 
 present time, fully accounts (I think) for the 
 depletion of pike in English waters. It is a greater 
 achievement to capture a 15 Ib. pike now than it 
 was to catch one of a score pounds previous to the 
 " seventies." An Act should be passed making 
 it illegal to retain jack under 3 Ibs., then anglers 
 would soon find these sporting fish increasing in 
 our rivers and lakes. Having cast aside "jack- 
 hood," to what age (irrespective of accident or 
 capture) will a pike attain ? This is a disputed 
 point. Pennant refers to one ninety years old ; Sir 
 Francis Bacon says forty years is more likely to be 
 the maximum ; and Dr. Badham instances a pike 
 in the College pond at Cambridge, that had " seen 
 out many a generation of bed-makers and ten-year 
 men." If Sir Francis Bacon was correct, a forty- 
 year-old pike that had increased at the moderate 
 estimate of 2.\ Ibs. per annum, would at its death 
 weigh a cwt. I have often wondered why the 
 largest pike are females. In the early months of 
 the year, when pike have paired, on catching a 
 female, say of 20 Ibs., and "going for" and capturing 
 her mate, I have generally found him to be about a 
 12 Ib. fish. Is it because males seldom attain to 
 the splendid developments and proportions of 
 " pikesses," or that the latter prefer to mate with 
 young and active " husbands ? " I never saw a 
 really handsome male of heavy weight but once, 
 and that was a grand specimen of 28 Ibs., which 
 came from Lord Normanton's fishery on the 
 Hampshire Avon. My 37 Ibs., 36 Ibs.. and 30^ Ibs. 
 pike were all of the gentler sex.
 
 PRESERVED WATERS. 27 
 
 A rare bit of sport is a good day's pike- 
 fishing in private and preserved water, in some 
 ancient park, where the undulating green- 
 sward is clothed with ancestral oaks and i n pre- 
 elms. In such places it has been my good s erved 
 
 waters 
 
 fortune to fish, and have grand sport. 
 
 I have in my mind's eye now, such a demesne, 
 where, as described by Byron, 
 
 " Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, 
 Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed 
 By a river, which its soften'd way did take 
 In currents through the calmer water spread 
 Around : the wild-fowl nestled in the brake 
 And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed ; 
 The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood 
 With their green faces fix'd upon the flood." 
 
 It is not necessary to mention the exact locality, 
 for if I did his lordship would have a score of 
 letters by the next post, begging for a day's fishing ; 
 suffice it to say, that fishing there January iQth, 
 1884, with a companion, we caught fifty-four pike, 
 of which we kept twenty-two, and returned un- 
 injured to the water all fish under 5 Ibs. : my five 
 largest pike weighed 23 Ibs., 21 Ibs., 2o| Ibs., 19^ 
 Ibs., and 19 Ibs.: my friend also had a fish of 18 
 Ibs., 6 pike 121 Ibs. And on subsequent visits 
 there with Messrs. R. B. Marston and S. W. Searle, 
 we captured pike weighing 26 Ibs., 23 Ibs., 22 Ibs., 
 20 Ibs. and 18 Ibs. Some of the Sussex waters have 
 furnished me with grand fish over 20 Ibs. each ; 
 notably a pike of 30^ Ibs. killed on paternoster 
 tackle, February 23rd, 1882; and Buckingham- 
 shire has given me some big ones, including a very 
 fine fish of 37 Ibs. on September 4th, 1879. Nor 
 does Kent, the county of my birth, stand much in
 
 28 THE PIKE 
 
 the rear, for it has accounted to me for pike over 
 20 Ibs. each, and a monster of 36 Ibs., February 4th, 
 1877, caught at Maidstone, relative to the capture 
 of which the late Frank Buckland gives the follow- 
 ing particulars in The Natural History of British 
 Fis/ies, page 1 56 : " On arriving at the water, which 
 for some days previously had been thick from rains, 
 
 Mr. J found the fish feeding ; and snapfishing 
 
 with a large dace, Mr. J fancied he had hooked 
 
 only a small pike, as it came along towards him 
 without much pulling ; when however the fish was 
 struck smartly, she began to show fight, tried to 
 make a bolt of it, and then rushed violently 
 
 through the water with open mouth towards J , 
 
 the tightened line still in her jaws. Coming along 
 the side of the boat she grinned a ghastly grin, 
 and two pairs of eyes met the man's and the fish's 
 in dire defiance of each other. The pike then 
 shook her head smartly, after the manner of a dog 
 worrying a rat ; all in vain, the hooks were too 
 firmly fastened in her tongue, and they could not 
 be shaken out. Off went the pike again round the 
 pool, and then came a deal of manoeuvring on the 
 part of the fisherman. The skiff not a flat- 
 bottomed boat was anchored in deep water by a 
 rope and chain, and the angler's fear was that the 
 fish would manage to twist the line round the rope, 
 in which case the line would, in all probability, give 
 way. He therefore tried all he could to get up the 
 anchor. Kneeling on one knee, he pulled hard at 
 the anchor-rope, while he played the pike with the 
 other hand ; but no, the anchor would not come up, 
 so he devoted his entire attention to the fish. After 
 dancing a pas de deux with his partner for a long 
 time, the fish began to give way, and to roll herself
 
 A GAME FISH 29 
 
 languidly about ; J brought her near the side 
 
 of the boat, but several times did she again plunge 
 into the depths below, making great swirls with her 
 tail; 
 
 ' Illam ter fluctus ibidem 
 Torquet agens circum, et rapidus vorat aequore vortex.' 
 
 " Still the difficulty remained how to get the fish 
 into the boat. Piscator was ready for the emer- 
 gency. Slipping the gaff gently into the water, 
 with a swift jerk he chucked the fish under her 
 chin, and having felt the hold was firm, he dropped 
 his rod, and put the finger and thumb of his other 
 hand into the pike's eyes. Another moment and 
 the pike was in the skiff. Then came the tug-of- 
 war between man and fish. The pike, feeling for 
 the first time herself out of water, begin to lash 
 
 about most, furiously. J stopped this little game 
 
 with a blow on her head, that had only a slight 
 effect in felling the fish, which was determined to 
 do as much mischief as she could. Lashing her 
 tail about like a crocodile, she first upset the large 
 bait-can containing the livebaits, so that there was 
 a merry morris-dance in the boat, the big fish 
 surrounded by the little ones. She then made a 
 
 charge upon J 's commissariat ; smash went the 
 
 bottle of sherry, then a tumbler, then the sandwiches 
 and a tobacco-box. 
 
 "Affairs were becoming very serious, for the 
 pike had rolled herself up with the loose line and 
 some spinning-flights she had upset out of the 
 
 tackle-case. J then tried to get her head into 
 
 a sack. No sooner was her head in than it popped 
 out again, the fish seeming to be aware that if Mr. 
 J ' gave her the sack ' it was all up with her,
 
 30 THE PIKE. 
 
 as is the case with the Sultan's wives, who, when 
 disobedient, are put into a sack and tumbled into 
 the Bosphorus. This, I believe, is the origin of the 
 
 term ' giving the sack.' At last J managed to 
 
 get towards shore, when the keeper at last gone 
 to his dinner of course ! came to his assistance, 
 when the two of them contrived to bag the pike 
 effectually, and they carried her a long way inshore 
 
 before J gave her the final coup de grdce" 
 
 This pike measured 45! ins. in length, and 25^ ins. 
 in girth. Two casts were made of it by Frank Buck- 
 land, one for his Fish Museum, South Kensington, 
 the other cast was painted to life by H. L. Rolfe, 
 and is in the possession of its captor. 
 
 There is no doubt that river-pike are, size for 
 size, more powerful and give better sport than 
 lake-fish ;' for living much of their time and pur- 
 suing their prey in quick flowing streams, and 
 often in the rapid rush of weir-pools, they get to 
 be like athletes in training, and when hooked 
 fight for freedom while there is any " fight " left in 
 them. The dash of even a ten-pound river-pike, 
 on either spinning, snap, or paternoster tackle, 
 is something to make one's blood tingle in cold 
 weather when those fish are at their best ; and 
 the sport is not so much inferior to that given 
 by a salmon of similar size, which anglers for 
 those fish assert should be played and landed at 
 the rate of a minute per pound weight. The 
 Thames has given me many very fine pike, my 
 best two days being at Sonning, in January, 
 1877, with a friend, twenty-three fish weighing 
 190 Ibs., the largest 2i| Ibs., i8i Ibs., 17 Ibs., and 
 15 Ibs. 
 
 On the Dorsetshire Frome in January 1882,
 
 PIKE AS FOOD. 31 
 
 a companion and myself had forty pike, the largest 
 ten weighing, two days after capture, at the 
 Gresham Angling Society, London, 135 Ibs. 5 
 ozs., of which the three heaviest weighed together 
 59 Ibs. This capture represented two days' fish- 
 ing, which "Red Spinner" (Wm. Senior) referred 
 to as having " no parallel in angling history so far 
 as London clubs were concerned, because the fish 
 shown were only the largest ; and the anglers took 
 thirty more, from 3 Ibs. to 7 Ibs." However, it was 
 excelled in 1884, when on January iQth I broke 
 my own record, and caught five pike weighing 
 together 103 Ibs. 
 
 Pike are nutritious food, and contain more 
 nitrogenous or muscle - forming qualities than 
 meat, as was shown by the " Analysis pike as 
 Tables of the Food Collection" at the food 
 Bethnal Green Museum ; and as an adjunct to the 
 domestic bill of fare, a small pike of from 5 to 8 Ibs. 
 weight, caught during November or the next three 
 months, when fat and nicely cooked, is a dish by 
 no means to be despised. There are various ways 
 of making these fish very pleasant to the taste, 
 for which some excellent recipes are given on 
 pages 37 and 38. 
 
 The pike, in spite of his many vices, is indeed 
 worthy of more attention than he usually obtains ; 
 he is a most toothsome food when he has been pro- 
 perly sujected to the culinary art. His merit was 
 so acknowledged in early times by King Edward 
 I., who saw no reason why his subjects should be 
 left to the mercy of a fish " ring." Regulating the 
 prices of the different sorts of fish then brought 
 to market, he fixed the value of pike higher 
 than that of fresh salmon. But those patriarchal
 
 32 THE PIKE 
 
 times have changed ; for fresh-water fish, ex- 
 cept at the Jews' feasts and holidays, there 
 is scarcely a market at all always excepting 
 trout ; and the poorer populations have now to 
 devour, at comparatively high prices, the offal fish 
 of Billingsgate, and the refuse sweeping out of 
 other great fish markets, i.e., the fish that are too 
 much off colour to be sold otherwise, and which 
 account for the atmosphere of Leather Lane and 
 suchlike fragrant thoroughfares. Our inland lakes, 
 ponds, and broads are lying useless, and pike would 
 well repay cultivation in them, for they grow and 
 fatten with great rapidity. I do not speak of 
 rivers, for the cultivation of pike (and eels) in rivers 
 would raise an outcry amongst trout anglers, as 
 trout have but little chance against the strength 
 and voracity of this water wolf. 
 
 It has been asserted by many good authorities 
 that an acre of water will grow as much food as 
 three acres of land. In any given area of water or 
 land where under natural conditions can be ob- 
 tained nourishment, there is found living (taking 
 one year with another) fully as much life as can 
 support and reproduce itself ; and on this basis of 
 fact, pike could be grown and cultivated with suc- 
 cess, as carp are in Germany, where they are so 
 much valued as food. 
 
 In one carp-pond of a fish-farm, 30,000 young 
 carp have been observed constantly to yield at 
 the end of three years, 20,000 kilogrammes, i.e., 
 50,000 Ibs. of marketable fish. It is necessary to 
 keep a few pike in the same pond, which prey upon 
 the carp to a certain extent ; the carp-culturists 
 know how many pike to introduce ; a few act 
 beneficially in destroying the smaller and more
 
 ALLEGED MIGRATION OF PIKE. 33 
 
 sickly individuals of the carp stock, who would 
 either not survive for the three years, or would 
 show no growth proportionate to their consumption 
 of food. On the other hand too large a number 
 of pike would reduce the total weight of carp, which 
 would thus have been converted into pike-flesh, 
 instead of remaining as carp. It has often puzzled 
 naturalists how newly-made lakes and ponds, or 
 streams known to have never contained pike, should 
 suddenly have been stocked with them. Some 
 naturalists, including the late Frank Buckland, con- 
 sidered it was by water-fowl such as ducks, coots, 
 moorhens, or dabchicks, which, feeding among 
 aqueous weeds where vivified spawn had been 
 deposited, on taking flight to other waters con- 
 veyed some of the spawn, which is glutinous, stick- 
 ing between their feathers or to their feet ; or, 
 may be, it passed from them in an undigested state, 
 and by either of these means it was disseminated. 
 The rivers Darenth and Wandle when I was a lad 
 contained no jack or pike ; now they are infested 
 with them ; and the trout-fishing has suffered in 
 consequence. The Saturday Review of November 
 7th, 1 888, in an article on " Water Wolves," stated 
 that pike certainly have a curious instinct which 
 sometimes causes them to embark on land-journeys 
 in search of food and water, if deprived of either of 
 these necessaries to their existence. 1 Mr.Newnham, 
 an English resident at Antwerp, in order to test 
 this theory of migration, made two new ponds, and 
 stocked one with pike and the other with small 
 fresh-water fish, such as dace, roach, &c. After 
 two days he had both ponds emptied, when it was 
 
 1 I hope I may not be understood to endorse this state- 
 ment. ED. 
 
 D
 
 34 THE PIKE. 
 
 discovered that many of the pike had travelled by 
 some means or other from their own pond into 
 that of their neighbours, and had devoured the 
 greater part of them. 
 
 That these pike should have taken less than two 
 cays to think out their marauding plan and put it 
 in practice is a proof that Esox lucius is at least 
 possessed of a prompt and decided character, and 
 there can be little doubt that the pike is an excep- 
 tion to the rule, that fish have little or n'o intel- 
 ligence. Even the size of his brain is worthy of 
 respect. Its proportionate size as compared to the 
 rest of the body, is as I to 1,300; in the shark, 
 whose intelligence has so often been vaunted, it is 
 only as I to 2,500, while in the tunny it is but 
 as i to 3,700. 
 
 When the late Dr. Warwick resided at Dunham, 
 the seat of the Earl of Stamford and Warrington, he 
 was walking in the park by a pond where fish were 
 temporarily kept for the table ; and a pike of about 
 6 Ibs. weight, when it observed him darted hastily 
 A ver away, and in doing so struck its head 
 strange against a tenter-hook in a post, one of 
 ory several placed in the pond to prevent poach- 
 ing ; and, as it afterwards appeared, fractured its 
 skull and turned the optic nerve on one side. The 
 anguish suffered by the fish appeared, to be in- 
 tense ; it rushed to the bottom, boring its head into 
 the mud, writhing about, and for a short interval was 
 almost lost to sight ; then plunging about the pond, 
 at length threw itself out of the water on to the 
 bank. The doctor on examining it found a small 
 portion of brain was protruding from the fracture 
 in the skull. He carefully replaced this, raised the 
 indented portion of the skull, and replaced the
 
 A PIKE STORY. 35 
 
 pike in the pond. It appeared at first a good deal 
 relieved, but in a few minutes again plunged about 
 and threw itself a second time out of the water. 
 Dr. Warwick again did what he could to relieve 
 it, and put it back into the water. But as the fish 
 several times continued to throw itself out, he with 
 the assistance of the keeper made a kind of bandage 
 or pad for the fish, which was then left in the pond 
 to its fate. Upon the doctor making his appear- 
 ance there the next morning, the pike swam to the 
 edge of the water, the doctor examined the fish's 
 skull and found it going on all right. He then walked 
 backwards and forwards along the edge of the 
 pond for some time, and the fish continued to swim 
 up and down, turning whenever he turned ; but 
 being blind on the wounded side of the skull, ap- 
 peared to be agitated when it had that side towards 
 the bank, as it could not then see its benefactor. 
 The next day the doctor took some friends down 
 to see the fish, which came to him as before, 
 and at length he actually taught the pike to come 
 to him at his whistle and feed out of his hands. 
 Dr. Warwick thought this a remarkable instance 
 of gratitude in a fish for a benefit received ; and as 
 it always came to his whistle, it also proved, what he 
 had previously disbelieved, that fishes are sensible 
 to sound. This incident as related is vouched for 
 in Cassell's World of Wonders, from which it would 
 appear that gratitude is a trait in the character of 
 pike. In the " Badminton Library " (Coarse Fish) 
 at page 275, it is stated that "at Sir J. Bowyer's, 
 near Uxbridge, there is, or was, a pond full of tame 
 pike which could be called together at pleasure." 
 
 From a gastronomic point of view pike from 
 those rivers that contain trout and salmon (the 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE PIKE. 
 
 young of which they feed upon) are much the 
 finest in flavour : Stoddart says, " as for the 
 ' Teviot pike,' I consider them at all times pre- 
 ferable to the general run of salmon captured 
 in that stream." In the Dorsetshire Frome, pike 
 consume salmon-smolts, and are delicious eating. 
 I once caught in that river a 19 Ib. pike with 
 a 3 Ib. grilse inside, so recently swallowed that 
 its scales were intact and brilliant digestion not 
 having commenced ; this pike and another about 
 the same size a friend had "kippered" for me 
 after the manner of Scotch salmon, and they were 
 almost as good eating when cut into thin slices, 
 and broiled as a relish for breakfast. Thames pike 
 are excellent, and the smelt-fatted pike of the 
 Medway are considered among the best in this 
 country. But cooking has a great deal to do with 
 the gastronomic qualities of pike ; and it is well 
 that those intended for the table should be gutted, 
 cleaned, and crimped as soon as possible after being 
 caught. For crimping, a fish exceeding 5 or 6 Ibs. 
 is best ; and it is done by stunning or killing the 
 pike by a blow or blows on the top of its head 
 just behind the eyes, and making several transverse 
 cuts, an inch or two apart, nearly as deep as the 
 backbone ; cut the gills under the throat, and hold 
 the fish in a cool spring or the running stream 
 until the bleeding ceases. Sir Humphry Davy 
 says that "crimping preserves the flesh hard and 
 crisp," and that " a fresh fish not crimped is tough." 
 Stoddart and other authorities consider a pike is 
 very much better eating when crimped, and 
 especially so if for boiling. 
 
 The best way to cut up a pike is to take off 
 the Lead, cut down the back from shoulder to
 
 METHODS OF COOKING PIKE. 37 
 
 tail along one side of the backbone, when it and 
 the ribs can be easily removed, and the flesh left 
 
 intact : if the vertebra is not removed, rub 
 
 How to 
 
 salt into it and hang the fish in the air cook 
 for some hours, i.e., to " wind-dry " it, plke 
 before cooking. After being thus treated, simply 
 boil it with a little salt in the water, serve with 
 plain melted butter or oyster sauce ; or baked 
 whole, with ordinary veal stuffing inside it, and 
 well baked, makes an excellent dish. Roasting 
 with strips of bacon tied round, and basting it until 
 it acquires a fine brown colour, is another satis- 
 factory and easy way to cook a 4 or 5 Ib. fish. If 
 a pike is boiled and allowed to get cold, it can be 
 taken from the bones in flakes, which when fried 
 in fresh butter or olive oil, with pepper and salt 
 added, and dredged with flour, will be found 
 toothsome Or place the flakes in a deep dish 
 with the liquor from the fish (which cold is like 
 stiff jelly), a few pieces of butter, and a dessert- 
 spoonful of anchovy sauce, a teaspoon ful of soy, 
 or Worcestershire sauce, a squeeze of lemon, a 
 little pepper and salt and some chopped parsley ; 
 then cover with pastry-crust, or mashed potatoes, 
 and bake until browned ; a few oysters added 
 improves it. 
 
 A pike (of 4 or 5 Ibs.) cut across in fillets an inch 
 thick or in longitudinal slices, and the bones with- 
 drawn, dredged in flour and fried in boiling oil or 
 butter, thoroughly browned, and served hot, is very 
 palatable ; yet another method is to split a small 
 jack lengthways, remove the head, fins, and bones, 
 and simmer it slowly in a dish with butter and a 
 bunch of savoury herbs. 
 
 The late Mrs. Beeton, in her Dictionary of Cookery,
 
 38 THE PIKE. 
 
 1 872, gives the following : " Pike (d la Genevese). 
 Divide a 4 or 5 Ib. pike into slices or cutlets onc- 
 and-a-half-inch thick ; two chopped shalots, a little 
 parsley, a small bunch of herbs, two bay leaves, two 
 carrots, pounded mace, pepper and salt to taste, 
 four tablespoonfuls of madeira or sherry, half-a- 
 pint of white stock, thickening of flour and butter, 
 one teaspoonful of essence of anchovies, the juice 
 of one lemon, cayenne and salt to taste : Mode 
 Rub the bottom of a stewpan over with butter, and 
 put in the shalots, herbs, bay leaves, carrots, mace, 
 and seasoning ; stir them for ten minutes over a 
 clear fire, and add the madeira or sherry ; simmer 
 gently half an hour, and strain through a sieve 
 over the fish, which stew in this gravy. As soon 
 as the fish is sufficiently cooked take away all the 
 liquor, except a little to keep the pike moist, and 
 put it into another stewpan ; add the stock, thicken 
 with butter and flour, and put in the anchovy, 
 lemon-juice, cayenne and salt ; lay the pike on a 
 hot dish, pour over it part of the sauce, and serve 
 the remainder in a tureen. Time, i^ hour. Cost, 
 averaging $s. Sufficient for six or eight persons." 
 Mrs. Glasse, in her often-quoted formula for 
 cooking a hare, says, " first catch your hare." 
 
 To anglers who wish to become acquainted 
 with Esox lucius gastronomically, also from the 
 desire for sport, we give this advice, " capture your 
 pike " ; and in order to enable them to do so, the 
 next section of this volume will be devoted to a 
 description of the tackles used and the methods 
 employed when angling for those fish.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PIKE RODS, REELS, AND TACKLES. 
 
 " If I, that am an angler, may protest, 
 Fishing is sweet pleasure, of sport the best, 
 Of exercises the most excellent, 
 Of recreation the most innocent ; 
 But now the sport is marred ; and wot ye why ? 
 Fishes decrease, for fishers multiply." 
 
 " Epigram," De Piscatione, A.D. 1 598. 
 
 THE angler intent on the capture of pike should 
 equip himself with a perfect rod, reel, and 
 line, and the necessary tackle, baits, &c. There are 
 various ideas among pike- fishermen as to what pik e 
 is a perfect rod. Some give the preference rods 
 to bamboo, others to rods made of hickory or lance- 
 wood ; the two latter are tough and substantial 
 materials, but, to my way of thinking, are too 
 heavy, and likely to tire the angler who has a day's 
 fishing before him, and a long trudge perhaps of 
 many miles beside a river. 
 
 From a combination of woods may be con- 
 structed a very serviceable rod ; for instance, with 
 ash for the butt, hickory the second and third 
 joints, and spliced hickory and lancewood, or, 
 better still, hickory and solid cane spliced for the
 
 40 THE PIKE. 
 
 top joint. Some give the choice to a rod entirely 
 of greenheart, which is springy, but a wood that is 
 very treacherous and liable to fracture unless the 
 joints are rent from the plank, thereby ensuring 
 straight fibres ; if this is done no rod can be 
 better, but it is expensive. If, however, instead of 
 rending the joints they are sawn from the plank, 
 which is a common practice in the manufacture of 
 medium-price rods, the joints are very likely to 
 snap under the strain of playing a fish, or even 
 as I have more than once seen when an angler 
 has been making a cast with a rather heavy 
 bait. 
 
 From a long acquaintance with angling and ex- 
 periences of rods of many kinds, my own opinion 
 is that nothing excels carefully selected East India 
 bamboo canes for spinning, paternoster fishing, 
 livebaiting, or trolling-rods ; they are light in the 
 hand, stiff, but have plenty of play, and make very 
 powerful weapons. My favourite pike rods have, 
 for the past twenty years, been made from these 
 canes ; and with them I have killed many heavy 
 pike, ranging from twenty pounds, through the 
 thirties, and up to thirty-six and thirty-seven 
 pounds weight. These rods have two interchange- 
 able tops, both of which pack into the butt a 
 great convenience, the angler having no spare top 
 joint to carry when he is at the river side, or maybe 
 the top lying about loose in a punt, at the risk 
 of being trodden on and broken. 
 
 The rods are from ten to twelve feet long, 
 according to which top is used, the short one being 
 for livebait-snap and leger-fishing, the long top 
 for spinning and paternoster-fishing ; these two 
 tops answer admirably for each method mentioned,
 
 SPLIT CANE RODS. 
 
 and render it unnecessary for anglers to cumber 
 themselves with more than one rod when away on 
 a raid among the pike. Rods so constructed for 
 me twenty years ago are as 
 perfect now as when they 
 were made. 
 
 I may mention that 
 Messrs. S. Allcock and Co., 
 of Redditch, whom I have 
 furnished with the correct 
 pattern of my rods, manu- 
 facture them for the retail 
 tackle-shops, at most of 
 which they can be obtained ; 
 they are known as "The 
 Jardine Pike Rods." 
 
 Since the 1883 Inter- 
 national Fisheries Exhibi- H 
 tion great advances have 
 been made in the manu- 
 facture of fishing-rods in 
 England, especially rods 
 built up from split canes, first 
 introduced from America, 
 and much improved upon 
 by Hardy Brothers, Alnwick. 
 Messrs. C. Farlow and Co., 
 191 Strand, manufacture a 
 very perfect pike rod of built "JARDINE" PIKE ROD. 
 cane, which has a solid 
 
 cork grip with the cane continued through it 
 to the butt end, and this imparts great casting 
 power. The rods are made with and without steel 
 centres, the steel giving remarkable strength 
 with flexibility ; they are fitted with lock-fast
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 ferrules ; the butt and top-ring have revolving 
 centres, the others are guard-rings ; they have two 
 top joints ; the 10 ft. 6 in. rods weigh I Ib. 2\ oz., 
 but they are made also n ft. and 12 ft. in length, 
 
 PIKE ROD 
 (MESSRS. FARLOW AND Co.). 
 
 PIKE ROD 
 (MESSRS. CARTER AND Co.). 
 
 which weigh a little more, are stiffer, and adapted 
 for extra large pike, such as we have been told 
 exist in the Irish loughs. Messrs. Carter and Co. 
 137 St. John Street Road, E.C., have pike rods
 
 FERRULES 43 
 
 built of double split cane with a steel core, that 
 are very powerful, and measure 12 ft. with the 
 long spinning top, and with the short or trolling 
 top II ft. The ferrules have a patent screw on 
 the end of the inner ferrule plug, a neat device 
 that effectually prevents the joints coming apart. 
 The grip is of solid cork, with the cane continued 
 through it to the pneumatic knob. Guard and 
 revolving-rings and improved winch-fittings com- 
 plete this admirable weapon, which is also exactly 
 adapted for spinning for salmon. 
 
 Rods composed of ash for the butt, the second 
 and third joints of bamboo, and the top of solid 
 cane and greenheart, are excellent for spinning and 
 paternostering, and if the last 12 ins. of the butt 
 was bored a short trolling top could be carried 
 in the hollow. If well made, these rods are well 
 suited for pike anglers. Much depends on the 
 ferrules, which should always be made of sheet 
 brass hammered round on a steel mandrel, and 
 not lengths cut from soldered tubes, which are 
 liable under a strain to split or rip. In all the 
 rod-joints the bottom plug, as also the thin peg, 
 should be double-brazed : both must fit into the 
 ferrule so accurately that no water may trickle down 
 into the joint from the wetted line as it passes through 
 the rings when spinning, &c., and penetrate the 
 ferrules, making them stick and difficult to withdraw 
 when taking the joints apart preparatory to packing 
 up rod and tackle at the close of a day's fishing. A 
 good plan is to grease the plugs, also inside the 
 ferrules before use ; when the ferrules stick, turn them 
 slowly in the flame of a lighted match or candle 
 for a few seconds, when the joints will come apart. 
 Rods are now constructed with suction-ferrules,
 
 44 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 which fit so accurately that the joints cannot come 
 asunder unless some force is used ; but if fasten- 
 ings are necessary, then the ordinary small metal 
 loops may be bound on to the ferrules and plugs, 
 which, whipped round with three or four turns of 
 thread, will effectually prevent the joints coming 
 loose under the swinging and swaying of casting 
 a spinning-bait or when trolling. There are im- 
 proved methods for fixing joints that have been 
 applied to fishing rods ; among them are the lock- 
 fast and the bayonet-fastening. 
 
 The rings on a pike rod should be large and all 
 of one size. Mine measure f inch inside diameter, 
 
 GUARD RING. 
 
 and are of the kind known as guard rings ; the line 
 cannot foul or twist round them, and accidental 
 tangles easily pass through, a matter of great 
 importance when playing a heavy fish. 
 
 The bridge ring is another useful one, round 
 which the line cannot foul. With the snake rings, 
 
 BRIDGE RING. 
 
 I have repeatedly found lines to jam (especially 
 when fishing in frosty weather) at the angles where 
 the wire is bound on to the rod-joints. The best 
 material for rings is phosphor-bronze ; it is light 
 but strong, and does not rust ; the butt and next
 
 FLEXIBLE KNOBS. 45 
 
 joint should have two rings on each, the third and 
 top joints three on each. 
 
 For top rings of pike rods, I find those the best 
 with a revolving inside ring that can be moved 
 round when it shows signs of wear by the friction 
 of the line cutting notches into it. 
 
 The butt ends of pike rods should be fitted with 
 an india-rubber knob, which may be obtained at 
 any of the best tackle shops. These flexible knobs 
 are essential to the comfort of anglers, who, when 
 spinning or trolling, often experience inconvenience 
 
 INDIA-RUBBER KNOB. PATENT PNEUMATIC BUTTON. 
 
 from the pressure of the hard wood or brass against 
 the groin, this being the usual position the end of 
 the butt occupies in pike-fishing. Messrs. Carter 
 and Co., of 137, St. John Street Road, E.G., have 
 patented an excellent one of bronze and india- 
 rubber. Half a ball of thick rubber is fixed to a 
 metal plate, which, by means of an ordinary screw, 
 is attached to the butt of the rod. This half-ball 
 is hollow, and a small air-hole is drilled in the 
 metal plate. Upon pressure being applied some 
 air is forced out, sufficient to bring about a nice 
 softness in the ball, invaluable when spinning. 
 When the pressure is removed, the ball auto- 
 matically fills with air ; this ball or button should
 
 46 THE PIKE. 
 
 prove a boon to the salmon or pike-angler when 
 
 playing a big fish. 
 
 The reel should not be less than 3^ ins. diameter, 
 
 four inches is better, and sufficiently large to 
 hold a hundred yards of pike line ; eighty 
 yards is enough for spinning. Reels should 
 
 always have large barrels or an arrangement of wire 
 
 pins, to increase the circumference of the barrels, 
 
 Reels 
 
 THE " COXON " AERIAL REEL. 
 
 so that the line may be wound up very rapidly. 
 Many capital reels are now constructed of wood 
 and metal, or of vulcanite and metal. Slater's is a 
 clever combination of a check and free-running 
 reel, and admirable for those who like to spin " off 
 the reel " ; personally I prefer the Thames style 
 of spinning, i.e. off the hand, which method I will 
 describe later on. 
 
 The " Coxon " aerial reel, lately patented by 
 Messrs. S. Allcock and Co., Redditch, is a beau- 
 tiful piece of mechanism, and so far as lightness is
 
 REELS. 47 
 
 concerned there are none made to compare with it ; 
 but although weighing so little it is a strong reel, 
 from which long casts can be made. The 4 and 
 4^ inch have check-actions and large drums to 
 hold thicker lines for pike-fishing. 
 
 Eschew all reels that have handles constructed 
 like cranks, for the line is very likely to get under 
 them, an almost certain breakage occur, and a 
 
 ALLCOCK'S "SIMPLEX" NOTTINGHAM RERL. 
 
 severance of the attachment existing between the 
 angler and a fish he may be playing. 
 
 Only use those reels that have the handles fixed 
 on to the side plate ; the advantage of this con- 
 struction will be apparent to every pike-fisherman. 
 The best Nottingham reels have a metal guard 
 placed round the centre part that revolves. This, 
 if ordinary care is used, keeps the line from over- 
 running and forming loose coils or other complica- 
 tions ; and as they also have a spring check which 
 can instantly be thrown into gear or out of gear,
 
 48 THE PIKE. 
 
 these reels can be advantageously used when 
 wading or spinning from rough reedy banks, or 
 among bushes, and the necessity of coiling line on 
 the ground, with the consequent risk of entangle- 
 ment, is avoided. 
 
 But there is yet another reel on the Nottingham 
 principle that comes very near perfection. It is 
 made by Carter and Co., and known as " The New 
 Reel " for pike and sea-fishing, It is strongly con- 
 
 TIIE NEW PIKE AND SEA REEL. 
 
 structed of wood and brass, but is light and durable, 
 has an aluminium disc and back-plate ; will not 
 warp, and therefore cannot jam ; and is made in 
 various sizes. The 4 in. pike reels hold over a 
 hundred yards of line, and having a check-action 
 there is no risk of overrunning. 
 
 The defect of the ordinary wood reels without a 
 check-action is their liability to overrun and form 
 knots and tangles in the line, which generally occurs 
 when an angler is playing a fish, and results as a 
 rule in the loss of the fish and the angler's temper.
 
 REELS. 49 
 
 Another danger of these cheap reels without check 
 is if the pressure of the finger on the periphery 
 of the revolving wheel be for an instant removed, 
 the line runs so freely as to produce an excess of 
 slackness, which is a greater evil possibly than the 
 other just mentioned ; for, with a good fish on, and 
 having, may be, to follow it rapidly along the river- 
 bank, possibly over broken ground, nothing could 
 be more trying to the angler than having through 
 a slack line no control over his fish. Another 
 
 THE "SUN" NOTTINGHAM WINCH. 
 
 serious danger in reels made wholly of wood is 
 that on wet or even damp days they warp, 
 and the portion that carries the line sticks fast and 
 will not revolve ; this is a fatal defect. One of the 
 best composite reels manufactured of wood and 
 metal is, in my opinion, that known as " The Sun 
 Nottingham Winch," made and patented by Messrs. 
 Farlow and Co. These winches have an adjustable 
 check and line guard, and are also made with bars 
 placed entirely round them. A metal rim on the 
 
 E
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 inside of back-plate and a metal inner revolving 
 plate prevent all possibility of sticking, without 
 adding any perceptible weight to the reels, which 
 are manufactured in five sizes, from 3 ins. diameter 
 up to 5 ins. 
 
 Messrs. Carter and Co., St. John Street Road, 
 have made winches of various sizes according to 
 special suggestions of mine, and placed them on 
 the market as " The Jardine Reels " They are 
 constructed of metal and vulcanite. Eight wires 
 
 are riveted between the 
 revolving plates, forming 
 a framework round the 
 barrel, thus increasing its 
 size considerably and the 
 rapidity with which line 
 can be wound up. The 
 larger sizes of 3^ ins. and 
 4! ins. diameter, for pike- 
 fishing, have a check- 
 action, hold from 100 to 
 1 20 yards of line ; they 
 
 have worn well and never required repairing, al- 
 though I have had them in constant use for fifteen 
 years. With these reels I have killed my largest 
 pike. The smaller winches of same construction 
 2| and 3 ins. diameter with a light check-action 
 are excellent for trout and grayling fishing, and 
 revolve so sweetly that a rising fish may be struck 
 "off the winch" without the slightest risk of break- 
 ing the gut, however fine and delicate the gut-cast 
 may be. The perforations are now carried right 
 through all the plates, whether of metal or vulcanite, 
 thus reducing the weight and helping to air and 
 dry the line. 
 
 THE '' JARDINE" REEL.
 
 LINES. 51 
 
 At the International Fisheries, 1883, some new 
 winch-fittings were exhibited, including the Weeger 
 fastening ; but since then this and others have 
 undergone considerable improvements, wherewith 
 almost any size of winch-plate can be quickly and 
 securely fixed to the fishing-rod. When the old- 
 fashioned sliding-rings were the only kind known, 
 unless the winch-plates fitted the slot, the winch 
 frequently dropped off, possibly at the critical time 
 of playing a fish, occasioning thereby entanglement 
 of the line. Such a miserable mishap cannot 
 possibly occur now, with the perfect fittings that 
 are supplied by the London and best provincial 
 tackle dealers. 
 
 Pike-lines are made of various materials, in- 
 cluding cotton, flax and silk. Of the former, those 
 manufactured by the Manchester Cotton 
 Twine Spinning Corporation are fairly 
 good, being strong, although fine ; but they have 
 a defect, they are apt to kink when wetted, as 
 indeed do all lines that are spun and not plaited. 
 
 Theaker, of Nottingham, manufactures very good 
 lines in various sizes, of which No. 3 and No. 4 are 
 possibly the best for pike-fishing. No better can 
 be obtained than the 8-plait waterproofed silk lines, 
 sold by respectable dealers in London and country. 
 A firm in Noble Street, E. C, has supplied me with 
 a plaited pure silk line made for medical purposes, 
 which I waterproof myself ; it is extremely strong, 
 but very fine, and wellnigh imperishable, if dried 
 after use, and occasionally re-dipped into water- 
 proofing, of which I give two or three receipts, and 
 the mode of applying them. I am using one of 
 these medical lines that I waterproofed six years 
 ago ; the worn and frayed ends I have broken off 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE PIKE. 
 
 from time to time, thus shortening the line ; but 
 the remaining 50 yards or so, spliced to another 
 old one, makes as useful a line as can be desired, 
 and I don't like to discard an old friend that has 
 killed big fish- 
 One of the best specially prepared lines I ever 
 met with is the size of No. 3, made of pure silk, 
 soaked in a waterproofing of oil forced thoroughly 
 into the fabric of the line by pressure of air in an 
 air-pump ; the line is pliant and elastic, and strong 
 
 SCALE OF SIZES FOR PIKE LINES. 
 PLAIT SILK LINES. 
 
 enough to capture a pike or any other fish up 
 to 40 or 50 Ibs. weight. The lines are prepared 
 by and can be obtained at Messrs. C. Farlow 
 and Co. 
 
 There are plenty of lines to be had that are low- 
 priced, but not cheap, because they are badly made 
 and untrustworthy ; they are made with a central 
 core of some shoddy material, around which silk is 
 plaited, similar to the way in which blind-cords 
 and picture-cords are made, i.e., worsted plaited 
 round a core of string. These lines are usually 
 dressed with a covering of varnish waterproofing,
 
 LINES. 53 
 
 and are sometimes sold as "American lines," 
 although I believe they are really made in Ger- 
 many ; the varnish cracks as the line stretches, 
 and the water gets to the central core, which 
 quickly rots, and, after a few times using, they are 
 unreliable, especially under the strain of a heavy 
 fish. 
 
 It is a good plan always to unpick an inch at 
 the end of a line and see if it is silk all through ; 
 if it is, a No. 3 size should be strong enough to 
 hold any fresh-water fish that swims. About twelve 
 years ago a friend of mine (now deceased) brought 
 me from Saigon, in French Cochin, some silk 
 fishing lines of marvellous quality and strength : for 
 although they were only the thickness of the finest 
 Nottingham roach-lines, which break at a strain of 
 less than 6 Ibs., these Saigon lines withstand a 
 strain of 20 Ibs., as tested and registered by a 
 Farlow spring-balance. The lines are made of 
 pure silk of the thinnest fibre, and, when unravelled, 
 the fibres measure from 18 to 20 ins. in length. 
 They are dressed with waterproofing, which with- 
 stands the action of sea-water ; I have used them 
 for the past ten years in both fresh-water and sea- 
 fishing, capturing many big fish, some exceeding 
 20 Ibs., and the lines have proved unbreakable, 
 and appear to be imperishable. I have succeeded 
 lately in obtaining these lines again, and very 
 likely they will be procurable in London and 
 country tackle-shops ; and as the price will be only 
 half that charged for the cheapest lines that are 
 strong enough to hold large pike, barbel or sea- 
 fish, there is certain to be a large demand for these 
 Saigon lines. 
 
 The following is a recipe for waterproof dressing
 
 54 THE PIKE. 
 
 for fishing-lines, which I have used for many years, 
 and found to answer well : 
 
 Of boiled cold-drawn linseed oil a pint, a wine- 
 glassful of gold size, two tablespoonfuls of copal- 
 varnish, poured all together into an earthen pipkin ; 
 cover with a small cheese-plate or tin patty-pan to 
 keep out dust, and place on hob of kitchen-stove- 
 for three or four days to simmer, stirring the 
 ingredients occasionally until the gold-size and 
 copal is thoroughly incorporated with the oil. 
 Then coil the line loosely in an eld pie-dish, pour 
 enough waterproofing over the line to cover it, 
 place paper or something over, and stand them for 
 two or three days in a gentle heat for the line to 
 soak thoroughly full of the dressing ; after this is 
 done, take the end of line off the top coil, and draw 
 all the line through a piece of an old kid-glove 
 held between the fingers and thumb, squeezing out 
 all the superfluous dressing, letting the line fall on 
 to a large sheet of paper to save it from dust or 
 dirt. When this is done hang it in coils on, or 
 wind it round, an old clothes-horse or the backs of 
 two chairs, where leave it for two or three days to 
 dry ; then stretch it, on a warm day, in the garden 
 between smooth nails driven into the walls or 
 fence, or between trees, and polish the line by 
 rubbing it with a little sweet oil on a piece of soft 
 leather or old kid glove. 
 
 Another recipe is : 
 
 Of boiled linseed oil, one pint ; beeswax, quarter 
 of a pound. Put the oil in a gallipot and stand it 
 in water kept boiling while the wax is added in 
 small pieces ; when melted immerse the line and 
 let it remain some hours in soak. When this is 
 done the line should be tightly drawn through a
 
 DRESSING FOR LINES. 55 
 
 folded piece of wash-leather, held by the fingers 
 and thumb, and then stretched to dry in a warm 
 room. 
 
 Here is one from Keenes Practical FisJierman : 
 
 " Half a pint of boiled oil, thrcequarters of an 
 ounce of beeswax, one and a half ounce of Bur- 
 gundy pitch ; one tablespoonful of copal varnish. 
 Simmer the line in the mixture, which should not be 
 raised to a greater heat than is necessary to quite 
 liquify the component parts ; then treat the line 
 and stretch it as described in the previous receipt." 
 
 The next is taken from Chitty's Fly-fisJier's Text 
 Book : 
 
 " Dressing for Lines. To a quarter of a pint of 
 'double-boiled cold-drawn' linseed oil, add about 
 one ounce of gold size ; gently warm and mix them 
 well, being first careful to have the line quite dry. 
 While the mixture is warm, soak it therein till it is 
 fully saturated to its very centre, say for twenty- 
 four hours ; then pass it through a piece of flannel, 
 pressing it sufficiently to take off the superficial 
 coat, which enables that which is in the interior to 
 dry well and in time to get stiff. The line must 
 then be hung up in the air, wind, or sun, out of 
 the reach of moisture, for about a fortnight, until 
 pretty well dry ; it must then be re-dipped to give 
 an outer coat, for which less soaking is necessary. 
 After this wipe it again, but lightly ; wind it on a 
 chair-back or towel-horse before a hot fire, and 
 then let it remain for two or three hours, which will 
 cause the mixture on it to ' flow ' (as japanners 
 term it) and give it an even gloss over the whole. 
 It must then be left to dry as before ; the length of 
 time, as it depends on the weather and place, 
 observation must determine upon. By this means
 
 56 THE PIKE. 
 
 it becomes impervious to wet, and sufficiently stiff 
 never to close or entangle, the oil producing the 
 former quality, and the gold size (which is insoluble 
 in water) the latter, whilst the commixture pre- 
 vents the size becoming too hard and stiff. A 
 trolling line should be thus dressed every season at 
 least." 
 
 When the angler is away on a fishing tour, and 
 new lines are not procurable, it becomes necessary 
 sometimes to temporarily re-dress a spinning or 
 trolling line, which may be accomplished by stretch- 
 ing the line between two trees or posts, and 
 thoroughly rubbing in white wax, finishing or 
 smoothing the line off with boiled oil placed on a 
 piece of wash-leather, and rubbed lightly over. 
 The wax and oil can be obtained at the nearest 
 oil and colour shop. 
 
 Referring back to the sizes of lines, I find No. 2 
 quite heavy enough if made of pure silk, plaited ; 
 thick lines are not necessarily all of them strong. 
 A fine line, carefully waterproofed with a dressing 
 of linseed oil, copal or mastic varnish, and gold 
 size, and thoroughly dried, will last for years, is 
 always supple, and a pleasure to use. 
 
 It is always necessary to dry pike-lines, or in- 
 deed any and all kinds of lines after a day's 
 fishing, by unwinding from the reel as many yards 
 as are wetted, and hanging them in coils on any- 
 thing convenient, such as the back of a chair, or 
 winding the line round the back of two chairs 
 placed a little apart, and leaving it there till dry ; 
 and when it is thoroughly dry, rubbing it with deer- 
 fat or some other good medium for preserving lines, 
 and making them buoyant, supple, and smooth. 
 
 A very convenient little machine for drying
 
 TRACES. 57 
 
 lines can be got at Farlow and Co., Strand ; it 
 is collapsible, and easily packed in a fishing-basket 
 or pike-bag. When the line is wound on it, air 
 passes freely through every part and speedily 
 dries it. Each winder is fitted with a screw-clamp, 
 so that it can be affixed to a table or window shelf, 
 and the clamp is arched to receive the " scoop" of 
 winch, which can be placed or removed at will, so 
 that the machine itself need not be removed after 
 once fixing. An advantage in these winders is 
 they prevent kinks forming in the line, which 
 
 LINE DRIER. 
 
 sometimes happens when it is hung up in coils, or 
 wound round the backs of chairs. 
 
 The next tackles to be considered are pike-traces 
 for spinning, livebaiting, paternostering. and trolling. 
 Several new kinds of traces have of late 
 
 Trsccs 
 
 been brought to the notice of anglers. The 
 most novel are of thin annealed wire, and among the 
 best and neatest are those made and sold by Messrs. 
 C. Farlow and Co. ; they are particularly strong, 
 and so fine that they show but little when in use. 
 The " Hercules " patent rust-proof traces, manufac- 
 tured by Messrs. S. Allcock and Co., are practically 
 unbreakable and excellent tackles for the capture 
 of heavy fish ; they also make gimps of platinum
 
 58 THE PIKE. 
 
 wire a great improvement on the old-fashioned 
 brass gimps, now seldom used, being too bright 
 and so easily seen by the fish. Next to platinum is 
 copper gimp ; it does not show much in the water ; 
 it is also strong and flexible. If nothing else than 
 brass can be got, it can be coloured or stained by 
 soaking it in a solution of bichlorate of platinum 
 mixed with water (one part of platinum to six or 
 eight of water), then dried before the fire ; but the 
 solution must be very weak, as it is so powerful 
 that it destroys gimp quickly. I find a good plan 
 is to hang brass gimp in the fumes of burning 
 brimstone, i.e., flour of sulphur ; this will stain it a 
 deep copper colour and not rot the gimp. An 
 iron stove-pipe placed on end, the gimp coiled 
 loosely and hung inside at the top, covered with a 
 slate, and the burning sulphur introduced at the 
 bottom, the gimp remaining in the fumes a few 
 minutes, this answers capitally. 
 
 Personally I much prefer pike-traces made of 
 stout salmon-gut, or of twisted trout-gut, three 
 strands, tapered, and stained blue or grey (i.e., the 
 tint of water with a weak solution of indigo, or 
 Stcphens's blue-black ink and water, or "water- 
 weed " colour, i.e., light olive-green), by first 
 soaking the gut or trace in an alum mordant, and 
 then in a solution of indigo mixed with sufficient 
 turmeric to produce the shade required. 
 "Red-Spinner" (Wm. Senior) says: 
 " It is always best when pike-fishing to use a 
 trace of twisted gut ; the use of coarse gimp is now 
 generally acknowledged to be a mistake, and the 
 deterioration of gimp some little time ago led to a 
 more general adoption of the twisted or double-gut 
 trace. Gimp, however, is essential for the hooks
 
 STAINS FOR GUT. 59 
 
 when angling for fish with such a formidable 
 furnishing of teeth as pike." 
 
 The following recipes for stains for gut are 
 selected from Keenes Practical Fislierman : 
 
 "Light Yellow or Amber. One and a half 
 scruples of quercitron bark, one scruple alum, one 
 scruple cream of tartar, sixteen grains of madder, 
 four drops of muriate of tin. Immerse three minutes. 
 
 " Another Amber Stain. Steep a large handful 
 of the common barberry tree in a pint of boiling 
 water, and let it stand for a couple of hours. 
 
 "Another Green Colour. Steep the gut in strong 
 green tea for twelve hours. 
 
 " Light Brown Stain. Steep in strong coffee. 
 
 " Bluish Green. Boil a handful of logwood in a 
 pint of water, and add copperas until of a suffi- 
 ciently deep colour. Immerse the gut, when the 
 preparation is cold, until the requisite hue is 
 obtained. A piece of copperas the size of a pea is 
 ordinarily quite sufficient. 
 
 "Light Green. Boil a piece of green baize and 
 steep in the liquor while it is warm. 
 
 " Light Yellow. Steep in tea or coffee lees. 
 
 "Red Water Stain. Steep in a teacupful of 
 black tea, till of sufficient depth of tint." 
 
 It is necessary to have a lead on the " spinning 
 trace," placed from two feet to three feet above the 
 
 bait, of sufficient weight to sink it (whether 
 
 < i Leads 
 
 a natural or artificial bait), about a couple 
 
 of feet under the surface of the water; and the lead 
 should be so formed or shaped as to prevent twists 
 or kinks running up the line ; there should also 
 be three swivels, or one double and one single 
 swivel between the lead and hooks, to assist the 
 revolving or spinning of the bait
 
 6o 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 There are various kinds of leads, but all of them 
 should be so constructed that their greatest weight, 
 
 DOUBLE Box SWIVEL. 
 
 DOUBLE Box SWIVEL, WITH 
 IMPROVED HOOK. 
 
 SINGLE Box SWIVEL, WITH DOUBLE WIRE SPRING HOOK SWIVEL. 
 
 IMPROVED HOOK. 
 
 or the centre of gravity, hangs below the level of 
 the trace, and then no twisting or kinking can 
 occur in the line above the lead. Among the best 
 
 FAKLOW'S IMPROVED SPINNING LEADS, WITH HOOK SWIVEL AT 
 
 EACH END. 
 
 for use on spinning traces are the " Pennell leads," 
 which are made in four sizes from oz. to f oz. 
 weight, or an improved lead made by Farlow an 
 
 " ARCHER-JARDINE" LEADS. 
 
 Co., and the " Archer-Jardine " non-slipping de- 
 tachable leads : the latter are made in twelve sizes, 
 commencing at f inch of oz. weight for chub and
 
 LEADS. 61 
 
 perch-fishing, the middle sizes from li inch to 2\ 
 inches for pike-fishing, and the largest, from 3 
 inches to 4 inches which are used in sea-fishing : 
 these detachable non-slipping leads can be placed 
 any distance from the bait by coiling the trace in 
 the grooves and wires ; and if necessary instantly 
 shifted to another position : or a heavier or lighter 
 lead put on by untwisting the trace ; if to be used 
 when spinning for pike, or other fish, bend or curve 
 the lead bctvyeen fingers and thumb, and this 
 will prevent the annoyance of kinks or twists 
 forming in the spinning line. These leads arc 
 manufactured by Bartleet and Sons, of Rcdditch, 
 and can be got at any of the London or country 
 fishing-tackle shops. In the early part of this 
 century, trolling with a dead-gorge-bait was the 
 mode usually adopted for catching pike, and the 
 art of spinning a natural bait was almost un- 
 known, or at any rate had not been elevated to 
 a science ; swivels were used then which were 
 badly constructed, and leads were wrong in shape, 
 i.e. pipe-leads, or a number of shots weighted 
 the trace, and rolled in the water, or rotated, 
 allowing kinks to run up the line, tangling and 
 crinkling it to such an extent that much of it had 
 to be taken off the reel and straightened, thus 
 incurring loss of time and discomfort to the 
 angler. Now, owing to improvements in the shape 
 of leads and perfect lines, &c., all these incon- 
 veniences have ceased to exist ; but still as tangles 
 and kinks do sometimes occur, the best way to 
 take them out of the line is to draw twenty or 
 thirty yards through the ring of the top-joint, and 
 trail it two or three times backwards and forwards 
 across a grass field, until all the twists are got rid
 
 62 THE PIKE. 
 
 of, when spinning may be recommenced with 
 some degree of pleasure. 
 
 The next among the more important tackles to 
 consider are spinning-flights, of which there are 
 
 several patterns, all good of their kind ; and 
 Flights 
 
 as spinning is probably the most popular 
 
 and sporting, as well as the most successful, method 
 that can be employed to capture a quantity, where 
 pike are rather small fora lifelong experience has 
 convinced me that much the largest fish are caught 
 by livebait-snap and paternoster fishing I will 
 now particularize some of the best spinning-flights 
 of the present day, their construction, &c. ; and, 
 where all are so near perfection, without being in- 
 vidious, or giving the palm to either of them. The 
 Pennell spinning-flights are made in three sizes 
 
 No. I flight is for small gudgeon, dace, or bleak, 
 from 4 ins. to 5 ins. long, and is suitable for small 
 jack of 3 Ibs. to 5 Ibs. weight. 
 
 No. 2 is for larger gudgeon, or small dace, from 
 5 ins. to 6 ins. long, and is suited to small pike 
 from 5 Ibs. to 8 Ibs. weight. 
 
 No. 3 for dace of 6 ins. to 7 ins. long, are the size 
 of tackle for pike of lolbs. and upwards. 
 
 In these flights Mr. Pennell has discarded his 
 previous shape of a curved reverse tail-hook, and 
 adopted a straight reverse-hook instead, which is an 
 improvement, as it is easier to put the bait on the 
 flights, and when on it holds more firmly, lasts 
 longer, and spins brilliantly. Rejecting the con- 
 struction of the now almost obsolete " Thames 
 flight," Mr. Pennell advocates "flying triangles;" 
 they certainly add to the killing powers of the 
 tackles, but are apt (I think) to gather floating 
 weeds.
 
 FLIGHTS. 
 
 The next flight I describe is the joint invention 
 of Mr. H. C. Pennell and Mr. A. N. Bromley, and 
 is known as " Farlow's Registered Flight ; rt it is 
 used by many practi- 
 cal pike fishermen, 
 and considered one 
 of the most simple 
 and perfect tackles 
 made. To bait the 
 flight pass the wire 
 loop under the gill- 
 cover and out of the 
 bait's mouth, then 
 put the single hook 
 through the back 
 (as shown in the illustra- 
 tion), pull gently on this 
 hook towards the head of 
 bait, and when the tail 
 assumes the curve it is to 
 retain, stick the double 
 barbed pin into the side 
 and right through the bait. 
 Then pass the wire loop 
 through the upper lip or 
 nose of the bait first and 
 the under lip second, and 
 again under itself at mouth, 
 thus forming a half knot, 
 which never slips. These 
 tackles are also made with 
 sliding lip-hooks, of which 
 
 the " Faciles " invented by Emil Weeger and 
 made in four sizes are excellent ones, for they 
 can be slipped up or down without injuring the 
 
 U 
 
 " FARLOW'S REGISTERED 
 FLIGHT." 
 
 (The gimp twelve inches long).
 
 64 THE PIKE. 
 
 gut or gimp, which is not the case with some other 
 lip-hooks. 
 
 It will be observed that the gimp is to be twisted 
 three or four times round the shank and the hook 
 thus fixed in its proper place ; for the correct 
 position of the bait when attached to the flight 
 depends mainly upon the nice adjustment of the 
 lip-hook ; this can easily be determined by the curva- 
 ture of the bait's tail (see the small sketch of bait on 
 previous page) ; if the lip-hook is drawn too closely 
 the shoulder of the bait will be bent, and it will 
 not spin correctly and brilliantly, but will "wobble," 
 which, as a rule, is not an attractive motion, 
 although pike sometimes will go for a wobbling 
 
 FARLOW'S "FACILE" LIP HOOKS (REGISTF.RKD). 
 
 bait, which has the appearance of a wounded fish 
 swimming with difficulty. 
 
 The " Francis " flight is a capital tackle that has 
 stood "the test of time, and is still preferred by 
 many an expert among the older school of pike- 
 anglers. It is strong but simple in construction, 
 not likely to get out of order, the bait is easily put 
 on, and the one flying triangle as placed midway 
 on the trace shows but little, yet is deadly. This 
 flight would be. improved by discarding the lip- 
 hook and substituting one of the " facile " hooks. 
 There is another tackle, known as " Storr's flight," 
 that is simple, convenient, and effective. It con- 
 sists of one large triangle ; this is attached to 
 9 inches of gimp, which by means of a baiting-
 
 FLIGHTS. 65 
 
 needle is passed through the bait from the vent and 
 out of its mouth, one of the hooks of the large 
 triangle jamming against the vent and there re- 
 maining. A small triangle on an inch and a 
 quarter of gimp is slipped over the hook-gimp and 
 flies loose above the shoulders of the bait, and a 
 sliding lip-hook completes the tackle. 
 
 To bait a spinning flight lay the bait in the 
 palm of the left hand, take the tail-hook by the 
 upper part of bend nearest the barb, and pass the 
 point into the side of the bait about half an inch 
 from the base of the tail, and press the point through 
 the flesh upwards and out again ; or, if the flight 
 has an end triangle, pass one of its hooks barb 
 upwards through the flesh and out again, as close 
 to the tail-fin as is possible. Then insert the 
 " straight-reverse," and push its barb quite through 
 the bait ; or if a small reverse hook, press home the 
 barb, so as to secure or fix the tail part of bait at 
 the curve or angle, which a very little practice will 
 show is the correct one. 
 
 Then having adjusted the lip-hook to the exact 
 length of the bait, pass it through both lips, the 
 upper one first if a gudgeon but the lower lip 
 first with dace and roach. 
 
 The flying triangle is intended to hang free and 
 not to be hooked into the bait ; the shoulder and 
 body of which should hang quite straight when 
 affixed to the flight, the tail portion of the bait 
 only being curved, as shown in the small cuts ; 
 and these instructions being correctly carried out, 
 the bait should spin in a brilliant manner, and look 
 very life-like. 
 
 Another very important element in spinning 
 flights is the shape and make of the treble-hooks, 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 or triangles, of which many are sold faulty in con- 
 struction and badly tempered. I have used 
 Hooks [ 
 
 some that were so soft that the hooks 
 straightened out at the bend and the fish escaped, 
 
 while others were so brittle that they snapped at 
 the barb or bend ; others were badly brazed, and
 
 HOOKS. 67 
 
 the hooks came apart. The best I can discover 
 are " sneck-bcnd Trebles." Treble hooks with 
 eyes also often prove very useful to pike-anglers, 
 and both kinds are made in various sizes. (See 
 illustrations.) 
 
 Some triangles are bronzed, others are tempered 
 a blue tint ; but those that are the natural colour 
 of the wire they are made of are the best (in my 
 opinion), as they assimilate more nearly to the 
 colour of the spinning-bait, whether it be a dace or 
 gudgeon. 
 
 F 2
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SPINNING THE WATER HOW AND WHEN 
 TO SPIN. 
 
 THAT branch of the angler's art which ap- 
 proaches more nearly to the elegance of 
 fly-fishing, and is certainly a more artistic way 
 of capturing pike than any other method, is spin- 
 ning ; and as I have already described the rod, 
 tackles, &c., necessary, I will now ask my reader 
 to accompany me to the river, and spin for a 
 pike. 
 
 We will put the rod together with the long top- 
 joint, fix the reel in its place, draw the line 
 through the rings, put on the trace and 
 mng flight, with a five-inch dace for the bait, 
 * r and, seeing that it spins nicely, begin by 
 fishing all the nearest water first ; taking 
 off from the reel enough line to make a cast 
 of, say, ten yards ; then drawing the bait up 
 to within six feet of the rod-top, the line held 
 between the left thumb and fingers, grasping the 
 rod in the right hand, with the knob on the end of 
 the butt placed against the right groin, and the rod 
 at an angle of 45, we turn the right shoulder 
 towards the place we desire to cast the bait to ;
 
 SPINNING. 69 
 
 then with a gentle but accelerated swing of the 
 rod, as the '"heft" or strain on the line is felt we 
 release it, and the bait should reach the spot 
 wished, and drop into the water with scarcely a 
 splash. Frequent practice will induce skill ; then 
 the distance covered may be increased, and the 
 angler will become proficient. It is not of much 
 use spinning water exceeding six feet in depth ; 
 choose quiet streams and glides adjacent to sedges 
 and spear-grass, between weed growths, or near 
 beds of water-lilies, whose leaves and stems have 
 been cut off and destroyed by winter frosts. 
 Shallows, near deep holes and weirs, are excellent 
 for spinning, and likely to yield good fish. 
 
 Lower the rod point to within a couple of feet of 
 the surface, and holding it at an angle to the bait, 
 begin by drawing the line in at a moderate speed 
 with the left hand ; and if a very small sweep or 
 stroke of the rod top is given between the intervals 
 of drawing in the line, it adds to the attractiveness 
 of the spin. The draws or pulls and movement of 
 the rod -top must be varied in quickness and length 
 according to the depth of water ; the left hand 
 making a draw about every two seconds or a 
 trifle less, each length of line drawn in being 
 usually about four feet : and a cast should be 
 made over every two yards fished. 
 
 The bait should not be lifted from the water 
 until close up to the bank or boat ; pike frequently 
 lurk under the nearest bank, especially if sedges or 
 reeds grow in and fringe the water ; sometimes 
 pike follow a spinning bait all across the water to 
 the boat or bank, making a desperate dash at the 
 last moment as if afraid to lose it. I have known 
 them to leap out and seize the bait savagely a
 
 70 THE PIKE. 
 
 foot from the surface of the water to their own 
 discomfiture. 
 
 Spinning is grand sport when pike are roving 
 
 about in search of food ; then is the best time. 
 
 Spin your bait a yard or two in front of a 
 
 >P1 the feeding fish, and ten to one it will be 
 
 finest seized with a rush that will make you 
 
 sport ... 
 
 burn with excitement. 1 well remem- 
 ber when the late H. L. Rolfe (the Landseer of 
 fish painters) was my companion, on December 
 2Oth, 1876, fishing a grand expanse of water 
 where pikes fed fast and furiously all that short 
 winter's day. My friend was not very well, and 
 as the weather was cold he sat for some time 
 in the stern of the boat wrapped up in a rug, leav- 
 ing me to do the fishing. Pike were breaking the 
 water all around us, and the bait had only to be 
 spun near a fish to be instantly seized. The results 
 of that day's sport were fifty-four jack and pike, the 
 largest i/lbs., and three fine perch, from 3lbs. to2lbs. 
 each. The waggonette arriving, it was time to pack 
 up my rod and tackle ; but on nearing the boat- 
 house I made one parting cast, and landed a pike 
 of 1 1 Ibs. 
 
 When near to trees or weed-beds, and there is 
 danger of casting the bait into them, the angler 
 should let his line run lightly through his left 
 hand, instantly closing his fingers and thus put- 
 ting a check on it, if the bait is likely to fall 
 where it may get hung up in boughs or other 
 obstructions. By thus arresting his cast and letting 
 the bait fall into an open place, he will avoid many 
 breakages and save much tackle during a day's 
 spinning, especially in a narrow river where bushes 
 and willows margin the water, or .old pollard trunks
 
 SPINNING. 71 
 
 jut out every here and there ; for if the flight gets 
 firmly stuck in a tree, or embedded in a growth of 
 reeds, when a strain is put on, something must go, 
 possibly the trace, whether it is of gut or gimp; 
 the released line flies back, for on the opposite side 
 of the stream, swaying backwards and forwards on 
 a branch, maybe, remain his flight and trace, with 
 perhaps two or three yards of line. How does the 
 practical spinner go to work ? To borrow a capital 
 angler's (Mr. H. B. Bromhead's) description : " He 
 makes no erratic throws, hooking into reeds or 
 floating debris ; his bait, properly leaded, shoots 
 evenly and swiftly to the desired haven, like an 
 arrow from the bow. Right across the river, 
 25 yards if an inch, it falls right under the drooping 
 boughs of an old willow, in a quiet eddy caused by 
 a small bay in the bank line. 
 
 "With but little splash the bait drops into the 
 water, and after sinking a foot or two is drawn 
 evenly across the river. It is a pikey bit of water, 
 a fringe of waving, rotting, sepia-tinted reeds 
 bordering the bay. If any kind of the species 
 Esox Indus possessed an especial retreat, this is the 
 one. Is master pike at home to-day ? I think he 
 is. A swirl in the water, a sudden resistance on 
 the line, a gleam of light colour in the dark green 
 depths of the river flowing smoothly along, as a 
 mighty fish seizes the bait and endeavours to re- 
 turn to his lair to munch his captive at his leisure. 
 
 " Not so fast, my friend. That 10 foot of green- 
 heart and lancewood is struck upwards smartly, 
 the line quivers like an arrow embedded in the 
 target, and a right royal battle has commenced. 
 Gamely the fish struggles, vainly endeavouring to 
 once more take up his quarters in those willow
 
 72 THE PIKE. 
 
 roots, which for months past have been his home, 
 
 a place carefully avoided by every well educated 
 
 roach and dace in the water. 
 
 '' It is not to be, though ; two or three frantic 
 
 rushes on the part of the fish, as many steady pulls 
 
 by piscator, and master pike is brought within 
 
 reach of the gaff or landing net." 
 
 There is more life-like motion and brilliancy im- 
 The parted to the spin of a bait by the Thames 
 
 Thames style (which I have endeavoured to des- 
 
 NoHi'ng- cribe on P a S e 73) than by the Notting- 
 ham ham method of spinning off the reel, which 
 has (in my opinion) too level and jog-trot 
 a motion and altogether lacks the darting and 
 varied speed, and flashing swerves, which can be 
 imparted to the lure by an adept in the Thames 
 mode, and which are so peculiarly tempting to pike, 
 and often induce them to feed even when not par- 
 ticularly hungry ; and notwithstanding what Mr. 
 Baily a great exponent of the Nottingham style 
 asserts in his Angler's Instructor, the substitution 
 of a mere mechanical motion for the combined 
 movement of the hand and rod is one great 
 objection to the method of winding the bait in 
 on a reel. Another fault is the large proportion of 
 inaccurate shots that are made by the Notting- 
 ham mode of casting off the reel. I have seen 
 Trent anglers, also those of Thames, clever 
 and successful fishermen, who had adopted the 
 Nottingham style, make most erratic shots, the 
 bait not falling or reaching within many yards 
 of the spot desired, or possibly deposited in the 
 overhanging branches of a tree, especially if the 
 finger pressure on the periphery of the reel was for 
 an instant removed ; but a proficient in the Thames
 
 SPINNING. 73 
 
 method of spinning should be able to drop his bait 
 on to a soup plate, at twenty yards distance. 
 
 To do this he would withdraw the necessary 
 length of line from his reel, and by a sort of shuttle 
 movement (as the late Francis Francis described 
 it) of the fingers and thumb, gather the line in a 
 series of small coils on to the palm of his left hand 
 easy to do, when the knack is acquired and then 
 making the cast, and letting the line run through 
 the fingers, but checking it if necessary just 
 sufficiently to insure the bait falling exactly into 
 the place wished ; in fact, I have played and 
 killed jack, " on and off my hand," i.e., fish which 
 have not exceeded 5 Ibs. weight. Avoid dropping 
 the line on the ground, or the floor of a punt ; it is 
 liable to be trodden en and damaged by a grit 
 bruising or cutting it ; or trouble may ensue in 
 the shape of a tangle, or worse a breakage ; 
 endeavour to wind the loose line on to the reel as 
 quickly as is possible ; and then play the fish " on 
 and off" the reel. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that the Thames is a 
 splendid river for spinning, varying, as it does over 
 
 all its course in shallows, and deeps, the , 
 
 The best 
 habit of pike being to feed on the waters 
 
 shallows in the morning and evening, and f the 
 
 Thames 
 to retreat to the deeps in the hotter and 
 
 brighter part of the day, where they may be 
 caught by paternostering and livebait snap- 
 fishing ; which kinds of angling will be described 
 in my later pages. The following are some capital 
 places on the Thames for spinning in late autumn 
 and winter when frosts have decayed, and floods 
 have cleared away, the weeds ; but the angler will 
 require a punt, to be enabled to command all the
 
 74 THE PIKE. 
 
 best water. The reach below Culham Lock, 
 and at Clifton-Ilampdcn ; from Streatley to 
 Harts Wood ; Maple Durham to Caversham ; 
 from Sonning and thence half-way towards Ship- 
 lake ; Wargrave to Henley ; Hambledon Lock 
 to Medmcnham ; from Temple Lock and on past 
 Bisham Abbey ; Marlow-weir to Spade Oak ; 
 the water under Clevendcn Woods ; from 
 Taplow to Monkey-Island and thence to Water 
 Oakley ; the old river at Old Windsor, and 
 the shallows by the Bells of Ouseley and Magna 
 Charta Island ; the river from Staincs, round 
 Pcnton Hook, to Laleham. Many of the above- 
 named waters vary from four to nix feet in depth, 
 hold plenty of jack and pike, and if carefully fished 
 should well reward the persevering angler. The 
 Kennet from Hungerford to Reading is another 
 first-class stream, celebrated for fine pike, of 
 which fish the late Mr. Francis Francis made many 
 large captures ; once (I think at Earl Craven's, 
 near Newbury) he put on record nearly 3 cwts., 
 the result of a day's spinning executed by 
 himself and a friend. But fishermen have so 
 increased in numbers of late years, that such 
 catches, or anything approaching them, are few 
 and far between. The Avon, which rises in 
 Wiltshire near Devizes, is fishable for pike at 
 Bulford, and all through its course from thence to 
 Salisbury, and on past Ringwood, contains many 
 fine stretches of water peculiarly adapted for 
 spinning. At Longford Castle, through the 
 kind permission of the Earl of Radnor, I once, 
 with Francis Francis for my companion, had two 
 days of grand sport ; and just below Braemore 
 Bridge, Mr. C. H. Pennell, some time since, caught
 
 DIRECTIONS FOR SPINNING. 75 
 
 twenty jack and pike, within the hour, spinning. 
 At Downton, Ri^gwood, and some other places are 
 "open" waters, which can be fished by the 
 payment of a daily fee. The Frome, Dorsetshire, 
 is another capital river for the pike-spinner ; and 
 where and when permission can be obtained, is 
 easily to. be fished from either bank. In the first 
 years of my acquaintance with this river, I had 
 many fine fish out of it, some of the pike exceeding 
 20 Ibs. each, but I am informed it has been much 
 overfished during the past ten years and every 
 small jack retained, to the depletion of those fish 
 in the river. If all jack under 4 Ibs. were 
 carefully unhooked and returned uninjured to the 
 water, the Frome would again become one of the 
 best pike rivers in the West of England. (See 
 page 3 1). 
 
 Spinning has its charms and advantages, for 
 with no sloppy bait-can to carry, but a couple or 
 three dozen selected baits instead, packed Direc 
 in bran, tackle case and flask in pocket, tions for 
 rod in hand, gaff and fish-bag in sling, s P innin & 
 warmly clad, and well booted, nothing can be 
 more enjoyable than to wander beside a " pikey " 
 river, spinning all the likely places, and catching 
 fish here and there. 
 
 When a pike seizes the bait, instantly give a firm 
 and decisively determined draw of the rod top 
 (rather than a strike) by smartly moving the rod 
 point to either the' right or the left, i.e., contrary 
 to the direction in which the fish may be running. 
 Or it may be necessary to elevate the rod top 
 smartly ; but any way it is the decided draw, and 
 the firm hold on the fish for a second or two, when 
 it is making its first efforts to escape, that will most
 
 76 THE PIKE. 
 
 surely bury the hooks deeply and well over their 
 barbs. Some anglers advocate a succession of 
 short, sharp strikes, but these seldom drive the 
 hooks home, and often result in snapping the 
 top joint, or the trace, at possibly a knot or a 
 swivel. 
 
 In keen frosts, however, it is not of much use 
 spinning, for in such weather pike retire to the 
 deeps, and the best way then is to paternoster 
 or to fish snap, with the livebait as deep down 
 in the water as possible. Of natural baits for pike- 
 spinning, none equal small dace and gudgeon, both 
 of which, because of their shape, spin better than 
 roach, and being tougher, last longer on the flight. 
 Next to them is a small roach or chub ; but when 
 waters are somewhat discoloured or swollen, a dace 
 of rather larger size, also because of its brighter 
 scales, may be used with advantage. 
 
 In London and other large cities and towns 
 livebait can be obtained at the fishing-tackle shops, 
 but in country places, where it is necessary to catch 
 them, a sweep-net or casting-net must be used ; 
 and as some practice is required in the using of the 
 latter net, it is wise for the caster to put on a 
 waterproof, to prevent himself getting wet. A few 
 handfuls of groundbait thrown into the water which 
 the netsman can most conveniently cover with the 
 expanse of his cast-net, will draw the small fish 
 together and ensure a catch. A bait-can will be 
 found necessary to keep the baits alive, for stale, 
 flaccid baits are not much good for spinning, and 
 from the livebait-can they may be transferred to 
 the punt-well, or a floating perforated bait trunk, 
 or one with zinc gratings, where they will live for 
 weeks if occasionally fed with gentles or small
 
 SPINNING-BAITS. 
 
 77 
 
 worms, and the angler will have a store always at 
 hand, and ready for use. 
 
 I have already mentioned packing spinning- 
 baits in bran, which preserves the silvery appear- 
 ance of their scales, and washes off the mo- 
 ment the bait is in the water. Another good 
 plan is, immediately after they have been killed 
 
 CASTING-NET. 
 
 by giving them two or three sharp flips with the 
 finger, or tap with the pocket-knife handle, or with 
 a pebble on the back of the head to wrap them in 
 a soft, damp cloth, which may be re-moistened 
 from time to time ; this will preserve their bright- 
 ness, and the scales will not slip. I should not 
 recommend them to be put into salt or brine ;
 
 78 THE PIKE. 
 
 boracic acid or powder is a good medium to pre- 
 serve them, so also is glacialine. I have found 
 methylated spirits to answer admirably, and that 
 in it baits will keep tough and bright for months. 
 Previous to going (some years ago now) to Galway 
 and Lough Corrib for three weeks' salmon and 
 pike fishing, I obtained two one- gallon jars, and 
 twelve dozen small Thames dace, which I killed in 
 the way already described, and then dropped head 
 first into the jars, which were half-filled with methy- 
 lated spirits of wine. They answered admirably, 
 and I killed many fish with them spinning 
 Thames fashion. 
 
 The Irish boatmen had never seen dace before 
 then (for there are none of those fish in Ireland), 
 nor were they acquainted with my mode of fishing. 
 They always rowed a boat about the likeliest 
 water, while the angler, with two rods, towed or 
 trailed two baits thirty or forty yards astern. I 
 brought some of those baits back to London, and 
 used them the following season, when they were as 
 bright and perfect as when put into the spirits. 
 My friend, and oftentimes angling companion, the 
 late Mr. H. L. Rolfe, imparted to me the advantage 
 of preserving spinning baits in methylated spirits, 
 and he repeatedly used large whitebait treated 
 the same way, for the capture of large trout, find- 
 ing them excellent on light spinning tackle, and 
 superior in brilliancy and toughness to minnows, or 
 any bait he had previously fished with. Preserved 
 baits, such as small dace, bleak, gudgeon, sprats, &c., 
 suitable for pike-spinning can now be obtained at 
 most of the London and provincial fishing-tackle 
 shops. 
 
 Six or seven inches cut from the tail end of
 
 BAITS. 79 
 
 a freshly-caught eel makes a tough and lasting lure ; 
 which, having also a very life-like appearance, often 
 proves a very deadly bait 
 
 When fishing Corrib, I caught a very large pike 
 with an eel tail. To construct this lure, get an 
 eel eighteen inches long, and cut off eight inches of 
 its tail, turn back the skin for two inches, and cut 
 through the exposed flesh ; form the head by 
 straightening the skin and tying it round with a 
 waxed thread closely up to the flesh ; again reverse 
 the skin over the ligature and sew it round to the 
 body of the bait, and then place it on a flight in 
 the way already described for the mounting of 
 other spinning baits. Salted eel tails last a longer 
 time, and are useful when fresh ones are not to be 
 got. Whole eels of eight or nine inches in length 
 make capital pike baits. I have constructed imi- 
 tations of them in india-rubber, which kilt almost 
 as well as the natural, and have patented them, 
 under the name of " Convolute Eel Baits," of which 
 the illustration is one-third the size of the baits. 
 The wire in the centre of the rubber allows them 
 to be lengthened or shortened in the coil, thus 
 altering the rapidity of spin. In small sizes, 
 three or four inches long, they are deadly baits 
 for fishing weirs, &c., for large trout ; also for 
 pollack, bass, and other sea fish. 
 
 The next illustration is a representation of the 
 " Collapsible Convolute Bait," in which the india- 
 rubber bends under the pressure of the fish's jaw 
 and the hooks are very firmly fixed. The 
 " Helix," another india-rubber spinning bait I have 
 lately invented, is a very tempting lure. In 
 this bait, the spin or rotary motion can be instantly 
 reversed by unfixing the rubber from the end
 
 8o 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 clamps, and coiling it the contrary way this 
 change of spin prevents any twists or kinks 
 forming in the line and the weight being within 
 the body of the bait, the usual lead is not required 
 on the trace, thus the objectional double splash is 
 
 avoided when the bait falls into the water, (see 
 illustration). 
 
 There is a large variety of artificial spinning- 
 baits, and some of them are very close imitations 
 of natural fish. Carter and Co.'s well known 
 " Wagtail Baits," are also constructed of soft rubber
 
 BAITS. 8 1 
 
 with metal fins, and enjoy a good reputation as 
 killing lures. I have had good sport when using 
 them myself, pike go for them eagerly ; they are 
 made in other sizes, suitable for salmon, trout and 
 perch. The same firm have recently made a novel 
 
 JARDINE'S "REVERSIBLE HELIX" SPINNING BAIT. 
 
 departure in the " Cachalot " a metal bait, like a 
 natural fish, which has a slow rotary motion : but 
 at its head there is a spinner which revolves 
 with great rapidity. Anglers who use it (and they 
 arc many) tell me it is a slayer of pike. 
 
 With the view of doing away with that horrid 
 
 G
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 bugbear, the kinking and twisting of spinning- 
 lines, I have recently perfected a little invention of 
 my own, made of metal and india : rubbcr, which 
 
 THE " CACHALOT." 
 
 differs from Brown's reversible pectoral fin " Phan- 
 tom '' baits, inasmuch as mine have reversible (and 
 some of them interchangeable) tail-fins, by which 
 
 JARDINE'S " REVERSIBLE TAIL" SPINNING BAIT. 
 
 the revolving motion of the baits can be changed 
 to either the right or the left as the angler chooses ; 
 they spin accurately, have a natural fish-like 
 
 JARDINE'S " INTERCHANGEABLE TAIL" SPINNING BAIT. 
 
 appearance in the water, can be made of any 
 weight, and no supplementary lead is needed on
 
 BAITS. 83 
 
 the trace. On one of these reversible-tail baits, 
 fishing a Dorsetshire river, I ran seventeen jack 
 and pike, and landed sixteen of them. 
 
 There is yet another artificial bait I am now 
 bringing out, which I have named the " Diamond 
 
 JARDINE'S "DIAMOND JUBILEE" SPINNING BAIT. 
 
 Jubilee Spinning Bait," and from repeated trials 
 my brother " pikists " find it is a " rare killer," which 
 is my own experience. It is convolute in shape, 
 and made of metal, weighing from half an ounce 
 upwards according to the sizes adapted for trout 
 and perch, or for salmon and large pike, or sea-fish. 
 It has no swivel, nor is gimp used in the hook- 
 armatures both of them elements of danger when 
 the angler is playing a big fish. (See illustration.) 
 
 Among other artificial baits are the " Geen's 
 Spiral" and the " Serpentanic" ; the latter is in- 
 
 GEEN'S "SPIRAL.' 
 
 geniously constructed of coiled flexible wire, both 
 of which, with the large variety of spoon-baits, 
 such as the " Norwich," the " Colorado," " Cana- 
 dian Tassel," " Bar-spcon," "Otter," "Comet," 
 
 G 2
 
 84 ' THE PIKE. 
 
 "Clipper," and "Lightning" spinner, are all of 
 them fairly good substitutes for natural baits when 
 the latter cannot be obtained. For two or three 
 years I have been experimenting with, and trying 
 to perfect, a phosphorescent spinning-bait, to be 
 used in very deep waters, such as Irish loughs and 
 weir-pools, or for sea-fishing at night. The diffi- 
 culty is to find a phosphorescent liquid that is not 
 explosive. I have partly succeeded in doing so ; 
 but the various luminous paints do not answer 
 at all. 
 
 If the tyro finds it difficult to put a natural bait 
 on a flight, so that it will spin properly, he can use 
 a " Chapman " spinner, on which a bait spins well ; 
 but the disadvantage of this tackle is, that after 
 being in action a short time, the tender interior of 
 the bait with which you are spinning yields to the 
 constant strain on the tiny hook, and there is a 
 gradual withdrawal of the flanges from the mouth 
 of the bait In my own opinion the "Archer" 
 spinner and the " Abbey Mills " spinner are very 
 much better tackles for dead natural bait. 
 
 There is another bait-spinner known as Hardy's 
 " Crocodile," which I have not used myself ; but it 
 appears to be an excellent one, from which the bait 
 cannot become detached, or pike which go for it 
 escape being hooked. A capital spinner for dead 
 baits is the " Coxon," patented by Allcock and Co. 
 It is easily and quickly baited ; has a natural 
 appearance when spinning, the rotary motion being 
 given by curving the metal placed within the bait, 
 which, owing to the arrangement of side hooks, 
 cannot easily strip when drawn through weeds. 
 The last artificials I shall mention are " Phantom- 
 baits," made of silk, also of sole-skin, and not the
 
 BAITS. 
 
 85 
 
 least valuable in my opinion as excellent lures, 
 although the last to be named by me. Undoubtedly 
 they are capital pike-baits, especially the "blue 
 
 THE "ARCHER" TACKLE , PATENT). 
 
 "ARCHKR" SPINNER 
 BAITED. 
 
 phantoms," though rather expensive for pike-fishing. 
 The late Francis Francis believed very much in
 
 86 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 them for fishing Scotch rivers and lochs. Of course 
 phantom-baits are made in many sizes for the 
 capture of pike ; also salmon, trout and perch. 
 I mentioned Francis Francis in connection with 
 
 "SERPENTANtC " BA'T. 
 
 "ADBEY MILLS" SPINNER. 
 
 these artificial baits. He was once, with the per- 
 mission of the Earl of Breadalbane, fishing in Loch 
 Tay, spinning for pike, and captured a fine salmon 
 with his phantom-bait. The net-fishings had
 
 BAITS. 
 
 closed. The carl was cntcrtainining some guests, 
 and the keepers who had tried with rod had failed 
 in catching a salmon, and told Francis there would 
 be no fish for dinner at Loch Tay Castle. So 
 
 J 
 
 HARDY'S "CROCODILE 
 
 " CROCODILE;" BAITED. 
 
 Francis, like a true angler, sent his salmon as a 
 present to the Earl, who accepted it, and told his 
 friends how thoughtful it was of Francis to have 
 done so. At dinner an Irish clergyman who wa.s.
 
 88 THE PIKE. 
 
 present, on being requested to say "grace," 
 proceeded thus : 
 
 " God bless Loch Tay, which I've heard say, the region of 
 
 romance is, 
 God bless the Earl of Breadalbane, and God bless Francis 
 
 Francis, 
 God bless the rod, the reel and line, also the phantom 
 
 spinner, 
 And bless the fish which left his Tay (ted) to come to our 
 
 dinner."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SNAP-FISHING ROD, TACKLES, BAIT, ETC. 
 
 A PIKE-ANGLER intent on livebait snap- 
 fishing should fit up his rod with the short 
 top. I had a pike-rod constructed by Mr. J. R. 
 Richardson, Kingston-on-Thames, of whole cane, 
 that is well balanced and a powerful weapon. He 
 also makes another with a cork grip, a most 
 excellent weapon for livebait pike-fishing, and 
 equally adapted for sea-fishing. Before passing 
 the subject of pike-rods, I must mention the 
 fine workmanship, strength, and reliability of the 
 whole-cane pike-rods made by J. Gillett, of Fetter 
 Lane. 
 
 A pike-angler's reel should contain a hundred 
 yards of No. 2 plaited silk waterproofed line, the 
 last forty yards of which it is well to rub with deer 
 fat, or mutton fat, to make it float better. Some 
 anglers advocate the use of two or three small 
 perforated globular corks, called pilot-floats, which 
 slide on the line and keep it afloat. I don't believe 
 they are of much use, but, if anything, nuisances, 
 and in the way. He will require a trace either 
 of gimp or twisted gut, the latter being much the
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 best ; at or near the bottom of it is the lead ; he 
 will also want a pike-float to keep the livebait sus- 
 pended and swimming at the proper depth below 
 the surface of the water ; and with snap-tackle 
 also dace or gudgeon in his bait-can he will be 
 equipped and ready for the fray. 
 
 First of all I will describe pike-floats, of which 
 various kinds are sold in the tackle-shops. The 
 
 \ 
 
 1 FISHIXG GAZETTE * 
 
 PIKE FLOAT. 
 
 (Half size.) 
 
 FARLOW'S NEW PIKE FLOAT. 
 
 Fishing Gazette float is a very useful one, made 
 with a channel cut half through the side into which 
 the line is placed, and the float fixed in position 
 on the trace, by inserting a wooden plug. 
 
 Farlow and Co. recently showed me a new 
 arrangement which is registered for fixing a pike- 
 float to the trace ; it is very simple but quite effective 
 and has no outstanding peg, to catch in weeds or 
 submerged boughs.
 
 PIKE-FLOATS. 9> 
 
 One of the most recent inventions in pike-floats 
 is the " Duplex," which has two interchangeable 
 tpps, one painted red, the other white. The red 
 top is for use on bright days, and shows up well 
 when a white top would scarcely show at all in the 
 
 JARDINE " DUPLEX" CORK FLOAT. 
 
 glint of sunlight. The red top can be seen nicely 
 in the foam-flecked waters of weirs, where white 
 would not be visible. On dull days, cloudy 
 weather, and under the shade of overhanging 
 boughs, and as evening is coming on apace, then
 
 92 THE PIKE. 
 
 the white top would be preferable to the red 
 one. 
 
 Some of these floats are constructed entirely of 
 cork, others of bamboo and cork, and both of 
 them possess great buoyancy, without distress- 
 ing the livebait. By a simple but effective con- 
 
 JARDINF.'S "DUPLEX" BAMBOO FLOAT. 
 
 trivance without the aid of plugs or pegs, they 
 can be fixed on any part of the trace or line, and 
 quickly shifted higher or lower according to the 
 depth of water ; and the cork floats which are 
 bored through their entire length can be used as
 
 LEADS. 93 
 
 sliding or " traveller" floats to fish waters thirty or 
 even fifty feet in depth. These floats are manu- 
 factured by Messrs. Allcock and Co., Redditch. I 
 have taken the following extract from the Fishing 
 Gazette: " Last week a well-known contributor to 
 the Fishing Gazette was using one of the new 
 ' Jardine Duplex Pike-floats' in an old flooded 
 stone-quarry, and successfully fishing by its means 
 water 40 ft. deep." (See illustrations of the two 
 kinds, bamboo and cork and all cork.) 
 
 Of leads, to place on the trace to ballast the 
 float, various patterns are sold in the tackle-shops. 
 Among the most useful for livebait fishing are 
 those which are detachable, so that they can be 
 placed on the trace near to, or if preferred, farther 
 away from the bait. The leads which more than 
 any others embody this advantage are the " Archer " 
 Jardine leads (see p. 60), which are attached or 
 detached by coiling or uncoiling the trace on or off 
 the lead and wire (as shown in the illustration). 
 They are made in various sizes and are in universal 
 request. Another useful lead, which is a fixture on 
 the end of the trace, but longer or shorter gimps to 
 the snap-hooks may be used, is my " perfected barrel 
 lead " ; it has been for years a favourite lead 
 with pike anglers. A brass wire, eyed at the top, 
 runs through the lead. The bottom of it is formed 
 like a flattened loop, into which the loop of the 
 hook gimp is placed and the lead pushed down 
 over the wire. 
 
 The next tackles (and important ones, too) to be 
 considered are livebait snap-tackles. Anglers have 
 their whims and fancies, some of them even now 
 preferring the old and nearly obsolete "saddle- 
 snaps," while others like the " Pennell " and some
 
 94 THE PIKE. 
 
 the " Bickcrdykc " snaps. Both are excellent 
 tackles. 
 
 About 1882 I intioduccd new snap- tackles with 
 which I had killed some of my largest pike. 
 
 PEN NELL'S LIVKSAIT SNAP-TACKLE 
 (with adjustable Lip Hook). 
 
 Lately I have improved them, and now they arc 
 known as Jardinc's " Perfected " snap-tackles. One 
 alteration is in the small " rydcr " hook being 
 made rather longer, which is to be inserted in the 
 top corner of the bait's giH cover, and not in the 
 base of its pectoral fin, for just there is the 
 fish's heart, and the bait soon gets exhausted 
 and dies. 
 
 The bait lives much longer and works more 
 strongly with the hook in the corner of the gill 
 cover. Livebaits are often difficult to procure, 
 
 JARDINE'S "PERFECTED" SNAP-TACKLE 
 (with adjustable Hook). 
 
 especially in quantity sufficient for a couple or 
 three days of pike-fishing, and it becomes neces- 
 sary to economise, and not to exhaust or kill 
 them when livebaiting.
 
 SNAP-TACKLES. 
 
 95 
 
 To further this end, two years ago I invented a 
 snap-tackle in which one hook only is placed in 
 the bait's back-fin, which does not injure or weaken 
 it, the other triangle being kept in position by a 
 fine wire spring put in the bait's mouth and out 
 through its gill cover. These new tackles are 
 manufactured by Messrs. Allcock and Co., Red- 
 ditch, and patented by them as the " Jardine Pec- 
 toral Spring Pike-Snaps." 
 
 THE 
 
 'PERFECTED" SNAP-TACKLE. 
 BAITED. 
 
 They are retailed by Messrs. Carter and Co., St. 
 John Street Road, and most other dealers ; and my 
 own experience is that baits used on these tackles 
 last three times longer and " work " much more 
 strongly than on any other snap-hooks, and that 
 these tackles excel most others in killing qualities. 
 
 I quite agree with Mr. C. Pennell that any 
 hooking of the lips and I would also add, in the
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 pectoral fins of livcbaits is to be avoided if pos- 
 sible; the former interferes with the respiratory 
 functions, and both tend to shorten the existence 
 and lessen the vitality of the bait. The hooks at 
 the head of the bait should point backwards, and 
 those at the dorsal fin upwards, for, as the pike 
 seizes bait crosswise and then turns the head first 
 
 JARDINE'S 
 
 PECTORAL -SPRING 
 PIKE -SNA P. 
 
 * 
 
 Baited 
 
 PECTORAL SPRING PIKE-SNAP. 
 
 into its mouth, both the triangles thus arranged are 
 almost certain to hook him ; in fact, I hardly ever 
 failed to hook a pike on snap-tackle. It will be 
 seen from the illustrations that the top or dorsal 
 triangles of both my tackles are " sliding," i.e., 
 adjustable to various sixes of baits, but they are 
 made also with different sizes of hooks.
 
 BAIT-CANS. 
 
 97 
 
 The trace should be about 3 ft. in length, and 
 may have either a double spring-hook swivel, a 
 buckle, or a loop swivel, whichever is preferred 
 on the bottom end, on which to attach the snap- 
 hooks, and if the leads are painted a dark-green or 
 olive, they assimilate better to the colour of weeds, 
 &c., and are not so easily seen by the fish. I have 
 already described the kind of baits required, of 
 which dace are undoubtedly the best for snap- 
 fishing, and next to them large gudgeon and roach, 
 5 or 6 ins. long. For big pike an 8-in. barbel 
 fished at mid-water is an excellent bait. A 
 
 Outer Can. 
 
 Inner Can (Perforated). 
 
 ZINC BAIT-CANS. 
 
 bait-can will be wanted by the angler in which to 
 keep his dace alive. Most cans now have double 
 lids to prevent the water splashing about. Those 
 cans with an interior one of perforated zinjc for 
 lifting out are very convenient, as a bait may be 
 selected without wetting the hands, a discomfort in 
 frosty weather. The inner part of these cans may 
 be withdrawn and placed with the baits in the river 
 to freshen them up and keep them alive and active. 
 A few years ago Mr. Basil Field (a noted angler) 
 invented his "double bait can," with an aerating 
 
 II
 
 98 THE PIKE. 
 
 bellows within its handle, which, while being grasped 
 in the act of carrying the can, allows the air to be 
 pumped by alternating pressures of the thumb, 
 from the bellows down a small tube into the water, 
 thus completely re-oxygenating the water, and .the 
 baits. In these cans I have conveyed live baits 
 very long distances, once over 120 miles, without 
 a bait dying, all arriving fresh and vigorous at 
 their destination. 
 
 Outer Can. Inner Can. 
 
 FIELD'S AERATING BAIT-CAN. 
 
 These aerating cans are made in various sizes, 
 and can be obtained at most of the London tackle- 
 shops. 
 
 And now we will imagine the pike-angler is 
 equipped, and eager for the fray, with his tackle 
 case containing traces, flights, snaps, &c., in his 
 wallet ; gaff or landing net suspended at his side ; 
 a couple of dozen live dace in his bait can ; a 
 larger bag to hold his captures slung across his
 
 LIVEBAITING. 99 
 
 back ; and booted to his knees ; so we will go with 
 him to the river side, and commence live-baiting a 
 deep sedge-fringed pool, where the stream makes 
 a splendid eddy by a bed of rushes growing in the 
 water, a rare place for a pike, and the home 
 of a large one we know of. 
 
 Selecting a bright and lively dace and placing it 
 carefully (so as not to injure it) on the snap-tackle, 
 then adjusting the float so that the bait shall swim 
 somewhat below mid-water, and pulling a dozen 
 yards or so of line off the reel, we next draw the 
 line down through the rod rings, and thus lift the 
 bait up towards the top-joint. Then with a gentle 
 and " accelerative " swing of the rod, we release the 
 line, letting it slide through our fingers, and cast 
 the bait quietly in at the top of the pool, paying 
 out line when necessary, but holding the bait for a 
 minute here and there, or drawing it to likely 
 places. Thus we fish all the water, down to the 
 centre of the eddy, when suddenly the float 
 disappears under the surface but comes up again a 
 few yards farther off ; then down it goes again, and 
 we quickly gather up the short slack of line, and 
 drive home the steel, when from the swirl in the 
 water and impetuous plunge of the fish, we know 
 that we have hooked a heavy pike. 
 
 Keeping as tight a rein as is possible, but 
 giving or recovering line according as the fish 
 dashes desperately here and there in its efforts to 
 escape, and playing It from tJie reel in preference to 
 having line lying loose on the ground, thus 
 avoiding the possibility of its being trodden under 
 foot or otherwise hung up and fouled, the fish is 
 played and conquered, drawn to the landing-net 
 and lifted ashore ; it proves to be a female, much 
 
 II 2
 
 ioo THE PIKE. 
 
 too pretty and plump to have her lovely body torn 
 and disfigured by the gaff. By February pike 
 have paired, and we know that her mate should be 
 somewhere near : so we put on another dace and 
 try the lower end of the pool, where the water is 
 less deep, and are rewarded with a splendid run 
 from a good fish, which when landed, proves to be 
 the male, a handsome tcn-poundcr. Thus at the 
 commencement of their honeymoon, we capture 
 both bride and bridegroom, and put an end to 
 their connubial joys. Why are most of the largest 
 pike females ? In the early part of the year when 
 pike are paired, on catching a female fish, say of 16 
 Ibs. or 1 8 Ibs. and going for and capturing her 
 mate, I have generally found him to be about a 
 twelve-pounder. Is it because large lady pike 
 prefer the attentions of young and active husbands, 
 or is it rather that male pike seldom attain to the 
 splendid development, and handsome proportions 
 of the gentler sex ? I never saw a really hand- 
 some male pike of heavy weight but once, and 
 that was a grand specimen of 28 Ibs. which came 
 from Lord Normanton's fishery on the Avon. My 
 37 Ibs. 36 Ibs., and 31 Ibs. pike were all females. 
 
 The haunts of pike are close to weeds, near beds 
 of sedges or spcargrass growing up through the 
 water, where they lie in ambush, ready to dart out 
 at any small fish which happens to swim by. These 
 places, and the tails of islands, where the divided 
 stream reunites and forms eddies ; deep holes, and 
 the vicinity of old weirs, the entrance to deep 
 ditches and backwaters, are all likely localities in 
 which anglers may calculate on catching pike. 
 But after November, when frosts have despoiled 
 the weeds and rushes, pike will be found in the
 
 L1VEBAIT SNAP-FISHING. 101 
 
 quiet streams and open waters. Livebait snap- 
 fishing is a method much adopted by Thames 
 anglers, and I know of many large pike caught in 
 the Metropolitan river by that way of fishing. At 
 Sonning-on-Thames, I have killed many from 
 12 Ibs. upwards, and thrice exceeded the score 
 pounds ; and there, as elsewhere, my best sport has 
 been on windy days, which, as a rule, are favour- 
 able opportunities, for then pike roam away 
 from their fastnesses in search of food, and lose 
 their habitual caution. The ripples on the sur- 
 face of the water refract the rays of light, and the 
 angler and his punt are but indifferently seen, 
 if at all, by his quarry. But under any circum- 
 stances of wind and weather, if fishing from the 
 bank, it is always best to keep a little distance from 
 the river at first, until the nearest water has been 
 tried ; pike often lie close inshore, even when water 
 is very shallow, provided there is a reedy or rush- 
 grown margin, or the shelter of a bank or bushes. 
 Approach very quietly, for the vibration of heavy 
 footfalls on the margin of a river or lake is trans- 
 ferred to the water, and the fish are disturbed ; cast 
 in your bait Avithout splashing ; for quiet fishing 
 frequently succeeds, while noise and commotion 
 often result in a blank. 
 
 On September 4th, 1879, I fished a little lake of 
 fifteen acres in Buckinghamshire. The weather 
 was very stormy and tempestuous. My punt was 
 rather small and shallow ; and the gale increasing, 
 it was dangerous to keep out in the middle of the 
 lake exposed to the full force of the wind. I there- 
 fore shifted to the leeward side of an island, where 
 in ten feet of water I expected to find a monster 
 pike, which some nine months previously had
 
 102 THE PIKE. 
 
 smashed up the rod and tackle of a brother 
 angler, who was then fishing with me. I baited 
 with a half-pound dace and cast it into the open 
 channel between some weeds, and waited but a 
 short while before I had a run, and drove my 
 snap-tackle well home. The pike immediately 
 made a mad rush, taking nearly a hundred yards 
 of line off my reel, and leaped some feet out of the 
 water ; this was several times repeated, but my 
 salmon gut trace held firm. I had the pike well 
 in hand, and in twenty minutes it was gaffed and 
 safe in my punt. The fish measured 47 ins. in 
 length, 25 ins. girth ; and that afternoon, in the 
 presence of Mr. W. H. Brougham, late Secretary of 
 the Thames Angling Preservation Society, weighed 
 37 Ibs. This pike was probably induced by the 
 tempestuous weather to feed fearlessly, and thus 
 lost its life. It and another of 36 Ibs. (both set 
 up in the same glass case) adorn my collection of 
 specimen fish. 
 
 The relative temperature of the water and air 
 has much to do with success when pike angling. 
 As a rule the air should be a few degrees 
 higher in temperature than the water, so that it 
 is above freezing point. Even in severe frosts 
 pike may be caught in rivers which flow too 
 fast to freeze, but the line may become so com- 
 pletely enveloped with ice that it will not run 
 through the rod-rings, when, if a fish of any 
 size is hooked, a breakage is certain to occur. 
 To remedy this the angler should envelope the 
 bottom and top rings, and an intermediate one, with 
 cotton wadding, secured in position with whip- 
 pings of silk or thread, the wadding to be 
 saturated with castor, or cod-liver oil, which lubri-
 
 PIKE-FISHING ON THE FROME. 103 
 
 catcs the line as it passes through the rings to and 
 fro, and effectually prevents its freezing. Snow 
 and frost do certainly play havoc with fishing ; but 
 I have on some occasions had excellent sport in the 
 keenest weather, when the days were bright and 
 with a little wind blowing. 
 
 Some winters ago, I fished the Frome with the 
 late Mr. J. P. Wheclclon, when the quieter parts of 
 the river and its backwaters were frozen over, but 
 in the main channel thick slabs of ice were hurrying 
 along the swift-flowing current towards Pool 
 Harbour. We fished close up to the land-locked 
 ice, and our floats would again and again dis- 
 appear under the edge of it, as hungered into 
 madness, some plunging pike seized our livebaits, 
 perhaps to rush out among the ice-floes, when it 
 required all our skill to play and secure the fish. 
 At other times, our lines would be severed by the 
 sharp edges of the ice, and the fish escaped ; but 
 we had grand sport, and killed many big fish in 
 spite of the bitter weather. My friend graphically 
 described our experience in The Sportsman of 
 January loth, 1894. 
 
 "In a far-off western county, as Jardine and I 
 conned over each day's fishing, Death stalked 
 rampant with such mercilessly cruel grip in his 
 strong bony hands and throttling fingers as choked 
 and crushed the warm breath of life from man's 
 weak frame, as also in countless numbers and in- 
 stances from the hardier birds and wild animals 
 which could not live and exist with no better 
 shelter than the open woods and bleak fields could 
 supply. 
 
 " Two tramps were found locked together in one 
 another's arms for warmth, yet frozen to death in
 
 104 THE PIKE. 
 
 the cruel snow. Rabbits and partridges were 
 stumbled upon, stiff and hard under the leaves and 
 tussocks of dead grass. Birds in great numbers 
 dropped dead from their roosting places in the 
 trees, while living creatures were so utterly worn 
 out and starved from the effects of relentless cold 
 and want of food, that I positively caught starlings 
 with my hands, too weak to fly away from bushes 
 by the roadside ; and almost set my clutch upon 
 live rabbits, who only just managed to scuttle away 
 from dry nooks under sheltered thorn bushes across 
 the depths of frost-crisped snow-drifts, too deep to 
 follow them without plunging in up to one's middle. 
 The very men who rowed our boats each day (and 
 we had each morning to break it out from thick 
 ice, the result of a single night's frost) fairly 
 shirked their job ; and yet they were hardy shore- 
 fishermen and deep-sea dredgers, accustomed to 
 bear the brunt of the very worst wintry weather 
 howling round the neighbouring coast. Said one of 
 them to me as he was loosing the ice round the 
 boat one bitterly cold morning, ' I wonders how 
 you soft-'andcd Lunnon folks stands it.' I won- 
 dered too ; and yet we did, day after day, in the 
 teeth of such iron-like frosts and blinding snow- 
 storms as I would not again face, no not for a 
 whole boat-load of twenty-pounders. Jardine put 
 me up to a little dodge, and a very good one it is 
 in frosty weather, of wrapping thick pledgets of 
 cotton-wool, thoroughly saturated with castor-oil, 
 round the inner and outer sides of the rings of the 
 rod, fastening them in their places with whippings 
 of fine thread. This certainly held the frost in 
 check, and enabled us to fish fairly comfortably, 
 although every now and then the line got abso-
 
 DEAD BAIT SNAP-TACKLE. 105 
 
 lutely clogged with big beads of ice, which pre- 
 vented it running freely through the rings. Beyond 
 that we suffered little or no unpleasantness, for the 
 sport being simply magnificent and the fish feeding 
 very quickly, that alone kept us at fever-heat ; and 
 I think that on the whole we stood the cold even 
 a shade better than cither of the boatmen did. 
 
 " It was certainly terrible hard work for them; for 
 the oars, from the broad blades right away up to 
 the very handles, were a solid mass of ice as thick 
 as a man's thigh ; and this extra weight alone, 
 combined with constantly holding the heavy 
 lumbering craft steady, in the set of a strong 
 stream, as first one and then the other angler 
 was busily employed in steering a powerful fish 
 from dangerous quarters under great drifts and 
 floes of floating ice, made an occasional stoppage 
 for the sake of warming a pannikin of strong coffee 
 over a spirit-lamp, and adding thereto a good 
 ' swig ' of old brandy, an uncommonly welcome 
 relief to the crew all round." 
 
 There is another way of fishing for pike, viz., 
 with dcadbait snap-tackle, for which Mr. R. 13. 
 
 MARSTON'S DEADBAIT SNAI--TACKLE. 
 
 Marston has invented a special tackle ; it is patented 
 by Hardy, of Alnwick. It is used with a sink-and- 
 draw motion in deep water. 
 
 To bait this tackle screw out the needle until the
 
 io6 THE PIKE. 
 
 end of lead to the needle eye measures the same 
 length as the bait from tip of nose to centre of 
 tail. Insert the needle in the mouth of bait, and 
 push it with the lead quite through, being careful 
 to keep in the centre until the eye protrudes from 
 the tail sufficiently to admit loop of gimp passing 
 through it ; then turn up the hooks, fixing one of 
 the first triangles in the gill-cover, then fix one of 
 the next set midway between tail and the first set, 
 and complete by making a half-hitch round the 
 root of tail with the gimp, and pass loop through 
 the needle eye. Or the hooks may be detached 
 from the lead and used as a livebait snap. It can 
 also be used for spinning by threading the gimp in 
 at the side, above but rather behind the vent and 
 out at the mouth, by the aid of the needle ; then 
 thread through the centre of lead which is pushed 
 into the bait, the triangle of hooks being drawn up 
 tightly, to give the necessary curve to make the 
 bait spin : at the same time make a half-hitch 
 round the wire eye of the lead, and pass through 
 the lips of the bait by puncturing them with the 
 needle. 
 
 Pike-anglers who are acquainted with these 
 tackles speak well of them,
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LIVE- AND DEAD-BAIT GORGE-FISHING. 
 
 THE use of live- or dead-bait on gorge-tackle 
 is never practised by true anglers who fish in 
 a sportsmanlike manner. A great objection is its 
 cruelty, for the pike swallows the bait and is usually 
 hooked in the stomach, and in its efforts to escape 
 the intestines are either torn or dragged up, causing 
 such extreme pain that the fish can give no sport to 
 the angler, but is in fact hauled out like a log of 
 wood. Small fish are so injured that if returned to 
 the water they are sure to die ; but snap-fishing is 
 humane and sportsmanlike, because the fish are 
 always hooked in the mouth by this method ; they 
 suffer no pain, and only fight against the restraint of 
 their tether ; moreover, small jack can be carefully 
 unhooked and replaced uninjured in the water, which 
 may also be said of spinning and paternoster- 
 fishing. But should pike have established them- 
 selves in valuable trout or grayling rivers, from 
 whence it is desirable to exterminate them by any 
 and every means, and they are looked upon as no 
 better than vermin, then and there, perhaps, gorge- 
 fishing is allowable.
 
 loS THE PIKE. 
 
 This volume, therefore, would be incomplete 
 without a description of the modus operandi of 
 trolling, which, in fact, is fishing with a dead 
 gorge-bait. 
 
 In 1662 Nobbcs, the " Father of Trollers," pub- 
 lished his Complete Trailer, in which he dissemin- 
 ated sounder views and some improvements on the 
 methods previously practised in this department of 
 pike-fishing. 
 
 Since Nobbes' time great advances have been 
 made in the art of angling ; the old-fashioned 
 tackles of our forefathers have been displaced by 
 more perfect ones of modern construction ; and 
 for those who care to fish for jack and pike 
 before the weeds are down a day's trolling is 
 possibly (where .it is allowed) amusing. As the 
 angler strolls along the banks of some weedy 
 water, he may (as J. J. Manley suggests in his 
 Fish and Fishing} flatter himself " that, etymo- 
 logically, 'trolling' and 'strolling' have one and 
 the same meaning, as indeed some etymologists 
 aver," making it out to be "fishing as you stroll." 
 Besides the great objection to gorge-fishing (with 
 either a live- or dead-bait), that it involves almost 
 every fish taken, large or small, being killed, there 
 is the great loss of time . incurred by waiting for 
 the fish to " pouch " the bait ; and then, after a 
 delay of eight or ten minutes to give them time 
 to do so, there is the constant disappointment of 
 finding the jack has rejected, or only been playing 
 with, the bait, or that no jack took it at all, or, 
 maybe, the bait had hung up in a weed. The 
 advice of the old gentleman (in Punc/i) to the 
 youthful angler at his side who was gorge-fishing, 
 was "Never hurry a jack, Tom." The picture
 
 TROLLING. 109 
 
 showed the hook of the bait fast in a log of wood 
 at the bottom of the river. Of course a pike angler 
 ought to, and generally does, know when a fish 
 has struck, also when he has struck a weed, or 
 some other subaqueous impediment; and if there 
 is any doubt as to which, he can usually tell by 
 a tentative tightening of the line whether a fish 
 has, or has not, taken his bait ; but not to every 
 angler is given that sensitive faculty. 
 
 However, should there be any uncertainty, a few 
 slight pulls on the line will elicit the fact whether 
 a fish is at the end of it ; if there are unmis- 
 takable signs of its presence, and the fish moves 
 but slowly about, shaking the line now and again 
 it is probable the pike is carrying the bait cross- 
 wise in its mouth, and has not turned it head- 
 first preparatory to swallowing it. Under these 
 circumstances a slight jerk will usually induce the 
 pike to bolt the bait without further hesitation, 
 when most likely it will move off at once to its 
 haunt ; then the line may be reeled up and the 
 gorge-hooks driven home, by giving a smart firm 
 draw (not jerk) with the rod, and the fish be then 
 played to the landing net or the gaff. 
 
 When an angler is trolling, his bait roves about 
 in rolling gyrations, which is what it should do, 
 to attract the pike, who no doubt mistakes it 
 for a wounded fish swimming with difficulty. To 
 add to these circular motions, some pike trollers 
 before placing the bait on the gorge-tackle cut off 
 one of the pectoral fins and the opposite ventral ; 
 the tail fin should be neatly cut off close up to 
 the flesh. 
 
 Among the most modern gorge-bait tackles is 
 that recommended by Mr. C. Pennell, (see illustra-
 
 110 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 tion below). It consists of two hooks, rather rank 
 in the bends, having long shanks that are brazed 
 together, and terminating in an eye, with lead 
 moulded on to the shanks to weight the tackle. The 
 trace, either of gimp or of twisted gut, with the last 
 nine or ten inches of gimp, should be four feet 
 long, having at its end a small buckle-swivel, or 
 a swivel with a turned-down hook, which is placed 
 - in the eye of the gorge-tackle. 
 
 V The loop at the top of the 
 
 ten inches of gimp is attached 
 +/M- to a baiting needle ; the needle 
 
 is passed in at the bait's mouth 
 and brought out exactly in the 
 middle of the roots of its tail, 
 which has been previously cut 
 neatly off. Then draw the gimp 
 through the bait and push the lead 
 into its body, leaving the hooks 
 lying one on each side of the bait's 
 mouth. Pull the gimp tight, punc- 
 ture the flesh by the tail from side 
 to side, draw the gimp through 
 the hole with the baiting needle; 
 and in the loop thus made pass the 
 end of the gimp, draw tight, and 
 the half-knot thus formed will not slip, but can be 
 instantly undone, when it is necessary to put on 
 another bait. These tackles are much better than 
 the older kind, which have the lead too far down 
 towards the bends of the hooks, and bulge the 
 cheeks and gill-covers of the bait, especially if it 
 is a gudgeon, so that weeds may catch and 
 tear them ; also the long stiff twisted-wire shanks 
 are objectionable, as they make the bait too 
 
 PENNELL'S GORGE 
 BAIT TACKLE.
 
 GORGE-TA'CKLES. in 
 
 rigid ; and frequently, when the bait has been 
 seized, it is immediately rejected, because the pike 
 has felt, or, maybe, has bitten the stiff wire. 
 Only the lead should be in the belly of the bait, 
 the remainder of the tail being flexible, which also 
 assists the rolling gyrations of the lure as it is 
 alternately dropped and lifted, in and out, between 
 the weeds. To entirely do away with the rigidity 
 of solid lead on the hook-shanks of 
 gorge-tackles, I recommend them Q 
 
 to be made thus. Procure ordinary 
 /m?-bait gorge hooks and bind 
 them to twelve inches of platinum 
 gimp, on which thread perforated 
 shots graduated in size, as shown 
 in sketch annexed ; then whip a 
 loop at the end of the gimp and the 
 tackle is complete. Bait the same 
 way as with the tackle previously 
 described ; there should be a swivel 
 between the hook-gimp and the 
 trace ; a second swivel is not abso- 
 lutely necessary, but a buckle- 
 swivel, or hook-swivel if preferred, 
 may be put on the end of the 
 line, to which the loop of the 
 trace can be attached. 
 
 The spinning rod, reel, and line, are quite adapted 
 for trolling with gorge. When trolling it is best 
 to fish up stream, and to work the bait down with 
 the current through the weeds. If the contrary 
 way is attempted it will result in many a hang- 
 up in the weeds ; besides, there is this advantage 
 in fishing up and bringing the bait down with the 
 stream : it approaches the pike more naturally, 
 
 SHOTTED GORGE 
 HOOK.
 
 112 TH-E PIKE. 
 
 and is better seen by them, as (except in gentle 
 currents) they always lie, whether in ambush or 
 not, with their heads up stream, on the look-out 
 for small fish swimming past. It is not necessary 
 to make long casts ; in fact, it is better not to do 
 so, for the bait being lifted and dropped almost 
 perpendicularly in the openings between weeds, 
 trolls, or gyrates in a much more tempting way 
 than when drawn slantwise through the water ; 
 and as the pike are usually among the weeds or in 
 deep weedy holes, from whence they cannot readily 
 see the angler, it is better to carefully fish all the 
 nearest water than to make long shots with the 
 bait. Raise the bait to the surface every two or 
 three seconds and let it sink head foremost, giving 
 a foot or so of slack line, and then it will have 
 a darting rolling movement as it drops to the 
 bottom. Keep continuing this, and if a check is 
 felt, slacken the line by paying off a few yards 
 from the reel (if none is already unwound), and see 
 that all is clear for a run, in case a fish has taken 
 the bait, which will soon be known by the fish 
 moving off, or by a few fierce little drags at the 
 line ; then allow the few minutes that are usually 
 given the- fish to pouch, wind up the slack line, 
 give a firm draw with the rod, and play the fish 
 on and off the reel, in preference to dropping the 
 line in coils on the ground. 
 
 Not unfrequently a pike takes a bait so near to 
 his lair that there is little or no moving off with it ; 
 the fish simply remains where he is and pouches at 
 his leisure ; the only plan, then, is to gradually 
 tighten up the line, when, as old Nobbcs says, 
 " a gentle ' stroak ' will do him no harm " ; and 
 to quote the same authority, " when a pike moves
 
 THE GORGE-BAIT. 113 
 
 up stream after being hooked, it is a sign of a 
 large fish." 
 
 In Mr. Stoddart's Anglers Companion is the 
 following graphic description of a pike taking the 
 gorge-bait, and it is so much to the point that 
 I have copied it for the benefit of those of my 
 readers whose misfortune it is not to have the book 
 I have mentioned. 
 
 " None that ever felt the first attack of a pike at 
 the gorge-bait can easily forget it. It is not, as 
 might be supposed from this character of the fish, 
 a bold, eager, voracious grasp : quite the contrary ; 
 it is a slow calculating grip. There is usually 
 nothing about it dashing or at all violent ; no stirring 
 of the fins, no lashing of the tail, no expressed fury 
 or revenge. The whole is mouthwork, calm, 
 deliberate, bone-crushing, deadly mouthwork. You 
 think at the moment you hear the action the 
 clanging action of the fish's jaw-bones ; and such 
 jaw-bones, so powerful, so terrific : you think you 
 hear the compressing, the racking of the victim 
 betwixt them. The sensation is pleasurable to the 
 angler as an avenger. Who among our ' gentle 
 craft ' ever pitied a pike ? I can fancy one lament- 
 ing over a salmon, or the star-stoled trout or the 
 playful minnow ; nay, I have heard of those who, 
 being bereft of a gold fish, actually wept : but a 
 pike ! itself unpitying, unsparing, who would pity ? 
 who spare ? 
 
 " I no sooner felt the well-known intimation than 
 drawing out line from my reel and slightly slacken- 
 ing what had already passed the top ring of my 
 rod, I stood prepared for further movements on the 
 part of the fish. After a short time he sailed 
 slowly about, confining his excursions to within a 
 
 I
 
 114 THE PIKE. 
 
 yard or two of the spot where he had originally 
 seized the bait. 
 
 " It was evident, as I knew from experience, that 
 he still held the bait crosswise betwixt his jaws, and 
 had not yet pouched or bolted it. To induce 
 him, however, to do so without delay, I very slightly, 
 as is my wont, tightened, or rather jerked the line 
 towards myself, in order to create the notion that 
 his prey was making resistance and might escape 
 from his grasp. A moment's halt indicated that he 
 had taken the bait ; and immediately afterwards, 
 all being disposed of at one gulp, out he rushed, 
 vigorous as any salmon, exhausting in one splendid 
 run nearly the whole contents of my reel, and 
 ending his exertions with a desperate somersault, 
 which revealed him to my view in all his size, 
 vigour, and ferocity : the jaws grimly expanded, 
 the fins erect, and the whole body in a state of 
 uncontrollable excitement." 
 
 It is my own experience, however, that a large 
 pike will sometimes take the bait with such a 
 ferocious rush as well nigh tears the rod out of the 
 trailer's grasp : notably once on the Loddon, close 
 to some sedges where had been a bed of water- 
 lilies then cut down by winter frosts, a big fish 
 seized my gorge-bait, one of the few times I ever 
 fished that way, bolted it at once, and rushed fifty 
 yards with it. The pike just topped 19 Ibs. 
 
 Fishing with the live-gorge bait does not require 
 much piscatorial skill. A double-hook bound on 
 to twelve inches of stained gimp, a leaded trace, 
 and a float are all the tackle required : a reel, line 
 and rod, similar to those used for snap-fishing will 
 be found quite saitable. The same objection 
 applies to this as to fishing with dead-gorge bait,
 
 LIVEBAIT GORGE TACKLE. 115 
 
 viz., that the hooks being swallowed, it is nearly 
 impossible to extract thcnvwithout killing the jack, 
 be they small or large fish. To bait the hooks 
 attach the loop in the gimp to a baiting needle. 
 Let the dace or roach lie flat on your left hand 
 with its head towards your wrist, the fingers and 
 thumb holding the bait, but not squeezing and 
 injuring it. Then insert the point of the baiting 
 needle in the shoulder of the bait, 
 pass it just under the skin and 
 bring it out behind the back fin ; 
 draw the gimp carefully through 
 so that the shank of the hook is 
 hidden under the skin, and attach 
 the gimp to the swivel on the 
 trace ; adjust the float to a proper 
 depth for the water about to be 
 fished, and cast your bait to a 
 likely spot, where let it remain for 
 some minutes to rove about. (See 
 illustration annexed.) t 7 / 
 
 If no run ensues, draw your \J\Jf 
 bait to another place, but do not 
 lift it out of the water oftener than 
 necessary, which would weaken it. 
 
 . , i_ ^1 n i- LIVEBAIT GORGE 
 
 A run is known by the float dis- TACKLE. 
 
 appearing under water, when pay 
 out line so as not to check the fish that has taken 
 your bait, but allow five minutes for pouching it ; 
 then wind up slack line, strike and play your pike, 
 and land it as soon as possible. Among the most 
 necessary arid convenient things for the pike-angler 
 to possess is a japanned case to contain his various 
 tackles, such as artificial spinning-baits, livebait- 
 snaps, traces, spare triangles, leads, &c. 
 
 I 2
 
 n6 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 My own japanned case, made twenty years ago, 
 has well answered its purpose, but is now super- 
 seded by improved ones. A recent and greatly 
 
 CLOSED 
 
 EXPANDING TACKLE CASE. 
 
 superior "expanding " tackle-case (which is stocked 
 by Carter and Co.) is a' veritable multitm in parvo j
 
 GAFFS, ETC. 117 
 
 and in addition to its many compartments for the 
 stowage of floats, hooks, spinning-baits, flights, &c., 
 has receptacles for reels and lines. There is- a 
 hasp for a secret padlock, and a handle to carry it 
 by on the lid or false back, which falls down and 
 supports the case when opened, as is shown in the 
 very accurate illustrations. A waterproof bag with 
 a sling is also made, in which to pack the case 
 when closed. Baskets and bags to hold the cap- 
 tured fish are very necessary addenda, and are also 
 useful to contain the angler's wading boots and 
 macintosh when journeying to a river or fishery. 
 Convenient carriers of any capacity can be ob- 
 tained at most tackle-shops. The next requisite 
 
 (About one-third size.) 
 
 I must mention are gaffs. Of these some are made 
 with the last inch or so of the point turning some- 
 what outwards, and not parallel with the shank ; 
 these are faulty in shape. When properly con- 
 structed and mechanically correct, they should be 
 as depicted in my sketch. The staff to which they 
 are screwed should be about four feet long, and if 
 of bamboo, it will carry a spare top-joint. There 
 are various gaff staves sold ; some of them have 
 folding hinges ; others are telescopic, but all are 
 more or less convenient, and on the whole more so 
 than landing-nets.
 
 )t8 THE PIKE. 
 
 Steady nerves are required to gaff a big pike 
 properly. On several occasions I have nearly lost 
 a fine fish through the nervousness of an angling 
 companion, who has through an erratic stroke 
 nearly broken my line instead of gaffing the fish, 
 and would have succeeded in doing so had I not 
 dropped my rod point, slackened the line, and 
 played the fish another minute or two before 
 bringing it again to the gaff. I much prefer to 
 gaff fish myself, and my invariable practice is to 
 pull the gaff-point in, at, or between the under jaw- 
 bones ; then the hold is certain, and it never 
 disfigures a fish, an important thing if the pike is 
 large enough for a specimen. 
 
 I have seen some anglers gaff just wherever they 
 could, sometimes through the cheek or in the back, 
 
 TELF.SCOPIC-GAFP. 
 
 and worst of all in the belly, ripping it all across 
 and completely disfiguring and spoiling the fish. 
 A pike should be quite played out and well in 
 hand before it is drawn within gaffing distance ; 
 and when it is, then the gaffer should not hesitate, 
 but make his stroke with certainty, and draw, not 
 lift, the fish ashore. 
 
 Mr. Pennell advocates behind the shoulder as 
 the best place to gaff a pike. It is a safe place, no 
 doubt ; but the flesh is apt to be torn if the pike 
 writhes and struggles, which it usually does. As 
 already stated, my favourite position is in the under
 
 PIKE-GAGS. ii g 
 
 jaw between the jaw-bones, and then to draw the fish 
 ashore head first ; but if any lifting is required, I 
 place my thumb and middle finger of my left hand 
 in the fish's eyes, and grasp the iron of the gaff 
 with my right, and lift the fish ashore or into my 
 punt. Landing nets are useful for fish under 8 or 
 10 Ibs. ; the net should be capacious and deep, the 
 ring large. My own pike net has a folding ring of 
 steel, 20 ins. in diameter. Large nets are not 
 necessarily cumbrous, but to prevent them holding 
 water and hooks sticking in the meshes, the nets 
 should be of oiled silk or flax cord, dressed in a 
 waterproofing varnish, and the handle 5 or 6 feet 
 long, so as to reach over the sedges and rushes 
 which usually margin the tanks of a river. When 
 by myself, with no one to carry my impedimenta, I 
 use no net, but only a gaff slung over my left 
 shoulder, where it is handy but out of the way, 
 while I am fishing alongside a river. 
 
 Most useful additions to a pike-angler's comfort 
 (inasmuch as excoriated and bitten fingers are 
 avoided, and much time is saved in extracting 
 hooks from a fish's mouth) are pike-gags. A few 
 years ago I invented and patented one which 
 answers its purpose completely, and has been well 
 spoken of by those anglers who have used them in 
 rivers and the sea. 
 
 The knob D is for killing the fish by knocking 
 it on .the head. The prongs E, F (which should 
 be previously closed) arc then inserted in the pike 
 or salmon's mouth ; B or D is held by the left 
 hand, and the handle A turned round, when the 
 prong F is drawn down the spiral rod c C, and the 
 mouth of the fish distended to any width required, 
 so that the hooks or salmon fly can be extracted
 
 120 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 without injury to tackle or fingers. By the use of 
 this gag, unsizeable pike can be returned alive and 
 uninjured to the water. These gags will prolong 
 the life of many an expensive salmon fly. 
 
 Since patenting the above I have invented a less 
 expensive, and simple but powerful pike-gag. It 
 is made of strong steel wire ending in prongs, 
 which are placed in the pike's jaws, and expanded 
 by drawing down the brass slide when the jointed 
 arm, or crosspiece, can be fixed in position ; it is 
 
 then impossible the pike can close its jaws. In the 
 coil of the wire is a knob of lead, with which to 
 stun the pike, preparatory to extracting the spin- 
 ning-flight, or snap-tackle, &c.
 
 A DISGORGER. 
 
 121 
 
 A disgorgcr is useful as an addition to the pike- 
 gag, wherewith to extract the tackle from the fish's 
 
 mouth. The kind represented on the following 
 page is made of metal, has a prong and hook, a 
 
 sharp edge for cutting, and the 'knob at the end 
 is for "felling" the fish.
 
 (22 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 A very handy knife for fishermen, containing a 
 disgorger, baiting needle, &c , also a corkscrew, 
 which is an implement useful at times to pike- 
 
 JARDINE DISGORGEK (Registered). 
 
 anglers, is sold by Farlow and Co., and is shown 
 half size below. 
 
 Reference has been made to the merits of a 
 bulb-pump for aerating the water containing live 
 bait. With the bulb shown on opposite page I have 
 conveyed ten and twelve dozen baits (placed in twc 
 
 FISHERMEN'S KNIFE. 
 
 cans) very long journeys all alive and vigorous at 
 their destination ; then, placing the interior can 
 with the baits in the river, to find them in splendid 
 condition next morning for the day or two's pike 
 fishing.
 
 FROGS AS LIVEBAIT. 
 
 123 
 
 The bulb is a hollow india-rubber ball, with an air 
 valve inside ; three feet of flexible tubing is 
 attached, having at its end a perforated nozzle of 
 metal ; this is dropped in the bait can ; the bulb is 
 held in the hand, and compressed by frequent 
 squeezes of the fingers, which thus pumps air 
 through the tube into the water. 
 
 When it is not possible to obtain live fish, frogs 
 may be used as substitutes. The gimp of a 
 double gorge-hook for live-baiting should be 
 attached to the baiting-needle, the point of it 
 
 pushed tenderly under the skin just behind the 
 frog's head and along its back without wounding 
 the flesh, and out near the thighs, to one of which 
 it may be fastened by a whipping of fine thread 
 or silk. A couple of swan shots or a very light 
 lead should be used on the trace. 
 
 The frog being cast into the water a little 
 distance off, it will most probably swim for the 
 opposite bank, when line must be paid out ; but by 
 gently drawing the line, the frog can be guided into 
 and over the likeliest places to hold pike ; and if
 
 124 THE PIKE. 
 
 any arc harbouring near, the lure will most probably 
 be taken, and bolted head first. 
 
 Gold fish may be used as a dernier ressort in a 
 total absence of dace, roach and gudgeon ; but they 
 arc sluggish fish, like all the carp family, and do 
 not work well on snap or livcbait gorge tackles ; 
 under some circumstances, however, I have known 
 pike to take them eagerly, possibly tempted by 
 the change of diet. 
 
 Pike have been caught with young ducks, moor- 
 hens, dabchicks and water rats inside them ; in fact 
 there seems to be no limit to the voracity of a pike. 
 The late Mr. Frank Buckland, in his British Fishes, 
 page 161, mentions an imitation rat-bait, made 
 from the end of a calfs tail, as an excellent lure, 
 which his friend Colonel Martyn used with consider- 
 able success in the extensive reservoir at Ruislip, 
 near Uxbridgc. The following is his recipe: 
 " Procure the tip of the tail of a brown calf ; make 
 a head with a champagne cork ; stick two boot 
 buttons into it for eyes ; attach a piece of leather 
 bootlace for a tail ; and dress with triangle hooks. 
 Big lake pike (who are very artful fellows) will not 
 be up to this calfs tail bait they will take it for 
 a swimming water-rat ; and the chances are they 
 will snap at it, especially on a windy day."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PATERNOSTERS AND TRIMMERS. 
 
 A NOTHER branch of livebait-fishing is with 
 Jr\. paternoster tackle. There are conflicting 
 opinions as to the meaning of the word "pater- 
 noster" as applied to angling; the origin of it is 
 obscure, but in practice the mode is deadly ; and 
 from the manner in which the lure is manipulated, it 
 approaches more nearly to spinning than any other 
 method. But although spinning may be considered 
 the most artistic way to fish for pike, yet I have 
 frequently found paternostering the most successful, 
 especially in the capturing of much the larger fish. 
 This may be because large pike (by which I mean 
 twenty pounders) are often sluggish, and while 
 making up their minds about going for a spinning 
 bait, it has passed them, or younger and more 
 active fish have darted through the intervening 
 water and seized the lure, thus anticipating the 
 older esox. My own experience has taught me 
 that pike under 8 or 10 Ibs. are, as a rule, caught 
 by spinning. I saw the late Mr. Francis Francis 
 catch one of 18 Ibs. at Sir Henry Mildmay's, Bart.. 
 Dogmersfield Lake, on spinning-tackle ; but on 
 paternoster I have considerably exceeded that 
 weight ; and once, fishing by that method, ncai
 
 126 
 
 THE PIKE. 
 
 Glynde, Sussex, 23rd February, 1882, I captured 
 and landed a pike of 30^ Ibs. 
 
 PIKE PATERNOSTER TACKLE. 
 
 My favourite paternoster rods arc from 12 feet 
 to 13 feet long, built of whole-cane and stiff but
 
 PATERNOSTER TACKLE. 127 
 
 springy ; they do equally well for spinning. The 
 rings are quite half an inch in diameter, and "guard " 
 or " bridge " rings ; any accidental tangle passes 
 easily through them without checking a fish I may be 
 playing. To the end of my running-line is attached 
 by the usual double-hitch and loop four feet of 
 salmon gut stained olive-green, to which is looped 
 1 8 inches, or 24 inches of trout gut, if the water is 
 deep, or has a bottom growth of weeds ; and at the 
 end of all is placed a ^-oz. or f-oz. lead plummet 
 or sinker. The reason for adding the trout gut is 
 this : should you get hitched up to a weed, or to 
 
 * 
 
 z a t 
 
 GIMP. 
 
 any obstruction, it is the first to break, being the 
 weakest, and you only lose the plummet. 
 
 At the loop connecting the salmon and trout 
 gut attach the paternoster hook, a square-bend 
 No. 10 short shank, bound on 12 inches of No. o 
 or No. i gimp of platinum wire ; any bright metal 
 like brass or white metal glitters, and is therefore 
 objectionable. 
 
 The bait should be a live dace 4^ inches or 
 5 inches long, and failing that, a small roach or a 
 large gudgeon, hooked through both lips, the bottom 
 one first ; they live longer this way than when
 
 I2b THE PIKE. 
 
 hooked through the upper lip only, and can breathe 
 very well on a square-bend hook. Draw six or 
 eight yards of line off from the reel, cast the bait 
 with a gentle swing into the water, and fish all the 
 nearest water first, gathering the line up slowly 
 with the fingers and thumb on to the palm of the 
 left hand in figure-of-eight coils, a knack easily 
 acquired with practice, slightly lifting and dropping 
 the point of the rod, continually gathering in the line 
 as described and keeping it moderately taut, thus 
 searching all the water, insinuating the bait into 
 eddies between weeds, and likely corners, and places 
 usually frequented by pike. Each time the bait is 
 withdrawn from the water (which should not be so 
 often as to kill it) the length of the cast may be 
 increased ; but a taut line should be kept and every 
 bit of water searched by lifting the rod top slightly 
 and drawing in a yard or two of line ; then, by 
 dropping the rod point, the plummet finds the 
 bottom, and the bait pirouettes round about. 
 
 Thus quietly moving and fishing fresh places 
 (and close to weeds, if any), where the bait should 
 remain a few seconds, if a pike is near, the bait is 
 almost sure to be taken, which will be apparent by 
 its being arrested and probably shaken, when a yard 
 or two of line should be paid out, and three or four 
 seconds allowed for the pike to turn the bait 
 head-first into its mouth, and then a firm draw 
 given (rather than a strike) by smartly elevating 
 the point of the rod ; or if the pike runs with 
 the bait, draw the rod the contrary way to the 
 direction the fish is taking, and the chances are it 
 will be securely hooked, most probably in the angle 
 of the upper and lower jaw, where the hook is not 
 likely to break away.
 
 PATERNOSTERING. 129 
 
 If in its first rush the pike takes all the line out 
 of your hand, you will have it on your reel ; and it 
 is well in playing a fish to get the line as quickly as 
 possible on the reel, as it prevents the chance 
 of getting the line fouled, or kinked, or in a 
 tangle. Sometimes pike are in a capricious mood, 
 and carry the bait crosswise in their mouths, not 
 turning it. In clear water I have often seen them 
 do this ; in such cases I have placed the paternoster 
 hook through the bait's back fin, and when it has 
 been seized, struck instantly, invariably hooking 
 the pike. In sunvner find autumn they secrete them- 
 selves un.Jcr and bet'vcen weeds ; the paternoster is 
 then particularly useful for fishing such places ; but 
 not more than one hook should be used on the 
 trace, as a second one might get fouled and cause 
 a breakage in the tackle. Better sport is, as a rule 
 obtained by paternostering than by other methods 
 of angling, for the hook is usually imbedded in the 
 upper jaw or else in the angle of the mouth, thus 
 giving little or no pain, the pike fighting against 
 the restraint of the rod and line, when the power- 
 ful efforts made by an eight or ten pounds fish are 
 something to-be remembered. A fish under 3 Ibs. 
 carefully unhook and return uninjured to the 
 water ; and as paternostering, spinning and live- 
 bait snap-fishing are sportsmanlike methods, prefer 
 them to live-gorge and dead-bait trolling. If a good- 
 sized fish is hooked, played, and escapes, try imme- 
 diately with a very small bait ; this often succeeds, 
 and tempts the fish to feed again. On page 126 is 
 mentioned a 30! Ib. fish I captured near Glynde. 
 I hooked it with a large roach on snap-tackle, and 
 lost both pike and bait. I immediately changed to 
 paternoster, put 911 a 4-inch dace, to which the 
 
 K
 
 j 3 o THE PIKE. 
 
 fish fed at once, and was successfully played 
 and landed. It was a female, and measured 44 
 inches in length by 24 girth ; and for condition, 
 with elegance of contour, was one of the hand- 
 somest ever seen. 
 
 On January 3Oth, 1878, Mr. James Barker caught 
 a 27^ Ibs. pike on paternoster-tackle in the Thames 
 at Hampton Deeps. 
 
 There is no practical limit to the depth of water 
 that can be fished by paternostering, for the 
 plummet of course carries the bait down to the 
 bottom. It is a particularly good way to fish weir- 
 pools, old flood-gates and camp-sheathings ; and 1 
 should think would prove a killing method in the 
 great depths of Irish loughs. At Shiplake Deeps 
 near Wargrave, where there are fifteen feet of 
 water ; at Runsford near Moulsford ; at Sonning 
 (above the weir) and other deep waters of the 
 Thames where are big pike, I have found pater- 
 nostering successful : for the bait goes right down 
 among the aldermanic fish. At Sonning some 
 years ago, fishing with a nine-inch barbel, deep 
 down to the bottom, I caught a fine pike of 
 2\\ Ibs; and no doubt there are many as big or 
 even bigger in these profundities of the Thames 
 and other rivers. 
 
 Before leaving the subject of paternostering 
 and live-baiting generally, I should say that the 
 best time to fish is when a river has cleared, or 
 nearly so, after floods succeeding frosts : the latter 
 will have decayed the weeds, which the floods will 
 clear away. In such conditions of water I have 
 hardly ever known sport to be bad, especially if 
 rivers are flowing in full volume, in which case the 
 angler should fish the still eddies and quiet lay-
 
 PATERNOSTEKING. 131 
 
 byes, near " reed-flams," the entrance to wide dykes 
 and backwaters, where the shoals of dace and roach 
 congregate to rest themselves from the stress of the 
 rapid streams of the main channel : for there pike 
 are sure to gather together, so as to be near to 
 their commissariats. In frosty weather dace and 
 roach seek the deeps, and thereabouts will be the 
 pike ; so the angler should swim his bait not 
 more than a couple or three feet (according to the 
 depth of water) off the bottom. Let him keep his 
 bait moving, /.., searching the water : for if 
 quiescent some time in the same spot, most 
 probably his bait has hung up to a weed, or 
 some other obstruction : if so, examine it and 
 remove any bits of weed that may be adhering to 
 the hooks ; for no pike will feed to a fouled bait. 
 But in autumn, before severe frosts have set in, and 
 while the beds of rivers are still carpeted with 
 luxuriant growths of weeds, in which pike often 
 secrete themselves, it is necessary when paternos- 
 tering to place the live bait as much as 2 ft. or 
 even 3 ft. up the trace, so that it may be above the 
 weeds, and within the vision of any fish harbour- 
 ing near : for the angler's chances are considerably 
 lessened if the bait being too near the plummet is 
 drawn down into the weeds and hidden from the 
 pike. Also when fishing deeps twenty or more 
 yards away from you, it is advantageous to have 
 the bait some distance above the plummet, because 
 the oblique angle of the line would let the bait be 
 too near to, if not actually in the weeds : but these 
 details can be left to the discretion of the angler. 
 Another way to angle for pike somewhat akin to 
 paternoster-fishing is with a leger : it is not 
 often attempted unless the water is in flood, and 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE PIKE. 
 
 so discoloured that a spinning-bait or snap-bait 
 would not be seen : but the leger-bait drops right 
 amongst the pike if any are in the eddy. 
 
 The rod should be stiff, so affix the short top, 
 for legering is heavy work. The reel may con- 
 tain sixty or eighty yards of No. 3 line ; to the 
 line fix the leger-trace, which consists of three feet 
 of gimp or twisted gut, on which a perforated 
 flattened bullet of one ounce is placed ; at the end 
 of the trace is a swanshot and swivel ; to the latter 
 eighteen inches of stout salmon gut is looped ; to 
 this is attached the snap, or single hook, which- 
 ever is preferred, baited in the same way as 
 described for paternoster-fishing ; or a pectoral- 
 spring paternoster-tackle may be used, the bait 
 (for either kind of fishing) should be four or five 
 inches long. In floods, dace and roach frequent 
 eddies, to rest from the stress of stream, and to 
 find the food which is washed into and deposited 
 in slack water by the currents, and to such places 
 pike naturally come after their 
 food the dace and roach. There- 
 fore, into eddies cast the leger 
 and keep a taut line ; the bullet 
 rests on the bottom, while the 
 bait pirouettes round about in 
 
 FLAT LEGER BULLET. a circle of tWO Or three feet, 
 
 according to the length of the 
 tether, until it is appropriated by some hungry 
 pike. 
 
 With the leger there is no reasonable limit to 
 the depth of water that can be fished. Supposing 
 you throw thirty or more yards from where you 
 are, when the bait drops in the water immediately 
 pay out more line (say three or four yards), and.
 
 PATERNOSTER ING. 
 
 '33 
 
 when the bullet finds the bottom gather up the 
 slack until you have a tight line. On getting a 
 run pay out a little line, and wait four or five 
 seconds before tightening up again and striking 
 the fish ; but if after a few minutes no tug 
 occurs, lift the point of your rod and draw the 
 bait to another place, where let it remain a short 
 time to work about the water. By pursuing this 
 method you can search every part of the bed of 
 the river within casting distance, and should 
 any pike near, get a kick or knock on its head 
 by the bait, it is pretty sure to be immediately 
 seized, for pike are certain to be hungry, and on 
 
 LEGER-TACKLE BAITED. 
 
 the look-out for the food which is difficult to find 
 in floods and thick water. 
 
 " Red Spinner," the author of Waterside Sketches, 
 gives a good description in that delightful work, 
 of some capital sport I had at Sonning, February, 
 1875, which will bear repeating, as it shows that 
 under perplexing circumstances, perseverance some- 
 times commands success. 
 
 "During the high floods that occurred in the 
 Thames Valley, and continued for several weeks
 
 134 THE PIKE. 
 
 in the early part of the New Year (1875), the pike- 
 fishers were completely nonplussed. One well 
 known amongst them, went up the river as soon as 
 there seemed to be a prospect of success, and found 
 the water in colour and consistency not unlike pea- 
 soup. All his efforts were unsuccessful till luncheon 
 time. Then he moored his punt to the rushes in 
 a position commanding a quiet eddy. Discarding 
 the ordinary methods of live-baiting, he affixed a 
 heavy bullet on the trace a yard above the bait, 
 thus improvising a legering apparatus ; the re- 
 sult justified his choice of both place and method. 
 His livebaits were large dace, and the yard of trace 
 below the bullet gave them an opportunity of 
 pirouetting in a pretty wide circle. The angler 
 had fortunately " struck ile " ; the eddy of his 
 choice happened no doubt to be the furnished 
 apartments into which a large family of pike had 
 been driven by stress of water, and the bait had 
 dropped into their midst like manna in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 " Their pikeships one after another simply opened 
 their jaws and absorbed the treacherous dace with- 
 out moving a foot, taking things ridiculously easy 
 until they ' felt the steel ' ; then, running madly, 
 they gave splendid sport. In one lucky hour 
 the angler caught six fish, the largest of them 
 13* lb., 10 lb., 9 lb., and 8 lb., the total weighing 
 49i lb." 
 
 When starting on the war path, never trust to 
 the chance of procuring bait at the riverside, or of 
 catching them there yourself. If you do, it is ten 
 to one you will meet with disappointment, for 
 either the fisherman you have engaged will be 
 without baits, or if there are a few in the well of
 
 AN EXTRAORDINARY CAPTIVE. 13$ 
 
 his punt, the chances are they will be stale or have 
 been used before. If you angle for them they are 
 sure not to bite, and thus you lose much valuable 
 time, which would be better expended in trying to 
 catch the pike ; therefore, always take a good 
 supply of baits with you. 
 
 I record an extraordinary capture made by Mr. 
 J. Bedford, of Regent Street, on the ist of July, 
 1883, at Marlow Weir-pool, which had been baited 
 for barbel. He was legering with ordinary gut 
 tackle, using lob-worms for bait, wheji he had a 
 bite, quiet as a roach would give. On striking, a 
 long greedy pull was the response, and Mr. Bedford 
 knew he was into a large pike. Forty or fifty yards 
 of line were immediately run off his reel with a rush 
 that fairly startled him ; this occurred several times, 
 but the fish being hooked just outside the lower jaw, 
 the gut was not bitten in two. Each time he tried 
 to lift the fish, it sailed round the pool to return and 
 rest in the same spot where it first took the worm. 
 It was forty minutes before he got a glimpse of 
 the pike's dimensions, and saw his landing-net was 
 not nearly large enough to hold it. He hailed 
 H. Rockell, who brought a larger one, in which the 
 pike, after an hour's play, was landed. It measured 
 45 in., and weighed just over 24 Ib. 
 
 "JARDINE" SPIRAL LEGER-LEAD, REGISTERED. 
 
 Leger-leads are made in various shapes and 
 weights. The spiral-leads are possibly the most 
 useful and convenient, because by uncoiling the
 
 itf THE PIKE. 
 
 trace, they can be instantly changed for heavier or 
 lighter leads. 
 
 In moderately shallow lakes and the Norfolk 
 Broads, where are weeds growing up nearly to the 
 surface, with 12 ins. or so of clear water above 
 them, very large artificial flies, cast and worked 
 as salmon flies, may often be used with considerable 
 success ; for pike lying in the weeds, when refusing 
 a spinning-bait, will frequently snap at a large fly 
 drawn over them. 
 
 These pike flies are about the size of humming- 
 birds ; are made of tinsel mixed with gaudy feathers, 
 
 REVOLVING 
 
 HEAD 
 PATENT 
 
 PIKE-FLV, 3 INCHES LONG. 
 
 and sometimes are built on two hooks. Pike when 
 hooked on them give capital sport ; almost, if not 
 quite, equalling the salmon. Carter and Co. manu- 
 facture a patent pike fly 3 ins. long, with a revolving 
 head, which is a very deadly lure. " Halcyon " 
 spinning flies 3 ins. long make excellent pike flies. 
 On February 33rd, 1878, a pike of 30 Ibs. was 
 caught with a pike fly in Lough Erne, Ireland, but 
 the captor is not known. 
 
 "Trimmering" for jack and pike in private 
 waters where it is desirable to thin the numbers of 
 those fish, may be occasionally resorted to, but, to
 
 TR1MMERING. 137 
 
 say the least, it is an unfishcrmanlike way of catching 
 them. As a bit of fun it is sometimes indulged in ; 
 it was considered a fine amusement in " Old 
 Nobbes'" time ; and in The Boke of St. Albans is 
 thus described : " If ye lyst to have good sporte, 
 thenne tye your line to a gose (goose) fote, and 
 ye shall have a gode halynge (hauling), whether 
 the gose or the pyke shall have the better." 
 
 Barker, in his Delight, published in 1653, tells us 
 that " the principal sport to take a pike is to take 
 a goose or gander or duck ; take one of the pike 
 lines, tie the line under the left wing and over 
 the right wing about the body, as a man weareth 
 his belt ; turn the goose off into the pond where 
 the pikes are. There is no doubt of sport, with 
 great pleasure, betwixt the goose and the pike. It 
 is the greatest sport and pleasure that a noble 
 gentleman in Shropshire doth give his friends 
 entertainment with." 
 
 J. J. Manley, in his Notes on Fish and Fish- 
 ing, gives the following account of a tussle be- 
 tween a gander and a pike : " A farmer in the 
 neighbourhood of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, kept 
 a gander who not only had a great trick of wan- 
 dering himself, but also delighted in piloting forth 
 his cackling harem to weary themselves in circum- 
 navigating their native lake, or in straying amid 
 forbidden fields on the opposite shore. Wishing to 
 check this vagrant habit, he one day seized the 
 gander as he was about to take to the water, and, 
 tying a large fish-hook to his leg, to which was 
 attached a frog, suffered the bird to proceed on his 
 voyage. As had been anticipated, the bait soon 
 caught the eye of a greedy pike, which, swallowing 
 the deadly hook, not only arrested the progress of
 
 138 THE PIKE. 
 
 the astonished gander, but forced him to perform 
 half-a-dozen somersaults on the surface of the 
 water. For some time the struggle was most 
 amusing, the fish pulling and the bird screaming 
 with all its might, the one attempting to fly and 
 the other attempting to swim from the invisible 
 enemy ; the gander the one moment losing and the 
 next regaining its centre of gravity, and casting 
 between whiles many a rueful look at his snow- 
 white fleet of geese and goslings, who cackled out 
 their sympathy for their afflicted commodore. 
 At length victory declared in favour of the 
 feathered angler, who, bearing away for the nearest 
 shore, landed on the smooth green grass one of the 
 finest pike ever caught in the castle loch." 
 
 A rough and ready style of " trimmering " some- 
 times practised on the Norfolk Broads, known as 
 " liggering," has slain thousands of fine fish. A 
 " ligger" consists merely of a bunch of dry rushes 
 or sedges, to which a few yards of strong line is 
 tied and then wound round the bundle, leaving 
 about a yard depending, which is secured by a 
 small peg stuck in the rushes. On the line is a 
 perforated leaden bullet, and below that the gorge- 
 hook baited with a small live roach. Fifty or more 
 of these " liggers " were sometimes set afloat on 
 the windward side of the Broad, generally over- 
 night, and travelled slowly in the direction of the 
 wind. When the bait was seized, the line came 
 away from the peg, and as the bundle of rushes 
 revolved in the water under the strain of the 
 unrolling line, the pike gorged the bait This 
 mode of fishing (I believe it is now considered to 
 be poaching) helped largely to deplete those once 
 celebrated pike waters. Pike arc more nocturnal
 
 TRIMMERING. 139 
 
 in their habits than most fish. The " liggerers," 
 knowing this, set their destructive engines over- 
 night, and in the early morning rowed out in their 
 boats to gather the slain. On Windermere 
 trimmers are largely used ; fishing parties go out on 
 the lake to angle for perch, and it is no uncommon 
 occurrence to catch over a hundred in two or three 
 hours, for in some parts of the lake perch congre- 
 gate in shoals, but are small, only averaging a few 
 ounces each. Before beginning " perching," the 
 boatman places a dozen trimmers, baited with 
 small perch (with their prickly back-fins cut off), in 
 a wide circle all round the boat. At the termina- 
 tion of the perch-fishing commences a pursuit of 
 trimmers (sometimes half of those set) that have 
 hooked a jack. The trimmers are flat discs of cork 
 or wood, painted red one side and white the other, 
 and grooved round the edge in which the line is 
 wound, with its end leaded and the bait on, which 
 swims four or five feet below the trimmer. 
 
 These painted floaters are known as " man-o'- 
 war " trimmers, and are set in the lake, all with 
 the same colour uppermost ; but when a jack takes 
 the bait, they turn over and show a reversed colour, 
 and thus the sportsmen can tell which trimmer 
 has captured a fish. There is a lake or reservoir 
 not quite thirty-five miles N.W. of London, where 
 for years past trimmering has been rampant, and 
 many a fine pike has met with an ignominious 
 death. 
 
 The following description, by J. J. Manley, 
 gives a good idea how the sport of trimmering is 
 pursued. 
 
 " It was a grand piece of jack-water, as full of 
 fish as a cage is full of birds. A stock of bait were
 
 140 THE PIKE. 
 
 prepared, roach, dace, gudgeon, and small jack, the 
 latter beirg an excellent lure, for jack eat jack as 
 dog eats dog. 
 
 " Various trimmers were brought into requisition, 
 there were the ' tell-tale ' or the ' man-o'-war ' ; 
 and trimmers in the shape of claret-bottles for 
 floats (not any kind of bottle but claret-bottles, 
 for these will float longitudinally when properly 
 ' trimmed ' with water, and with the spare line of 
 the trimmer wound round their necks will unreel 
 when a jack runs the bait) ; also trimmers with 
 bullock's bladders. A few ' bank-runners,' which 
 arc a kind of trimmer, especially when a leger lead 
 and cork beyond it are used, making the fishing a 
 cross between night-lining and ordinary gorge live- 
 baiting, were also set. 
 
 " So, too, were a few bough trimmers that is 
 trimmers in the shape of a letter Y, without any 
 horizontal finishing lines. These are simple, but 
 clever contrivances. The letter Y is formed by any 
 ordinary bit of wood that is bifurcated. Round the 
 bifurcated part the line is wound, and nicked in a 
 slit in one of the arms. The stem of the Y is tied 
 by a separate piece of string to a bough over- 
 hanging the water, and when a jack runs the bait, 
 the line slips out of the split arm and runs off the 
 bifurcation quickly enough not to check the fish. 
 
 "About fifty or sixty trimmers in all were left 
 to the consideration of the jack, who are certainly 
 more nocturnal in their habits than most fish. In 
 the early morning the bank and bough-trimmers 
 were first visited and found to have done their 
 duty well, but the others required some finding. 
 Some of the bladders had evidently collapsed ; 
 but on one was certainly a good fish, for as the
 
 TRIMMERING. 141 
 
 boat with the keeper rowing neared it, the jack 
 evidently felt alarmed and dashed away, pulling 
 the bladder under the water from time to time. 
 Nearly twenty minutes were consumed in the chase, 
 and at last the bladder came into contact with a 
 floating branch, got pricked ; and our hopes of a 
 grand fish were dissipated, like the bladder, into 
 thin air. 
 
 "There was a somewhat similar hunt after a 
 claret-bottle, which eventuated in the landing of 
 a 12 Ib. fish. Some of the bottles and trimmers, 
 however, had disappeared altogether, doubtless 
 drawn down into the weedy depths by the jack 
 when they had come to the end of their tether. 
 About ten trimmers could not be found ; on about 
 ten more there were no fish, the gimp of some 
 having been bitten through, or the bait of some 
 rejected after it had been taken. On twenty were 
 jack of some kind, great or small, and on one 
 a grand perch of nearly 4 Ibs. in weight. This 
 may suffice as to the result of the day's or rather 
 night's trimmering." 
 
 But let it be added, that it is not every owner 
 of a lake like this, which was once one of the 
 best private pike fisheries in any of the home 
 counties, who would allow it to be depleted with 
 trimmers. 
 
 When fishing the Avon, at Downton, near Salis- 
 bury, with the late Francis Francis, we saw in the 
 keeper's hut lots of bottle-trimmers, with baits un- 
 removed from some of them, and the lines on all 
 were wet, just as taken from the river. The pike- 
 fishing there in consequence of this trimmering was 
 not worth the trouble of putting rods and tackle 
 together for. Hofland says trimmer-fishing is un-
 
 I 4 3 THE PIKE. 
 
 worthy of a sportsman, and that the skilful artist 
 will disdain to have a trimmer in his possession. 
 Mr. Pennell says trimmering ought to be the abomi- 
 nation of all pike-fishers ; and he is furthermore of 
 the opinion, which all true sportsmen will thoroughly 
 endorse, that those anglers who aspire to become 
 adepts in trimmer-fishing should procure a good 
 supply of old bottles, rusty hooks, and clothes-line, 
 and the assistance of the most notorious poacher 
 and blockhead in the neighbourhood ; and the 
 chances are that the angler will find himself exactly 
 fitted to his sport, both in tackle and companionship, 
 without violating the bond of like to like. 
 
 An important factor with regard to pike-fishing, 
 is the fence months, during which it is illegal to 
 catch those fish. Previous to the Mundella Fresh- 
 water Fisheries Bill of 1879 being passed and 
 becoming the law, pike and other so-called "coarse 
 fish" might be captured all the year round ; and 
 I believe they may be in the Norfolk waters even 
 now. However, the Bill as passed was a move in 
 the right direction ; fish were in some measure pro- 
 tected and the long-suffering coarse-fish anglers were 
 thankful for small mercies. Yet the Mundella Bill 
 was for many reasons a mistake, being full of 
 errors as to the months and time during which 
 some fish were fenced. For instance, in February 
 pike are gravid with spawn, and " shed " in March, 
 or, in late seasons, the first or second weeks of 
 April ; while perch spawn in May ; carp, tench, 
 bream, and roach late in May or early June ; yet 
 all are "fenced" from March i5th to June i6th, 
 and many of the cyprinida have not recovered 
 condition until August. The Mundella Act wants 
 amending, and it should be made illegal to capture
 
 ANGLERS' TROPHIES. 143 
 
 pike after the last day of February and before the 
 3Oth of June. 
 
 The trophies pf anglers, and of the members of 
 Angling Societies, are seldom mounted without 
 some kind of pictorial embellishment ; and among 
 the best examples of modern taxidermy were 
 specimens of very fine pike at the 1883 Inter- 
 national Fisheries Exhibition, South Kensington, 
 Among other grand fish were pike of 37 lb., 
 36* lb., 35* lb., 32 lb, 3oJ* lb., 28* lb, and 
 downwards to 20 lb, the weights of which were all 
 authentic : but the weights of many others ex- 
 hibited (as specified on their glass cases) were, to 
 say the least, doubtful. When taking plaster of 
 Paris " casts " of fish it is very different, for 
 they cannot be " faked " and made to appear 
 larger, than when alive in the water. The wet 
 plaster of Paris is simply poured on the fish, and 
 moulds itself to the exact length, girth, and contour 
 of the specimen, perfectly reproducing every fin, 
 scale, and muscle. 
 
 Casts were made by the late Mr. Frank Buck- 
 land of my above-mentioned pike which are 
 marked *, also of some of my large perch and a 
 fine grayling, which were painted by my artist 
 friend, the late Mr. H. L. Rolfe. who depicted the 
 colours of the fish soon after capture ; and the 
 perfection of simulation could no further go, nor 
 the art of making the unreal appear as life, 
 
 " Before decay's effacing fingers 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers."
 
 THE PERCH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PERCH (PJSKCA FLUVIATILIS). 
 
 " The bright-eyed perch, with fins of Tyrian dye." 
 
 POPE. 
 
 THE freshwater perch (Perca fluviatilis) is a 
 typical member of the Percidas family ; in 
 fact, although there are other spinous-finned fish, 
 the perch may be said to take first place among 
 the members of his tribe, as 
 
 " Prince of the prickly cohort ! " 
 
 The perch is not only one of the most beautiful 
 of the fish which swim in our rivers and lakes, but 
 ranks as a prime favourite with anglers, because of 
 the excellent sport it affords. A distinguishing 
 feature is its second dorsal fin ; its front dorsal has 
 from 13 or 14 sharp spinous rays: a weapon of 
 defence and offence, as some anglers have dis- 
 covered when they have incautiously handled the 
 fish ; its operculum (gill-cover) is also furnished 
 
 L
 
 146 THE PERCH. 
 
 with a sharp bone, something like that of the 
 small sea-fish the stinging weever (a species of 
 l\-)\-id<\ which is quite capable of giving a 
 painful puncture. VVhcn a perch is in full 
 season, his cuirass of golden-brown scales (in 
 shape, ctenoid or comb-like) arc variegated with 
 five, and sometimes six, transverse bars of a dark 
 green-bronze colour, shaded with a lovely iri- 
 descence, as also are the gill-covers. The ventral 
 fins are situated on the breast below the pectorals, 
 and are, with the tail, a brilliant red. The teeth 
 are large, and numerous on the palate as well as the 
 jaws. He is a plucky fighter, and when he sallies 
 forth from his concealment, with his spiny gill- 
 covers distended and prickly dorsal fin erect, like 
 a warrior, ^at the word of command to " fix 
 bayonets" all ready for the combat even the 
 pike respects him, for he would be a tough 
 antagonist to swallow. 
 
 When quiet and at rest, the perch sheathes his 
 back fin, and " slopes swords." 
 
 In the matter of food he is omnivorous, and when 
 hungry has a craving stomach, which, Dr. Badham 
 Habits in Fish Tattle, says " comes up at least 
 of perch half-way to meet the bait, as with a hand- 
 like effort to grasp the food." A lively worm is his 
 bonne-bouche ; even in worms he has a choice. A 
 middle-sized one with plenty of movement or wriggle 
 in its tail is usually preferred ; but there are times 
 when minnows or small gudgeons are more seductive 
 bait than worms, and an ordinary fish globe, with a 
 few dozen minnows inside and muslin tied over the 
 top so that they cannot escape, and then sunk in 
 the water, forms a very attractive lure for perch. 
 There is a glass-trap to hold minnows made
 
 PERCH SOMETIMES CAPRICIOUS. 147 
 
 expressly for the purpose of enticing perch 
 together, sold, I think, by Messrs Alfred and Sons, 
 of Moorgate Street, E.G. 
 
 Perch are sometimes capricious in biting or 
 feeding, and appear to be very sensitive to electric 
 changes in the atmosphere. In hot weather, with 
 the south wind blowing, they usually feed all day 
 long ; at other times, not at all in the day, but 
 generally at early morning and during the evening ; 
 they like a gravelly bottom, and where the water 
 is not too swift, especially near growths of 
 water-lilies. In winter perch are usually found 
 under hollow banks, where there is a gentle flow 
 of stream ; beneath boughs overhanging rather 
 deep water, near submerged roots and tree- 
 trunks, old flood-gates, moss-grown piles, and 
 campsheathings. Such places, where spinning or 
 " floating " with minnow or small gudgeon would 
 result in a hang-up to some obstruction, with loss 
 of tackle, can be fished more satisfactorily with 
 a paternoster. There was a bough (I think it still 
 remains) near the entrance to the Abbey stream, 
 Fenton-Hook, Thames, where a few winters ago I 
 caught seventeen handsome perch in a little over 
 an hour, paternoster fishing with minnow. 
 
 Perch spawn in May, and during summer and 
 early autumn are somewhat solitary in their habits ; 
 but after frosts have set in they become gregarious, 
 consorting together, so that where one is caught 
 the angler may expect others will find their way 
 to his landing-net. Female perch are much more 
 numerous than males. Frank Buckland states in 
 History of British Fishes that he had two female 
 perch sent him that weighed respectively 3 Ibs. 
 2 ozs. and 2 Ibs. 1 1 ozs. ; he and his secretary 
 
 L 2
 
 I 4 8 THE PERCH. 
 
 counted the eggs, which numbered 155,620 in the 
 larger fish, and 127,240 in the smaller. 
 
 The ova of perch are about the size of millet 
 seeds, and instead of being deposited and separated 
 one from another as in the Salmonida, are (when 
 extruded) invested with and bound together by 
 a copious matrix of semi-transparent mucilage, 
 and are hung in loops or festoons of ribbon-like 
 bands upon water-weeds, among submerged sedges 
 or boughs ; the perch goes into such places 
 and rubs or presses herself against the weeds, 
 until one end of the band of ova has become 
 attached, and then swimming slowly away the eggs 
 are voided. Perch will bear a strong admixture 
 of sea water. I have known them to be caught in 
 the salmon nets below Wareham, where the river 
 Frome drops into Poole Harbour. They are very 
 abundant in some of the Norfolk Broads, and grow 
 to large dimensions ; besides the two I 
 of size have already mentioned as specified by 
 
 and the late Mr. Frank Buckland, he par- 
 numbers ... j. 
 
 ticulanses two others a fine fish of 
 
 4| Ibs. taken on a "Jigger" in Wroxham Broad; 
 also one of 4! Ibs. in the Bure ; another weighing 
 4f Ibs. was some years ago caught in the reservoir 
 at Daventry. My own largest specimens, captured 
 in the Colne and Loddon, were 3 Ibs. 8 ozs., 3 Ibs. 
 2 ozs. and 2 Ibs. 15 ozs., of which I have the 
 " casts " made by Frank Buckland and painted 
 by H. L. Rolfe. 
 
 The naturalist Pennant (in British Zoology, pub- 
 lished 1761, 1769) mentions a perch caught in the 
 Serpentine, Hyde Park, that weighed 8 Ibs., but the 
 evidence is not satisfactory. The river Lunan was 
 said in 1894 to have produced a perch weighing
 
 PERCA LABKAX. 149 
 
 5 Ibs. 13 ozs., relative to which fish the late Lord 
 Inverurie asked a question in the Fishing Gazette 
 of February 3rd, 1894, and received the following 
 answer : " A heavy perch. The river Lunan, 
 on which the town of Forfar is situated, is a tidal 
 river, and sea-perch, or bass {Perca labrax), ascend 
 the brackish water a considerable distance. Was 
 not the Lunan fish caught by Sergeant Milne a 
 sea-perch ? What number of bony rays were there 
 in its dorsal fin ? " 
 
 There A\as no reply to this. 
 
 Dagenham Breach, Essex, was also credited many 
 years ago with an 8 Ibs. perch, but as there had 
 been an exceedingly high tide, when the Thames 
 overtopped its bank, causing an influx of brackish 
 water into that lake or gulf, the fish spoken of was 
 no doubt a Perca labrax, A perch of 6 Ibs. was 
 accredited to Mr. Hunt, of Brades, Staffordshire, 
 as captured by him in the Birmingham Canal ; 
 and another of the same weight is said to have 
 been taken at Slapton Ley. Some years ago a 
 perch of 7 Ibs. was reported to have been taken in 
 the New Cut, between Readham and Herringfleet, 
 but as the water there is tidal and brackish, the 
 fish was doubtless Perca labrax. All these 
 specimens were "topped" by a fish at the 1883 
 International Fisheries Exhibition. It was shown 
 by the Birmingham and Midland Piscatorial Asso- 
 ciation and described on its glass case, also in the 
 official catalogue, as a " io Ibs. perch, taken on 
 one of the Norfolk Broads " ; it was proved to be a 
 bass or sea-perch, with the spines of its dorsal fin 
 " faked," and five dark stripes painted on the body. 
 It was promptly turned out from the exhibition 
 as a fraud. The lakes of Lapland hold enormous
 
 150 THE PERCH. 
 
 perch. Yarrell speaks of one, recorded by 
 Schafier, of about 40 inches in length, the head of 
 which (nearly a foot long) is preserved in the church 
 of Lulca, Lapland. 
 
 The waters of Norway and Sweden, also the 
 Danube, contain gigantic perch, far exceeding the 
 extreme weight spoken of by some angling 
 writers as having been caught in this country, 
 where quantity and not extreme size seems to be 
 the character of the sport 
 
 For instance, the Field of August 25th, 1884, 
 gave an account of " the capture by two anglers 
 in six hours (between eleven and five o'clock) of 
 more than 800 perch in Slapton Ley," a well-known 
 piece of water in Devonshire, which may be fished 
 by all comers on payment of a small fee. The 
 accuracy of the statement was questioned, but the 
 evidence of subsequent correspondents confirmed 
 it ; one gentleman stating that he and a friend in 
 five hours' fishing took 476 perch. Next to this 
 Devon lake, or " ley," perhaps Windcrmcrc might 
 be mentioned as holding countless shoals of small 
 perch ; in both these waters the fish average 
 about five to the pound weight, a half-pounder 
 being considered a fine specimen. Corrib and 
 some other Irish lakes and rivers hold large 
 perch, where 2| Ibs. to 3 Ibs. fish are not infre- 
 quently caught. 
 
 In Virginia Water and other private lakes I 
 know of perch of fine size ; and I have two fifteen- 
 acre ponds in my mind's eye, where three-pounders 
 are not at all uncommon. But possibly among our 
 southern rivers, the Colnc, Kcnnct, and Loddon 
 have produced the finest fish ; my own best catch 
 in the Colne was in 1875, seven perch weighing
 
 RECORDS. 151 
 
 1 8 Ibs., the largest 3^ Ibs., and in the Locldon five 
 of the aggregate weight of 1 2 Ibs. The two finest 
 Kennet records I ever heard of were made by the 
 late Mr. Francis Francis, who took home thirty- 
 seven perch weighing 60 Ibs. (many over 2 Ibs. 
 each), the selection of one day's fishing ; and the 
 friend who angled with him had three large perch 
 on his paternoster at the same time, of which he 
 bagged two weighing 2 Ibs. and 2^ Ibs. respec- 
 tively : while the third fish, which was the largest 
 of the three, got away. 
 
 Near Kintbury, on the Kennet, Mr. C. Penncll 
 and a friend took one day " several dozen perch, 
 averaging more than a pound weight each, and the 
 largest considerably exceeded 2 Ibs." 
 
 On November 8th, 1876, the late Mr. J. H. 
 Keene caught fifteen perch weighing 21 Ibs. in 
 Virginia Water, and a few days before that eight, 
 averaging i^ Ibs. each ; also in the same water 
 (February, 1877) a friend of mine captured several 
 over 2 Ibs. each, fishing with brandlings and 
 lobworms on a light leger-line; and in 1882 two 
 other anglers I know, fishing the lake at Eastwell 
 Park, Kent (Lord Winchelsea's), caught with worm 
 baits fifty perch, some of 2} Ibs. each, of the ag- 
 gregate weight of 69 Ibs. Of late years the Thames 
 has not produced many perch ; but as they are 
 now better looked after at spawning time and pro- 
 tected from the swans which then greedily devour 
 the perch ova those fish are again increasing in 
 number. The largest specimen Thames perch I 
 know of weighed 4 Ibs., and was caught at Sun- 
 bury, January, 1879. In the Thames a 2-lbs. fish 
 is now considered a fine specimen, and although 
 there may yet be three-poiinders in the river it will
 
 i$2 THE PERCH. 
 
 take a great deal of perseverance to catch them. 
 As the late J. J . Manley, wrote respecting 
 perch-fishing: "If ever you should capture one 
 of 4 Ibs. invite all your piscatorial friends to an 
 oyster supper (3^. 6d. per dozen) with still Moselle, 
 or better, Chablis ; for you have accomplished the 
 object of your life, and fulfilled your mission ; you 
 have nothing else worth living for." And to quote 
 again my reverend friend, " What bait will a hungry 
 perch not take ? for he is well-nigh omnivorous. 
 Varieties He will take any kind of worm, from the 
 of bait tail of well-scoured lob, delicate as the 
 best prepared tripe or cod's sounds, to a bunch 
 of stinking brandlings, the effects of the handling 
 of which carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush can 
 hardly efface in a week. He will take a salmi 
 of gentles, a nubble of paste, an artificial spinning- 
 bait of almost any pattern ; yea, even a gaudy fly 
 in some waters. As for ordinary spinning and live 
 baits gudgeon, dace, roach, chub he has little 
 choice generally speaking, though perhaps a 
 gudgeon is his favourite. And what ' specimen ' 
 live bait will he not seize ? When you are fishing 
 for large jack, a perch of 2 Ibs. (say) will take a bait 
 intended for a pike of 12 Ibs., as if he had any quan- 
 tity of capacity for internal storage, which, however, 
 is not the case ; indeed, at times he is by no means 
 well on the feed, and like other fish though perhaps 
 not to the same degree is affected by wind and 
 weather, and by other circumstances ; but when they 
 are biting boldly, and the angler drops his bait quietly 
 into the midst of a shoal of perch, if he fishes care- 
 fully and does not hook and lose fish, he may capture 
 nearly every one of them." Mr. C. Pennell's wide 
 experience testifies to this. He says : " 1 have seen
 
 GREEDINESS OF PERCH 153 
 
 a whole string of perch following the bait one after 
 another like so many shadows ; and when they are 
 on the feed in this way, it would not be an im- 
 possible feat to take every fish in the shoal. In 
 fact, I believe that I have literally done so on 
 several occasions ; and I remember once a visit to 
 the Avon, above Christchurch, where the perch lie 
 mostly in holes easily fishable, after which visit I 
 should not have much cared to fish the same water 
 for a year or two ! " 
 
 My own observations have convinced me that a 
 perch appears sometimes to be fearless. I have, 
 when pike-fishing in a lake or river, seen a large 
 perch sail with prickly fin erect close up to the 
 boat or bank, seize the pike bait, and shake it as 
 a terrier does a rat, eventually getting the head 
 and hook into his mouth, bristling all the while 
 like a porcupine, and his colours showing with 
 increased brilliancy ; then, retiring with his prey, 
 only to be hooked and caught himself. Perch will 
 at times gorge themselves to repletion, and yet keep 
 feeding on minnows, with the tails of some pro- 
 truding from their throats. In the punt-well or 
 basket they usually eject some from their dis- 
 tended stomachs, in some cases digestion of the 
 minnows not even begun, so recently were they 
 swallowed. 
 
 The late Mr. Frank Buckland considered perch 
 to have more intelligence than most other fish ; also 
 that the best way to test a fish's intelligence (like 
 that of other animals) was by appealing to its 
 appetite. " At the aquarium at the Zoological 
 Gardens, Tennant, the keeper, was accustomed to 
 frequently feed the perch with live minnows. After 
 a while the perch ascertained by a process very like
 
 154 THE PERCH. 
 
 reasoning that minnows were kept in another 
 portion of the fish-house. Whenever they saw 
 Tcnnant go near the place where the minnows were 
 kept, they began to rush about as if in anticipation 
 of the welcome feed, which, somehow or other, they 
 had ascertained was forthcoming for their benefit." 
 But of all intelligent fish the most intelligent must 
 be the Perca scandens or A nabas scandens, the Climb- 
 ing Perch, a native of Ceylon and other Eastern 
 countries ; it not only travels over land, but climbs 
 trees to the height of several feet in pursuit of the 
 food on which it exists, using the spines of its 
 dorsal fin and its prickly gill-covers, also the tail 
 and its stiff scales, to enable it to climb the tree- 
 trunks. Sir Emerson Tennent tells all about this 
 queer perch in his book on The Natural History 
 of Ceylon (published 1860). 
 
 The tenacity of life in perch is almost as extra- 
 ordinary as in carp ; they may be packed in damp 
 weeds, moss, or hay, and if occasionally wetted, 
 can be conveyed a hundred miles or more, without 
 perceptible loss of vitality, and turned alive and 
 vigorous into a pond or water-tank. From the 
 upper parts of the Thames, above Moulsford, I 
 have brought them to London, packed in the way 
 described, and kept them alive for days afterwards. 
 If packed this way, perch will in the winter survive 
 a journey even if apparently frozen and will 
 recover animation if thawed by placing them in 
 water three or four degrees above freezing point. 
 Cold-blooded animals preserve vitality for a 
 lengthened period in a frozen condition : Sir John 
 Franklin discovered fish perfectly frozen, but after- 
 wards capable of resuscitation. 
 
 Do perch feed at night ? As for myself I never
 
 HERALDIC FISH. 155 
 
 caught one after nightfall, nor have I ever known 
 one to be captured at night, and I believe them to 
 be somnolent fish. 
 
 As a typical fish in heraldry, or as a symbol 
 appropriated in the dim past by ancient potentates 
 and families, I fear the perch has been pish in 
 altogether ignored, for I have searched heraldry 
 heraldic and archaeological works relating to the sub- 
 ject fruitlessly ; and while the salmon, pike, barbel, 
 eel, the lobster and crab (which by-the-bye arc 
 crustaceous) and even the whale (a mammal) have 
 been taken up as emblems for family crests and 
 coats of arms, I find the perch makes hardly any 
 show at all. Of fishes, heraldry takes comprehensive 
 notice ; the fish symbol has come down to our own 
 day, and " the Pisces " may be seen on the door- 
 way of Iffley Church, on the Thames near Oxford ; 
 in the nave of Peterchurch in Herefordshire, and 
 elsewhere. Whales are the insignia of Whalley 
 Abbey ; bream of Peterborough ; haddock of Peter- 
 hausen ; herring of St. Edmunds, and also of the 
 Black Friars Priory at Yarmouth. The arms 
 assumed by monasteries were sometimes those of 
 their benefactors, as the pike of Caldcr Abbey, 
 largely endowed by the Lucy family ; and the 
 salmon of St- Augustine's at Bristol, in memory 
 of the fishery attached to that Abbey by the 
 Lords of Berkeley. Many prelates and some 
 primates have borne fish crests. Peter Courtenay, 
 Bishop of Exeter, afterwards of Rochester, assumed 
 a dolphin, and transmitted it to his sons Robert 
 and Baldwin. A dolphin curves itself upon 
 the arms of John Fyshar, another Bishop of 
 Rochester, who also bore three eel-spears. Arch- 
 bishop Herring, and Thomas Spratt, Bishop of
 
 156 THE PERCH. 
 
 Rochester, display on their coats of arms the 
 fishes of their own name ; and St. Mungo's 
 salmon figures in the arms of Glasgow. A very 
 lengthy catalogue might be given of prelates, and 
 other dignitaries, also of royal examples, who have 
 gone to the fish-world for their crests. Barbel 
 appear in the royal arms of Bohemia and Hungary ; 
 also in the arms of Queen Margaret of Anjou ; and 
 salmon on those of the Princes of Lorra'ne. 
 
 As an edible fish, perch enjoys a fine reputation, 
 and a river perch has decided claims on our' con- 
 Perch as sideration ; those of the Hampshire Avon, 
 
 food t] le Colne and Kennet are very good ; but 
 a Thames perch is the best of all river perch. I 
 have caught and eaten Corrib perch those of 
 Maidstone,Kent, and Firle, Sussex also of Naseby, 
 Northamptonshire ; the last " spatchcock'd " and 
 broiled in butter, in the Bungalow on the banks of 
 the reservoir, by a lady angler (my host's wife), 
 were excellent. Therefore, I cannot but endorse 
 what Ausonius says in his lines, which have been 
 thus translated : 
 
 " Prince of the prickly cohort, bred in lakes 
 To feast our boards, what sapid, boneless flakes 
 Thy solid flesh supplies ! Tho' river-fed, 
 No dantier dish in ocean's pastures bred 
 Swims thy compeer ; scarce mullet may compete 
 With thee for fibre firm, and flavour sweet." 
 
 Among the ancients the perch was held in high 
 esteem. Galen, the celebrated physician born 
 A.D. 150, died A.D. 201 prescribes it for invalids 
 generally ; and one famous doctor, though he 
 taboos other fish, flesh, and fowl to certain patients, 
 permits them perch. Izaac Walton, commending 
 that fish, mentions the proverb " More wholesome
 
 METHODS OF COOKING PERCH. 157 
 
 than a perch of Rhine." Dr. Badham tells us that 
 on the Continent perch are generally stewed in 
 vinegar, fresh grape juice, orange, or some other 
 sour sauce ; but on Lago Maggiore they are roasted 
 in their scales and basted with an acid sauce ; 
 while in Holland butter is added. Among our- 
 selves some cooks simply boil ; some broil ; some 
 fillet and fry them with egg and bread crumbs. 
 
 Split down the back and laid in the form of a 
 spread-eagle (spatchcocked), with the scales in- 
 tact, on a gridiron, and broiled with a suggestion 
 of butter and cayenne, served piping hot, with a 
 squeeze of lemon, the fish is very good ; or baked 
 whole in his jacket ; as also, skinned and broiled 
 delicately in buttered paper. Perch may be cooked 
 by the riverside (as gipsies do a hedgehog), by 
 taking the fish as caught, not drawn or otherwise 
 cleaned, and procuring some clay and with it coat- 
 ing the fish about one-eighth of an inch thick ; or, 
 failing clay, enveloping in several coatings of paper 
 (newspaper does very well) ; thoroughly saturate 
 the paper by holding it in the water, having pre- 
 viously lighted a fire of wood or sticks, and making 
 a quantity of hot embers, in which place the fish, 
 and bake it. Perch done in this way are exceedingly 
 nice. An angler who is frequently punt-fishing 
 should get a small charcoal stove with a grating 
 on top like a gridiron ; this can be kept in the punt 
 and fish cooked, as fancied or required. 
 
 A small species of the Percidas family (Acerina 
 inilgaris] and very much resembling the The pope 
 perch in appearance is the Pope or Ruffe. or ruffe 
 The distinctive mark is in the back fins, which in a 
 pope are joined together, but in the perch are 
 clearly separated ; neither has the pope transverse
 
 158 THE PERCH. 
 
 markings or bars, but is coloured almost exactly 
 like a gudgeon, and is often caught when angling 
 for the latter fish. Its average length is four or 
 five inches. Pope arc plentiful in the Thames, and 
 the Berkshire Canal ; also in the rivers Kennct, 
 Yarc, and Wensum. They are bold-biting fish, 
 with iridescent opal tints on the cheeks, spots on 
 the spinous dorsal fin, and a sharp point on the 
 gill-covers. 
 
 Buckland : says " A cruel habit, which probably 
 originated in some idea connected with Roman 
 Catholic persecutions, is practised up and down the 
 Thames, and almost all over England. When a 
 pope is caught, a wine-cork is pressed tightly on to 
 a spine of the dorsal fin, and the fish is turned 
 loose again into the water, to bob about upon the 
 surface. This is what is called ' plugging a pope.' "
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 METHODS OF ANGLING FOR PERCH. 
 
 r I ""HE rod selected for this branch of the sport 
 J_ should be a cane one light in the hand 
 and 12 feet or 13 feet in length moderately stiff 
 but springy, with standing rings, such as p a ter- 
 describcd for pike-fishing ; or the pike- nostering 
 spinning rod, if not a weighty one, will answer the 
 purpose admirably. Use a Nottingham winch with 
 a fine running-line and a perch-paternoster, which, 
 properly made, should consist of 4 feet of selected 
 round, sound gut ; this is called the trace, and has 
 a small pear-shaped lead plummet looped on the 
 bottom of it, which may weigh f oz. or less, accord- 
 ing to the depth of water or strength of stream ; at 
 any rate, use as small a plummet as is possible ; for 
 with fine tackle and light leads better sport can 
 usually be obtained, especially if the perch are feed- 
 ing frugally, for they are sometimes not mad on 
 the feed. About five inches above the plummet tic 
 a loop in the trace (after well soaking the gut), and 
 fifteen inches higher tie another loop, to each of 
 which attach a No. 6 sncck-bend hook, bound on 
 to five inches of fine salmon-gut, the stiffness of
 
 i6o 
 
 THE PERCH. 
 
 which will make the hooks stand out at right 
 angles to the trace. If fishing deep waters, such as 
 a weir pool, a third hook, No. 9 on gimp, may be 
 added with advantage another fifteen inches higher 
 up the trace, on which a live gudgeon, or small 
 dace may be placed, on the chance of catching a 
 pike ; the middle hook, or the top one (if only 
 two are used), should be baited 
 with a large minnow (those from 
 the Colne are very large), and 
 the bottom hook, next the plum- 
 met, with a nicely scoured worm ; 
 or if a three-hook paternoster, 
 two with brandlings or red 
 worms ; but any way, see that 
 neither gudgeon, dace, minnow 
 nor worms are stale, but strong 
 and lively. Red marsh-worms, 
 garden-worms and brandlings 
 are excellent bait for perch. The 
 minnows must be hooked 
 through the side of the upper 
 lip, and it should be remembered 
 that they are delicate little fish, 
 and won't bear much handling 
 or pulling about. 
 
 Patcrnostering for perch is 
 much the same in method as that 
 pursued for pike. Drop the bait in carefully ; let 
 them remain on a tight line for a few seconds ; if 
 no result, move them quietly to another place and 
 then search all the water round about. Deep, quiet 
 water, where there is a gentle eddy ; holes, where 
 the roots of trees run down, and their pendant 
 branches shade the retreat from the fierce heat
 
 WHERE TO FISH FOR PERCH. 161 
 
 of the sun ; the moss-grown piles and camp- 
 sheating about locks and sluice-gates, and the 
 back-waters of mill-streams are all favourite perch 
 haunts. In canals and navigable rivers perch seek 
 the deeper parts where barges lie, and about floats 
 of timber, choosing in preference (if obtainable, 
 places where the bottom is sandy and pebbly. It 
 is advisable when for the first time on an unknown 
 river in quest of perch, to note where the small fry 
 of dace, roach, gudgeon, &c., congregate, and there 
 to drop the paternoster quietly in, and keep the 
 line taut from the winch the moment the bottom 
 is felt ; then move it gently along the bottom 
 lifting it now and again by the point of the rod 
 until the water adjacent has been thoroughly 
 searched. If fish are there, and in a feeding 
 humour, the angler will soon be aware of it ; at the 
 sharp " tug-tug " he should strike at once, and the 
 perch nine times out of ten will be hooked. If it 
 proves to be a good fish, be in no hurry, but play 
 him gently, for perch have tender cheeks, and if 
 handled roughly, a hole is easily torn, out of which 
 the hook may very likely drop if the slightest 
 slackness of line is allowed, and the perch be lost. 
 If played properly, after the first few plunges are 
 over the fish is your own ; then get him to your 
 landing-net, and mind his prickly back fin. Perch 
 sometimes refuse a minnow on paternoster, or 
 only mouth and kill it ; if the angler finds this is 
 the case, he should hold a loose yard of line in his 
 left hand, and on feeling the fish's tug slack the 
 line and drop the point of his rod ; wait two or three 
 seconds, then recover the slack line, strike firmly 
 but gently, and the chances, are he will hook his 
 fish ; by following this suggestion, he gives the 
 
 M
 
 i62 THE PERCH. 
 
 fish time to turn the minnow or small gudgeon 
 into his mouth head first ; for perch always seize 
 a fish bait across the middle in the first instance. 
 
 If refusing minnows on paternoster, perch some- 
 times take them greedily when put on a hook 
 Float- and shotted trace, with float, and floated 
 fishing clown or along the swim ; so that if they 
 will not feed to paternoster tackle, floating the bait 
 may be tried with advantage. Stone-loach are ex- 
 cellent baits for perch. Anglers should always have 
 a good supply of worms ; to which end gardeners 
 and gardeners' boys should have orders to collect 
 all the worms they possibly can, and to throw them 
 into a tub or box half filled with turves and moss, 
 in which the worms can scour themselves, get tough, 
 and bright in colour. " Lobs " require a week at 
 least in moss, and well looking after if the weather 
 is warm, also picking over daily, the stale ones 
 being thrown away ; but if wanted for immediate 
 use, put a handful of worms into a pot with some 
 tea-leaves squeezed dry, and let them remain for a 
 few hours, when they will be found in nice con- 
 dition. I have omitted to explain the reason why 
 the lowest hook of the paternoster is placed so near 
 the plummet, which is, that if the bait be a minnow, 
 or small gudgeon, it may be near the ground, where 
 (as a rule) the largest perch lie, it being the habit 
 of the minnow on seeing a perch near, to strike up, 
 as far as the gut hook-link will allow, in its efforts 
 to escape, and thus attract the perch. The bottom 
 hook usually catches most fish ; and this is gener- 
 ally the case when paternostering with worms for 
 baits. There are few fish more intelligently wary 
 than the perch. In waters that are much fished 
 perch attain a degree of experience in the matter
 
 FLOAT LEDGER. 163 
 
 of bait and fishing tackle which would do credit to 
 many anglers, who often insult a perch's intelligence 
 by fishing for him with a monstrous apparatus of 
 hog's bristles, shots, and bone which they have 
 bought at a tackle-maker's, and fondly believed to 
 be the " right sort " of paternoster. As Mr. 
 Francis rightly observes about such abominations, 
 " if he (the perch) condescends to take your 
 minnow at all, he will take it probably without 
 the hook." 
 
 Where there are slow eddies and deep holes, 
 with but little stream, some of the largest perch 
 are frequently caught by using a float ledger made 
 thus : Attach a gut bottom of a yard length to 
 a Nottingham running line of fine silk ; fit up a 
 long cork float on the silk line with a small bullet 
 having a hole drilled through it in which the line 
 runs easily and freely ; the drilled bullet is, of 
 course, below the float, and a split shot is pinched 
 on the line just above the gut to prevent the bullet 
 slipping lower. Selecting the hole or eddy you 
 intend to fish, arrange the float so that the bullet 
 just rests on the bottom, and thus find the proper 
 depth. Then select a fat luscious-looking lob, 
 one with a red vein running down to its tail if pos- 
 sible ; put the barb in an inch below the head, and 
 " threadle " the worm until the shank of the hook 
 is just covered. Worms put on in this manner 
 show much better than when looped on in a bunch, 
 and must be more attractive baits. Cast out your 
 tackle, and when the bullet reaches the bottom, 
 draw it towards the point angled from, until the 
 gut length is likely to lie straight on the bed of 
 the river, and if there is any current the float 
 must be held back, the thin silk line between the 
 
 M 2
 
 164 
 
 THE PERCH. 
 
 rod top and the float being clear of the water. Do 
 not be in a hurry if a dip of the float indicates that 
 a fish is attacking the worm, for the perch may be 
 a big one, and in consequence much more cautious 
 than those of ordinary size, therefore wait until the 
 float goes down clean out of sight, then strike, but 
 not too hard, and look out for " a long, strong 
 pull," and ructions at the top joint. 
 
 Hardy Bros., of Alnwick, are producing excellent 
 hooks in various sizes for perch fishing, in which 
 the barbs stand out sideways and, the points being 
 
 N?2 
 
 Pike. 
 
 N3 
 
 Perch Sixes. 
 
 SECTION 
 
 HARDY'S "SIMPLEX" LEADS. 
 
 shaped like lancets, injure the minnow or worm 
 baits but very little, so that they live longer 
 than when on ordinary hooks ; the gut is also re- 
 inforced at the binding (close up to the shank), 
 which gives additional strength. They also manu- 
 facture " Simplex " leads for perch-spinning, which 
 are easily attached to or detached from the trace. 
 To fix them they can be opened with the fingers 
 or the aid of a penknife ; a knot in the trace 
 being brought into where the hole in the lead 
 is cut, the lead is then closed with the fingers 
 or pliers. 
 
 Good sport may generally be had. with perch by
 
 SPINNING BAIT. 165 
 
 spinning either with natural bait or with artificial 
 minnows, small spoon baits, Hoarder's " piano 
 convex" spinners, and other diminutive spin- 
 but very deadly lures such as Farlow's ning. 
 "Hogback" spoons and "Magnet" spinners. These 
 are made of light metal, with the hook eyed 
 and attached to a solid ring, thus combining 
 lightness with strength. They are sunk with 
 two or three shots on the trace, which has, of 
 course, a small double swivel or two in it ; or 
 the trace may be weighted with a f-inch Archer- 
 Jardine lead, or a No. 3 Hardy's " Simplex " lead, 
 
 "HOGIJACKED" SPOON. THE " MAGNET " SPINNER. 
 
 and fished as a spinning lure, or on the sink 
 and draw method. For a natural spinning bait 
 none is so good as a large minnow ; those from 
 the river Colne water-cress beds are from 2 inches 
 to 3 inches long, and can usually be obtained of 
 Hancock and Co., 308, High Holborn, or of Carter 
 and Co., 137, St. John Street Road. The next best 
 bait is a small gudgeon or stone-loach. A trace, 
 such as described for pike-spinning (see page 58), 
 but made of selected gut fit for trout-fishing, 
 answers the purpose exactly ; the flight on which 
 to place the minnow or small gudgeon may be 
 like the following, which is known in the trade
 
 166 
 
 THE PERCH. 
 
 as the " Fenncll" perch tackle, and the method 
 of baiting with a minnow is shown below. 
 
 With a baiting-needle, or a disgorger, push the 
 lead down the bait's throat and into its belly ; 
 insert one of the hooks of upper triangle through 
 the back, about a quarter of an inch behind back 
 fin, leaving the tail triangle to hang loose ; adjust 
 the movable lip hook so as to crook the bait into 
 
 THE "PENNELL" PERCH FLIGHT. 
 
 the form shown ; and finally, pass the lip hook 
 through both lips of the bait, upper lip first. If 
 the distance has been wrongly guessed and the 
 bait does not spin brilliantly, increase or diminish 
 the curve by shifting the lip hook, which can be 
 readily done without taking it out, by loosening 
 the surrounding coils, pushing the gut through the 
 loops (upwards or downwards as the case may be), 
 and again tightening the coils. 
 
 The trace should be attached to a light plaited
 
 "ARCHER" SPINNER; " COXON " SPINNER. 167 
 
 line of waterproof silk. A very small "Archer" 
 spinner, such as in size is used for trout, is a 
 capital tackle baited with large minnows or small 
 gudgeons (see illustration). 
 
 "ARCHEK" SPINNER. 
 
 So also is the " Coxon " patent spinner, in 
 small sizes for perch-fishing, with a small natural 
 bait. The various artificial lures, such as Phantoms, 
 Devons, and quill-minnows ; also minnows or small 
 fish preserved in quickleen, methylated spirit, and 
 other antiseptics, are very good substitutes for 
 spinning baits in the absence of natural ones. 
 
 s- 
 
 " COXON " SPINNER. 
 
 Float-fishing for perch with live baits or worms, 
 either in rivers or lakes where these fish are plenti- 
 ful, as a rule gives excellent sport. A light pater- 
 noster rod, a fine running line of prepared silk on a 
 Nottingham winch, such as is shown on page 47, are 
 the tackles required ; and in addition a float on a
 
 168 THE PERCH. 
 
 gut trace properly shotted to the float's buoy- 
 ancy ; also a No. 7 hook on gut is a size which 
 will do equally well for minnow or worm fishing. 
 
 For ordinary fishing a float this pattern (A on 
 opposite page) will be found the correct thing ; but 
 when fishing some distance away down a stream 
 or a weir by the Nottingham method, a traveller 
 float (B on opposite page) will be found more 
 suitable for the purpose. 
 
 An excellent float for perch and other fishing 
 has recently been invented by Mr. J. Jeffery, of 
 Epsom, which exactly provides a requirement long 
 needed by anglers, who, like myself, have at times 
 been so situated as not to be able to cast a float 
 far enough to reach the desired spot where fish 
 were likely to be congregated, unless the gut trace 
 or line was heavily shotted. These new floats 
 which are made in two or three sizes have a coil 
 of lead, b l>', wound round them at the bottom end, 
 the weight of which is so accurately adjusted that 
 it submerges them to the proper line of flotation, 
 a a. (See illustration C on opposite page.) On 
 making a cast the float travels as a weighted arrow 
 does from a bow, striking the water with a kind of 
 'shoot," and then "cocking" immediately. Two 
 or three small shots are sufficient for the gut-hook 
 link to sink the bait. For " roving " alongside 
 banks and under trees these floats answer admir- 
 ably. I am informed Messrs. Allcock and Co. 
 have secured the patent. 
 
 If the bait used is a minnow it should be care- 
 fully hooked through the side of its top lip ; if a 
 worm it must be tenderly threaded up the hook 
 shank, with half an inch or so of its tail hanging 
 over and beyond the barb.
 
 NEW FLOATS. 
 
 169 
 
 It is best to let a perch take the float well under 
 water, giving a second or two before hitting the 
 fish, when a bite is perceived ; and then, keeping 
 
 B 
 
 NEW 
 
 I PERCH 
 
 FLOAT. 
 
 PERCH FLOATS. 
 
 a moderately taut line, but not holding the fish 
 so hard as to tear the hook out of the thin and
 
 170 THE PERCH. 
 
 tender check. - If the water is very bright and 
 perch are quite off feed, take away the float and 
 substitute a small perforated bullet for a sinker ; 
 throw out the worm across and rather up the swim, 
 and draw it up and down the water slowly towards 
 you, with a motion similar to spinning ; a brace or 
 two of fish may be taken this way when they are 
 very dainty. 
 
 Where there are deep, slow eddies without much 
 stream, some of the largest perch, and now and 
 again fine chub, are captured by using a gut bottom 
 2 or 3 feet in length attached to a fine Nottingham 
 or Derby silk line. Before attaching the gut bottom 
 fit up a cork float on the line, with a small per- 
 forated bullet below it, the hole in the bullet being 
 smooth and large enough for the line to run easily 
 and freely. Then, having looped on the gut bottom, 
 a split shot is fixed on the line just above where 
 the gut is tied or looped on, so as to prevent the 
 bullet running over the loop in the line on to the 
 gut. The float must be so arranged on the line 
 that the bullet just touches the bed of the river ; 
 and the proper depth of the place selected to be 
 fished being obtained, select a flat and nicely scoured 
 lobworm ; put the point of the hook in an inch be- 
 low the head of the worm, and carefully thread the 
 worm until the shank of the hook is just covered. 
 Worms put on this way are much more attractive 
 than when looped up on the hook. Then having 
 cast out the bait, when the bullet has reached the 
 bottom draw it a little towards you, so that the 
 gut lies straight between the 'bullet and bait, and 
 hold the float back a little, especially if there is 
 any current, the line being clear of the water from 
 point of rod to the float. Do not be in a hurry if a
 
 WHEN TO STRIKE. 
 
 171 
 
 dip of the float indicates a bite ; for it is likely to 
 be a big fish, and a more cautious one than the 
 smaller of its tribe. Wait rather until the float 
 goes clean out of sight, then strike, but not too 
 hard ; look out for some good sport, and carefully 
 play the fish to the landing-net. 
 
 AERATED COMBINATION BAIT-CAN. 
 
 " Roving " a minnow for some distance alongside 
 an overhanging bank hollowed out by the wash of 
 the stream, is another capital method, and easily 
 accomplished on running-tackle by the Nottingham 
 mode of fishing. 
 
 I have often thought it would be a comfort to 
 anglers if livebait, say minnows and small gudgeon,
 
 172 THE PERCH. 
 
 worms of two kinds, i.e. "lobs," red-worms, or 
 brandings and gentles, could all be carried in 
 separate compartments in one handy " lock-up " 
 vehicle to the lake or riverside. Bearing this in 
 view, I have invented aerating combination bait- 
 cans, which fulfil the advantages enumerated. I 
 give an illustration on the previous page. The 
 usual application has been made for provisional 
 patent. 
 
 Dead-bait fishing for perch is not much practised, 
 but sometimes a large one will take a dead gorge- 
 bait when the angler is pike-fishing ; in fact, I have 
 known big perch to seize a bait which in size was 
 fit for a 15 Ibs. pike, and never leave hold until it 
 succeeded in getting the bait half-way down its 
 throat, when of course the perch was hooked, 
 played, and landed. An instance of this occurred 
 when I was fishingnear Glynde (February23rd, 1882) 
 with a companion who caught a 3 Ibs. perch, which 
 took and gorged a gudgeon bait, five inches (at 
 least) in length. In hot weather, on bright and 
 calm days, I have known perch to take artificial 
 flies rather readily. A fly, sunk to mid-water, by 
 pinching a split shot on to the gut, close up to the 
 head of the fly, will usually ensure the capture of a 
 few brace ; and the most killing flies are the large 
 Wickham Fancy, Red Ant Fly, Soldier Palmer, 
 and small Alexandra or Halcyon.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SPORTING FISH OF THE PERCH FAMILY. 
 
 THE pike-perch, called Sandra in German, 
 and " glass-eye " in the United States, be- 
 longs to the Percidcz, and is found in most of 
 the rivers and lakes of Russia, where it The 
 is caught in the spring in large quanti- Pike- 
 ties, and dried as an article of food. It (p. ca 
 has been calculated that a quantity ex- /'- 
 ceeding 45,000,000 are captured annually "" 
 in the Delta of Kuban and the Sea of Azov, 
 from which there is a .large export of the roes 
 of these fish, made into a kind of caviare, and 
 sent principally to Greece and Turkey. Oil 
 made from the fat of the fish is used on fast 
 days as a substitute for vegetable oils ; also in 
 the preparation of sturgeons' roes. Pike-perch 
 are not plentiful in the Elbe and Oder ; are un- 
 known in the Rhine and Weser ; but grow to a 
 large size in the Bothkamper lake, Schleswig- 
 Holstein, where they are said to attain (as in some 
 other European lakes) a length of 3 ft. and up- 
 wards. In outward aspects they have a strong 
 resemblance to pike, with many characteristics of
 
 174 THE PERCH. 
 
 perch, their colour being olive-green, banded with 
 brown ; and, like perch, they possess two dorsal 
 fins, the first one having shark spines. Living 
 examples have been on view at the Brighton 
 Aquarium ; and, in 1878, pike-perch were success- 
 fully acclimatised in this country by his Grace the 
 Duke of Bedford, in his lakes at Woburn Park, 
 Bedfordshire, where, no doubt, they were a desirable 
 addition to the local fauna : but in waters like 
 the Thames or Trent, Avon or Tay, and many 
 others, they would undoubtedly prove very danger- 
 ous intruders to the young salmon and trout 
 Pike-perch are excellent sporting fish, and, to 
 judge from their teeth, voracious as pike. They 
 are also considered good food-fish in most of the 
 continental cities, including Berlin, Leipzig, Ham- 
 burg, &c. An allied species, the L. Americana, 
 found in North American fresh waters, is now 
 artificially hatched in the United States in large 
 numbers; the earliest experiments to propagate 
 them having been made there by M tiller and Browne 
 in 1857. In 1880 the late Mr. Frank Buckland 
 had a perca-zander, weighing 8 Ibs., sent him from 
 Billingsgate Market, which had been imported with 
 several more from Russia. Buckland says, in his 
 Natural History of British Fishes, "The pike- 
 perch has a formidable back-fin, which consists of 
 fourteen rays, the longest of which ' is nearly three 
 inches." (Qy., of the 9 Ibs. specimen ?) "The point 
 of each ray is sharp as a needle, and the membrane 
 which covers each spine seems to make a retract- 
 ible sheath for the point. The teeth are, indeed, 
 most formidable. At the tip of the upper and of 
 the lower jaw there are two teeth, conical and ex- 
 ceedingly sharp. Those in the lower jaw fit into
 
 PIKE-PERCH. 1?S 
 
 cavities in the upper jaw. Both sides of the upper 
 and lower jaw are armed with trenchant teeth ; 
 the roof of the rnouth is also armed with two 
 rows of teeth, the two anterior being much the 
 longest. I have in my collection many specimens 
 of fishes' teeth, but none, I think, so terrible as 
 those of the pike-perch. The teeth of an animal 
 indicate the food on which it subsists : I should 
 say, therefore, that the pike-perch is a most vora- 
 cious and carnivorous fish ; but still, I think he 
 must have different habits from the pike, as his 
 teeth are differently arranged. On dissecting the 
 fish, I found that the stomach was thin, but very 
 capacious ; in it were the remains of a fish which 
 appeared to be very like that of another pike-perch. 
 When examining the stomach, the oesophagus felt 
 very rough ; I therefore dried the soft parts, and 
 found that the pike-perch had a pavement of 
 teeth on each side of the gullet, as well as a set to 
 correspond on the floor of the pharynx. The edges 
 of the bones which carry the gills are also covered 
 with tufts, which tufts are composed of very minute, 
 needle-pointed spikes of bone ; these, when dried, 
 are exceedingly pretty. The subject dissected 
 was a female, full of roe ; the eggs are very minute, 
 smaller than perch ova." 
 
 In many Schleswig lakes zander are plentiful ; 
 in others they are not so, although connected with 
 one another, and apparently of the same kind of 
 water. The fish do not like a muddy bottom, but 
 thrive best in lakes with stony, sandy, or clay beds, 
 and in instances where they have been transferred 
 to neighbouring waters, they have been known to 
 take advantage of the first high floods to return to 
 their original home. Considerable difficulty was
 
 176 THE PERCH. 
 
 experienced in getting the consignment of pike- 
 perch from Schleswig safely to this country ; for, 
 after they were netted and placed in the fish- 
 carriers, which were oval-shaped barrels, 4 feet 
 long, 3 feet wide, and 18 inches deep, the fish 
 (twelve males and twelve females) had a rough 
 journey over frozen roads to the railway at Altona ; 
 and in transit from Hamburgh to London by 
 steamer, owing to fogs and stiff head winds, the 
 voyage lasted sixty instead of forty-eight hours ; 
 air having to be pumped into the carriers every 
 half hour to aerate the fish. The steamship 
 arrived in London at noon on a Sunday, when the 
 consignment of zander was met and taken charge 
 of by people appointed by his Grace the Duke of 
 Bedford. Fresh water was supplied to the fish, 
 and they were conveyed to Woburn Abbey, by 
 railway, rather more than a two and a half hours' 
 journey. On reaching their destination twenty- 
 three of the fish were found to be lively and in 
 good condition ; the twenty-fourth, being doubtful, 
 was killed, cooked, and eaten. 
 
 The bass (Labrax lupus} also belongs to the 
 Percidce, and is the representative of the genus 
 _, B among British sea-fishes. It is known 
 (Labrax sometimes as the sea-perch, and is found 
 chiefly on the southern and south-east 
 coasts of Britain, but decreasing northwards. In 
 Ireland and the Isle of Man they are known, but 
 not abundant, and on the Scottish coast are but 
 rarely captured. They ascend rivers to a consider- 
 able distance, sometimes far above tidal influence, 
 and, when caught under such circumstances, have in 
 some instances been mistaken for fresh-water perch
 
 BASS. 177 
 
 (P. fluviatiiis). Strong, bold and voracious, the bass 
 affords excellent play to the angler ; but being well 
 skilled in artful devices, the fish often eludes efforts 
 to capture it. They are caught on handlincs baited 
 with lug-worms, sand-eels, pieces of cuttlefish 
 (squid) ; also by trolling or spinning with sand- 
 launce, and artificial indiarubber baits in the shape 
 of twisted worms mounted on hooks, frequently 
 with salmon-flies and rod, giving then most ex- 
 citing sport, as fish of 8 Ibs. and 10 Ibs. are not 
 by any means uncommon captures. 
 
 My own largest (13^ Ibs.) I caught spinning off 
 Brixham, Devon. Pennant records one of 15 Ibs., 
 Buckland one of 22 Ibs. from Herne Bay, and 
 Yarrel one of 28 Ibs. 
 
 The bass is a handsome fish ; the body is 
 elongated and perch-like, grey along the back, 
 and the sides silvery as a salmon's, and white 
 on the belly. There are two dorsal fins ; the front 
 fin has nine sharp spines ; the second dorsal, tail 
 and anal fins are stained grey ; the ventral and 
 pectoral yellowish- white. The scales are of mode- 
 rate size. Teeth are borne upon the jaws, vomer, 
 palate and tongue, and the gill-cover terminates in 
 two spines. Allied species occur in American 
 waters, and also in the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 Some years ago, in December, 1878, Mr. Begg, 
 a Scotch gentleman who resided near Toronto, 
 Canada, brought to England some living The 
 specimens of black bass, the Grystes Black 
 nigricans of the River St. Lawrence, but (Grystes} 
 caught in Lake Rosseau. Most of the nigricans) 
 fish were sent to Mr. Mason, of Eynsham Hall, 
 near Oxford, and a number of them were taken 
 
 N
 
 178 THE PERCH. 
 
 by Mr. Begg himself to Dunrobin Castle, the seat 
 of his Grace the Duke of Sutherland. 
 
 It was, however, to the late Marquis of Exeter, 
 Burlcigh House, Stamford, that English fish- 
 culturists owe the importation to, and acclimatisa- 
 tion of, black bass in this country. Since then 
 (1878 to 1879) other gentlemen have successfully 
 carried on experiments in cultivating these fish, 
 which now rank among our best, for their sport- 
 giving and superior edible qualifications. Small 
 importations of a few hundred bass, brought over 
 by the Marquis of Exeter's pisciculturist, Mr. Silk 
 (who went twice to America for the bass), were 
 placed in the White Water Lake, Burlcigh Park 
 where they bred and multiplied into many thou- 
 sands, some of the fish now being specimens of 
 from 6 Ibs. to 8 Ibs. each. 
 
 Mr. Silk's report of the experiences gleaned in 
 his expeditions undertaken to obtain the bass, and 
 the trouble taken in conveying them alive to 
 England, are so interesting that I am induced to 
 .give a summarised account of them : " All of the 
 black bass that I brought in 1878 from the United 
 States of America were taken from the Delaware 
 River. I placed them in boxes floating in the 
 stream ready to be taken away. On the day pre- 
 ceding the sailing of the steamship for England, 
 they were placed in the tank I had prepared for 
 them by the riverside. We got them to the train 
 without any loss, and on arriving in New York 
 had them placed on the main-deck of the steamer ; 
 it was then 1 1 p.m., we having left the Delaware 
 River at 3 p.m. Up to this time I had no loss ; my 
 greatest trouble was the high temperature, viz., 
 78 degrees all night. I kept the water as cool as
 
 IMPORTATION OF BLACK BASS. 179 
 
 possible with ice. I stayed by the tanks all night, 
 pumping in air every few minutes, and keeping 
 people from meddling with them. When daylight 
 came I examined the tanks and found five fish 
 dead, which I removed at once. It was now 5 a.m., 
 and the ship was to sail at 6 a.m. I got some men 
 to assist me in changing the water in the tanks. I 
 had one spare tank, which I filled first, and then 
 reduced the temperature from 75 dcgs. as it came 
 out of the hydrant to 58 degs., then placed the bass 
 in it, and so on, until I had given them all fresh 
 water. We sailed at 6 a.m. sharp. When we got 
 out to sea a few miles, I made arrangements with 
 two of the steerage passengers to assist me on the 
 voyage. It was then 9 a.m., and I gave them in- 
 structions what to do. After this I arranged with 
 my men to keep watch two hours each, and to 
 relieve each other at meal times. I always took 
 four hours' watch in the night. I then roused 
 one of the men, and gave over the fish in good 
 order. If there were any dead I always took them 
 out at once. I made it a point never to go to my 
 cabin at night. We got on very well the first day, 
 as it was cooler ; but after this we got into the 
 Gulf Stream. The air and sea were both very 
 hot, the atmosphere 85 degs., and the sea 78 degs. 
 It was during these five days that we lost most 
 fish. We cleared the water every day by 
 straining it through flannel ; all the- thick and 
 dirty water we threw away, and added fresh 
 water by melting ice. The sixth day out we got 
 into cooler weather, and the fish commenced to 
 do better, as the temperature of the atmosphere 
 dropped to 57 dcgs. We used very little ice, 
 unless to make fresh water with. We kept on 
 
 N 2
 
 iSo THE PERCH. 
 
 like this until we reached Liverpool, after ten 
 days' passage. 
 
 " I now got fresh water, and changed all in the 
 tanks. The fish did not object in the least, but 
 were quite lively. It did not hurt them changing 
 the water from American to British. I got them 
 conveyed to the railway station and placed on a 
 truck. We arrived at Stamford in due course ; 
 and on counting the fish, I found we had 153. I 
 left the Delaware River with 250, so that I had lost 
 97 fish in twelve days. 
 
 " In 1879 I went again, and started from America 
 with 1,200 black bass, and on arriving home had 
 812, having done better than on the previous occa- 
 sion. All of the black bass were for the Marquis of 
 Exeter, he having borne all the expenses of the 
 experiments. 
 
 " Most of the fish were placed in a lake belong 
 ing to his lordship, called ' White Water,' near 
 Stamford. They would be about half a pound 
 each in weight, so that they had done very well. 
 The first lot that were put in will be three years 
 old in April, when they are expected to commence 
 breeding." l 
 
 It has been stated that the black bass of the 
 North American Continent is a fish esteemed by 
 American anglers even above the trout. 
 
 Professor Browne Goode, the American Com~ 
 missioner to the International Fisheries' Exhibition,, 
 1883, stated that " as an ' angler's fish,' he believed 
 the black bass to be superior to any fish in Great 
 Britain outside the salmon family, and that its in- 
 troduction into rivers where pike, perch, roach and 
 bream are the principal occupants, could do no^ 
 1 Buckland's Natural History of British Fishes.
 
 EXCELLENCE OF BLACK BASS. 181 
 
 possible harm, and would probably be a benefit to 
 anglers ; " he said also, " it is well suited for large 
 ponds and small lakes, where there is an abundant 
 supply of coarse fish, which a school of black 
 bass would soon convert into fish flesh by no 
 means coarse." The late Marquis of Exeter 
 when writing to Frank Buckland in 1874, said, 
 " I could have some black bass sent over, but am 
 afraid of them, as Mr. Roosvelt says that the 
 black bass (Grystes nigricans] is ' a fighting 
 American, and will swallow every British fish in 
 your lakes. It is our champion fish, and it can 
 whip all creation of the fish race.' After this de- 
 scription I think that you will advise me to have 
 nothing to do with such a devil, if I want to get 
 up a stock of trout in my ponds." Since 1879 Mr. 
 Silk made several successful excursions to America, 
 bringing back with him for the Marquis and his 
 friends, considerable numbers of the small and large- 
 mouthed black bass ; and the several importations 
 were distributed amongst various lakes and ponds 
 in England, including Sandringham, Rushden, 
 White Water, the rivers Welland and Nene ; and in 
 Scotland the Duke of Argyll turned a considerable 
 quantity into one of his lakes in Mull. 
 
 The black bass spawns in May or June ; is a 
 very game fish, and its recommendation to anglers 
 will be the fact that it rises freely to the fly, and 
 will take minnows, worms and baits of almost 
 every kind, and, when hooked, gives grand sport, 
 " fighting to the last." Black bass attain the weight 
 of 10 or 12 Ibs. where water and food are suitable, 
 and conducive to large growth ; they are excellent 
 food for the table, having white, firm flesh, with 
 curd between the flakes, and taste more like whiting
 
 i8a THE PERCH. 
 
 than fresh-water fish, and they are very free from 
 bones. But, with all these qualities and recom- 
 mendations, it would not be wise to favour the 
 indiscriminate introduction of the fish into British 
 waters ; though they might be confined to some 
 of the ponds and lakes which now afford but little 
 sport to anglers. 
 
 [Characteristics of Black Bass.] A head of 
 moderate size, rather flat between the orbits. The 
 angle of mouth is in front of posterior border of 
 eye. The front dorsal fin has six or seven very 
 sharp spines, the middle one of which is rather the 
 longest ; the second dorsal has thirteen or fourteen 
 soft rays ; the pectoral fins sixteen soft rays ; the 
 anal eleven or twelve soft, and one or two sharp, 
 spines ; the tail, seventeen soft rays. In mature 
 fish the colour on the back is somewhat of a dark 
 olive-green, toning off to lighter bronze-green at 
 the sides, and softening to yellowish-white on the 
 belly. The younger fish are more or less spotted 
 or marked with blotches in a regular line from 
 shoulder to tail, which markings gradually dis- 
 appear as the fish grows older, but spots remain 
 upon the scales. 
 
 The large-mouthed (Micropterus salmonides} and 
 the small-mouthed (Micropterus dolomica) are both 
 natives of most of the rivers and lakes in Canada 
 and the United States. M, salmonides may be 
 easily distinguished by its enormous mouth and 
 projecting under-jaws from the smaller variety, 
 which is also, as a rule, rather darker in its 
 colourings. 
 
 As their custom of making a nest and mode of 
 spawning is peculiar, and the solicitude they dis- 
 play about their young is interesting, I give a con-
 
 BLACK BASS: SPAWNING. 183 
 
 denscd account of the process, as furnished by the 
 Marquis of Exeter in a letter to the Secretary of 
 the National Fish Culture Association, of the 
 executive of which I was a member during its too 
 short existence. 
 
 " The female bass deposits her ova at the bottom 
 of the nest, which she has prepared by scooping 
 out a hole in the gravel or mud in the bed of the 
 lake or river. These nests are nearly circular in 
 form, varying, according to the size of the fish, 
 from I to 2 or 3 feet in diameter. The female 
 lies on her side, and the male fish with his mouth 
 presses out the ova by a series of what look like 
 bites along her belly. The male then ejects the 
 milt over the eggs from time to time, and the 
 spawning process" lasts for two or three days. 
 The parent fish take the greatest care of the ova 
 and of their young when hatched, by swimming 
 round the nests and keeping off all intruders or 
 anything which is likely to injure the young brood. 
 When the young black bass are able to swim, one 
 of the parent fish accompanies them. I have seen, 
 on a hot, still day at White Water, the old bass 
 swimming leisurely about near the surface of the 
 water, surrounded by her family of young bass, 
 leading them in the same way that an old hen on 
 land goes about with her chickens." 
 
 According to the late Mr. Frank Buckland, the 
 Murray River or Macquarie Cod (OH- Th 
 gorus Macquariensis] is an Australian Murray 
 member of the Percidcs family. It is one ,. od 
 
 J ( Ohgonts 
 
 of the largest, if not absolutely the largest, Macqttar- 
 of fresh-water fishes, and sometimes is tensts ^ 
 captured from 80 Ibs. to over 100 Ibs. weight. When
 
 184 THE PERCH. 
 
 from 3 Ibs. to IO Ibs. it is considered most market- 
 able, is without doubt a delicious fish, and said to 
 eat better than a grey mullet. It abounds in most 
 of the rivers north of Sydney, and in those of the 
 western watershed, such as the Murray and Mac- 
 quarie and their numerous tributaries, affording 
 good sport for anglers and a valuable supply of 
 excellent food ; they are usually caught for market 
 with a trammel or bag-net set across the stream, 
 or by hook and line. They have been introduced 
 into several of the inland lakes near Sydney, such 
 as Lake George, Lake Bathurst, &c., where they 
 thrive remarkably well, becoming immense fish, 
 and exceeding fat. A large specimen was ex- 
 hibited at the Great International Fisheries, 1883. 
 Large quantities arc daily, during the cold weather, 
 sent to the Melbourne and Adelaide markets from 
 the Murray and its tributaries ; the supply for the 
 Sydney markets is obtained from Lake George 
 and from the Macquarie river, but chiefly from the 
 Murrumbidgce, being forwarded by train from 
 Wagga Wagga. 
 
 The following is an abstract from Mr. Wilson's 
 Character of the Murray Cod : " He is idle, he 
 moves but slowly, and in consequence he cannot do 
 injury to the small fish, which are generally so 
 alert. He is solitary in his habits, he swims up 
 little currents of water, and easily accommodates 
 himself in a water-hole ; a water-hole being a large 
 hole in the bed of the river, always full of water, 
 frequently found in the rivers of Victoria when the 
 great heat of the sun has dried up their course." 
 
 The other Australian Percida are the two species 
 of golden perch (Ctenolates ambiguus), found in the 
 Victorian fresh waters, and at Wagga Wagga, on
 
 THE MURRAY RIVER. 185 
 
 
 
 the river Murrumbidgee, and C. flavcscens, caught 
 in the upper waters of the river Macquarie. 
 There is another variety, viz., the silver perch 
 (T/terapon RicJiardsoni\ which, although taken in 
 considerable numbers for the markets with the net, 
 affords good sport to the angler ; for from twenty to 
 forty fine fish, weighing from \ Ib. to 6 Ibs., may 
 easily be secured by one person in a day's fishing, 
 within a few miles of the town of Wellington ; but, 
 as the Murray River is tidal above Wellington, the 
 Australian silver perch is possibly a Labrax 
 lupus, or basse. 
 
 The following extract from a letter written by 
 my son in 1893 may possess some interest for 
 anglers : 
 
 " Heat 107 in the shade, and not a breath of air 
 stirring. This day will long be remembered in the 
 Liverpool Plains district. Horses, cattle, and 
 sheep have been killed in hundreds by sunstroke, 
 and birds found dead in thousands, the excessive 
 heat (more than 150 in the sun) having proved too 
 much for them. 
 
 " I left Mellaby on the evening of the 24th 
 January, about 7 P.M., at sundown, as it was nearly 
 impossible to move in the daytime. It was a 
 moonlight night, and I arrived at Gunnedah, near 
 Tamworth, at 7 A.M. on the 25th, covering a dis- 
 tance of nearly thirty miles. The walk did me no 
 good, and soon as I saw the Peel, or Namoi, river, 
 I felt very much relieved. I camped five days at 
 Gunnedah, and caught a tremendous lot of fish 
 in fact, almost subsisted on damper and cod. 
 Father's 37 Ib. and 36 Ib. pike are infants compared 
 with the Murray cod I brought to bank. I baited 
 with Ib. lump of raw mutton, placed on a large
 
 186 THE PERCH. 
 
 strong hook ; my line was thick whipcord, with a 
 stone for the sinker. One cod in particular weighed 
 between 80 Ibs. and 90 Ibs., and took another cod 
 of more than 3 Ibs., which I had baited with. I 
 also caught a splendid specimen of the golden perch 
 in the Peel river."
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 LATE AUTUMN PIKE AND PERCH FISHING. 
 
 ONE of the most beautiful landscapes than . 
 which perhaps there are few lovelier within 
 forty miles of London is to be enjoyed from the 
 park at Brarnshill, Hampshire, where, -from altitudes 
 clothed with pines, oaks, elms, and yews, the spec- 
 tator can look out far and wide, over an expanse of 
 valleys, to the heights of Chobham Ridges and the 
 Fox Hills, with the Hog's Back beyond Guildford 
 in the far distance. The lowlands are fertilised by 
 the waters of the river Loddon, which rises near 
 Basingstoke, and its affluents, some of them being 
 overflows from large lakes, among which are those 
 of Brarnshill, Tundry, and Dogmersfield ; the last- 
 named, I think, supplies water to the Basingstoke 
 Canal. 
 
 At Odiham, close by, is a stream, holding large 
 trout ; but it is difficult to obtain permission to fish. 
 The lakes contain pike and perch, carp, tench, &c. ; 
 while in most of the streams chub are plentiful ; but 
 it is of pike and perch that I write. In this beauti- 
 ful country, on the confines of Bramshill Park, lived 
 and died the Rev. Charles Kingsley, Rector of
 
 i88 THE PERCH. 
 
 Eversley, poet, novelist, and an ardent angler. The 
 stream flowing through the valley below the park 
 turns and twists about among coppices of nuts and 
 hazels ; at every bend is a larger tree or bush, their 
 roots pushing through the bank, and forming 
 holts for perch and chub. At all these corners 
 the water is from four to five feet deep fine places 
 for paternoster fishing, with a worm or minnow. 
 For a mile or two the stream maintains this charac- 
 ter, until we approach a brick and timber bridge, 
 hoary with age, covered with lichens and moss- 
 embroidered ; wild clematis and honeysuckles 
 overrun the banks and dip into the water flowing 
 beneath. 
 
 In the meadows immediately beyond the 
 bridge, the stream widens out into lagoons, where 
 (when the early morning frosts of autumn have 
 destroyed the weeds) is rare spinning for pike. It 
 was here, some years ago, that Francis Francis, 
 another friend, and myself, had splendid sport. 
 
 The meadows beyond the bridge are boggy 
 along the margin of the stream, and the angler 
 sinks in over his ankles, so that water-tight knee- 
 boots are necessary ; but when frosts have hard- 
 ened the ground, the water can be comfortably 
 approached and fished. Handsome wrought-iron 
 gates, three centuries old, extend between the 
 entrance lodges ; the drive, through an avenue of 
 noble elms, crosses the stream over a stone bridge 
 of five arches, and ascends to the summit of the 
 park by a winding road, which skirts one side of 
 the lake, to the mansion a grand Elizabethan 
 structure, built on a terrace, reminding one some- 
 what of Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire. It is said 
 to contain as many windows as there are days in
 
 FISHING AT BRAMSHILL. 189 
 
 the year. It was here that the poor girl playing 
 hide and seek one Christmas Eve got lost and 
 smothered in the old oak muniment chest, this 
 incident forming the theme of the old song, "The 
 Mistletoe Bough." 
 
 The ground at the rear of this fine old mansion 
 drops by a succession of very wide terraces cut into 
 the side of the hill ; on each are the remains of 
 what were evidently fish-ponds, ruinous now, dis- 
 mantled, and nearly dry, with large trees and tall 
 bushes growing, where fish were once "in stew," 
 providing food or sport for the inmates of and 
 visitors to the mansion. 
 
 The park, of large extent, is very beautiful, 
 because of its exceeding wildness. It seems to 
 have remained uncultured for a century. The 
 undergrowth has in many places overrun wide 
 gravel drives ; ferns usurp the trim parterres of 
 former days, and grow profuse on the once well- 
 trimmed lawns ; laurels and rhododendrons flourish 
 luxuriantly, attaining huge dimensions ; and they 
 again are overgrown with brambles, woodbine and 
 honeysuckles, in dense tangles and thickets, form- 
 ing safe retreats for the rabbits, which on fine 
 evenings dot the lawns all round about. 
 
 Among the lofty fir-trees and giant oaks and 
 elms, wood pigeons nest and breed ; while cock 
 pheasants and their hens strut about in undis- 
 turbed security, save when a fox now and then 
 levies toll ; for there are fox-earths about the 
 neighbourhood, as any one would expect in so wild 
 a jungle ; stoats and weasels are not unknown, but 
 on the contrary are frequently seen, as they run 
 and twist in and out the thick undergrowths. The 
 badger also is occasionally met with by wayfarers
 
 190 THE PERCH. 
 
 after nightfall, this animal's natural timidity keep- 
 ing him indoors in his burrow during the daytime. 
 The large lake is nearly square, and belted on two 
 sides with noble timber, an island in the centre of 
 it being similarly wooded. 
 
 At the side farthest from the boat-house, sedges 
 and water-lilies form harbours and breeding places 
 for the pike and perch. A mighty fish had his 
 home there a fact imparted to me by the keeper. 
 Accordingly I arranged to have a day's fishing to 
 try and capture it, and invited the late Mr. Francis 
 Francis cheerfullest of companions to accom- 
 pany me. My other friend lived in the neighbour- 
 hood, and I had the pleasure of his presence, as 
 also on subsequent occasions when angling there ; 
 but, as he was fonder of shooting than the sister- 
 sport, and there were plenty of wild-duck, which 
 were bred there, also coots and moor-hens, he 
 usually brought his gun with him. 
 
 Francis and I, on arriving at the station, found 
 my friend's waggonette awaiting us. On our 
 drive to his house we placed our livebait cans 
 and their contents in a brook which flowed 
 through the keeper's garden, and found our dace 
 alive . and in splendid order when we called for 
 them next morning to take them to the lake, a 
 mile distant. The boat-house reached, we lost no 
 time in putting rods and tackle together and get- 
 ting afloat in a punt, well appointed with every 
 requisite in the shape of oars, poles, hitchers, &c. ; 
 on its stern was painted in gold letters, " Rev. 
 Charles Kingsley," the punt he had built on the 
 Thames and conveyed there for his own private 
 use. Francis and I rowed to the top corner of the 
 lake, putting my friend (our companion and host)
 
 A BIG PIKE. 191 
 
 ashore on the island, for some ducks had pitched 
 in the water the other side of it. By creeping 
 carefully through the undergrowth, he got a shot 
 and killed a mallard, which we punted after and 
 secured, then left him for awhile to pay attention to 
 the wood-pigeons, which every now and again 
 settled in the trees there. 
 
 Fishing just outside the fringe of sedges in water 
 eight feet deep, Francis soon got a run, and was 
 playing a nice fish, which took some thirty yards of 
 line with a rush, making for a penstock, where 
 some dangerous posts stuck up in the water ; how- 
 ever, the pike was soon well in hand, gaffed, and in 
 the punt ; it weighed 9 Ibs. He was fishing with 
 snap-tackle, I was paternostering, searching the 
 water round about us with a small, lively dace, 
 both of us every now and then adding a fish of 
 retainable size to those already caught. 
 
 Thus the morning wore on until it was time for 
 lunch, when we re-embarked our friend at the 
 island, and thoroughly enjoyed our midday meal, 
 which we had thoroughly earned ; then we tried 
 water not yet disturbed, quietly approaching a 
 reedy bay the home of the big pike not going 
 too near, but fishing it from a distance of 20 yds. 
 Some moorhens swimming in the bay took flight 
 in alarm, for there was a great swirl in the water, 
 and one of the birds disappeared, which showed us 
 where the pike was ; and as the bird did not 
 appear again, we judged the fish was on the 
 feed, so I cast a good-sized dace on snap-tackle 
 to where the pike bulged, and in less than two 
 minutes it had taken my bait, and I had driven 
 home the steel. Francis rowed the punt away 
 from the sedges to open water, where, after a
 
 192 .THE PERCH. 
 
 tearing struggle of a quarter of an hour, my fish 
 was gaffed and knocked on the head, a handsome 
 pike of 1 8 Ibs., thick-set and fat, and rotund as a 
 jolly well-fed monk of the olden time. 
 
 The lake, being on the higher portion of the park, 
 has no streams running into it bringing in fish- 
 food, but is kept full by springs which seem never 
 to fail ; in fact, there is an overflow at the pen- 
 stock, the water discharging into the river in the 
 valley. Carp abound in the lake, and on the 
 smaller ones the pond roach and white bream 
 (Abramis blicca) ; pike grow large and lusty, finding 
 plenteous food ; while the young of the wild-ducks 
 and coots, which nest and breed on the island and 
 in the sedges, pay constant tribute to the water- 
 wolves. 
 
 So we finished a day of sport with true con- 
 tentment, as all anglers should ; and as our 
 friend drove us towards his hospitable home we 
 resolved to fish next day the waters in the valley. 
 The morning broke clear and rather frosty, with 
 wind enough to ruffle the water, and make an 
 angler happy with anticipations of sport. By nine 
 o'clock we were driving across Bramshill Common, 
 through an expanse of brown moor and heather, 
 stretching away for many a mile towards Windsor 
 Forest. Below us in the valley flowed the two 
 streams, Blackwater and Whitewater, both adding 
 volume to the Loddon. Strathfieldsaye Park (the 
 Duke of Wellington's) was within three miles ; its 
 waters, once celebrated for enormous pike and 
 perch, were drained some years ago, and afterwards 
 made into a trout preserve. Turning along a cart- 
 track, down a deep slope, where the ruts in the 
 loose gravel and peat-mould nearly brought the
 
 FRANCIS FRANCIS. 193 
 
 horse and us to grief, at last arriving at the stream ; 
 in the meadow opposite the keeper's cottage we 
 fitted up our rods, and mounting gut-paternoster 
 with two hooks, we fished with a well-scoured 
 worm nearest the plummet, and a minnow or small 
 gudgeon on the top hook. Keeping a couple of 
 yards from the bank, we dropped our baits 
 over the rush-fringed margins into all the deep 
 water at the bends of the stream, and caught 
 many fair-sized perch and chub, among the latter a 
 few from 2\ Ibs. to 3 Ibs., also half a dozen jack, 
 one a seven-pounder. 
 
 And so, fishing on through nut and hazel cop- 
 pices, we at length reached the old brick bridge, with 
 its wooden rails overgrown with wild clematis and 
 honeysuckle. Here we took off our paternoster 
 tackle, for the water widened out into a shallow- 
 lake ; and as the breeze blowing down the valley 
 made a fine ripple on this lagoon, we mounted 
 pike spinning-gear, with 5 -inch dace for lures. 
 
 Looking up to the hilly park above, an angler, 
 moved by the beauties of Nature and where is 
 there a true disciple of Izaak Walton who is not ? 
 would be enraptured by the sight of hundreds of 
 splendid fir trees crowning the heights ; grand 
 gnarled giants, planted there by James the First, 
 or at least in his reign. 
 
 We were now at the little lake, and Francis was 
 ready to make a cast across the channel to just 
 below where the stream flowed in. His bait flew 
 straight towards and close up to the sedgy mar- 
 gin, dropped in without a splash, began to spin 
 athwart the water, when a bulgy wave unmistak- 
 ably showed a good fish had sprung at the lure ; 
 Francis spun his bait no faster : he was always cool 
 
 O
 
 194 THE PERCH. 
 
 when fishing. A second more his line tightened, 
 and he had struck a fine fish, which fought hard to 
 gain his stronghold, where no doubt many previous 
 anglers had come to grief through broken tackle. 
 
 The fish was brilliantly played, past and under 
 boughs overhanging the stream, by dipping the rod- 
 point down to the water ; and I had the satisfaction 
 of gaffing a fifteen-pounder for my old friend, one 
 of the prettiest pike of its size I had ever seen. 
 Then came my opportunity. I tried the water 
 round about, spinning over every portion of it 
 slowly and carefully ; and about twenty yards 
 below rose a fish, hooked and played it, bring- 
 ing to grass in about ten minutes a nice pike of 
 12 Ibs. This was encouraging ; and fish fed so 
 well that by the time we reached the stone bridge 
 at one o'clock, where our friend and the keeper 
 were waiting us, with a basket containing a cold 
 loin of roast pork and other toothsome fare from 
 my friend's farm, also a large stone jar of brown 
 October ale, we were able to show them a baker's 
 dozen of pike, besides the perch and chub. 
 
 Beyond the stone bridge the stream again widens, 
 deeper water flowing through the centre arch along 
 a channel down the middle of the lagoon to the weir. 
 Much of this can be fished by floating a livebait 
 down from the bridge ; and all the water covered 
 with a spinning-bait from either bank. We adopted 
 both methods, and captured some more sizeable 
 jack, the largest not exceeding 8 Ibs. weight. There 
 were shoals of young carp and roach swimming in 
 this water ; but dace were deadly bait, no doubt 
 the pike appreciated a change of diet. 
 
 Snipe abound here the boggy meadows of the 
 valley just suit them, afford plenty of food, and the
 
 STRATHFIELDSAYE PARK. 195 
 
 tufts of rushes nesting-places. High overhead in 
 the breeding season snipe can be seen rising and 
 falling on vibrating pinions through the air, mak- 
 ing their peculiar bleating all the day long, while 
 the hen birds are on their nests. 
 
 Woodcock frequent the quiet glades of the park, 
 and in April are sometimes plentiful ; the large 
 hollies with straggling branches drooping over the 
 withered brackens provide splendid shelters, while 
 the woodcock's mottled plumage of grays and 
 browns assimilates so nicely with the dead leaves 
 in which they cower, that a passer-by may almost 
 touch them before they will take flight 
 
 As we were resting by the bridge, enjoying the 
 fragrant weed, the startled cry of a blackbird drew 
 our attention to some thickets beneath the firs 
 bordering a woodland path. Ascending the hill, a 
 dog-fox showed himself for a minute, and per- 
 ceiving us, slily glided back to shelter, and out of 
 our sight. He was no doubt intent on catching a 
 rabbit for his evening meal ; and .as daylight was 
 now fast fading, we tipped the keeper, got into the 
 waggonette with our fish and tackle, and drove 
 away to our friend's farmhouse. Its surrounding 
 walls were part of what had been a monastery, 
 suppressed during the reign of Henry VIII. The 
 granary had been the chapel this was evident from 
 the eastern widow, which yet remained with its 
 stone traceries also the gables, and a small belfry ; 
 but the bell which once summoned the holy men to 
 prayer had long since disappeared. Outside these 
 walls was an orchard, full of crabbed and gnarled 
 fruit trees, hoary with age ; beyond this was a 
 stream and a dilapidated fish-pond or stew. 
 
 The once rapid stream is now arrested by a weir,
 
 1 96 THE PERCH. 
 
 for the purpose of obtaining a head of water for 
 irrigating the meadows ; and in the small pool 
 below the weir a few fine trout can usually be seen. 
 Here ten or a dozen years ago a large one of 5 Ibs. 
 was caught with a fly ; and a brace a fifth that size 
 can often be taken on a favourable evening. 
 
 On reaching the farmhouse we found our host 
 had invited three neighbours to meet us and spend 
 the evening. Two of them were farmers living a 
 mile or so away ; the other, a cattle-dealer and 
 meat-contractor for Aldershot camp, which is dis- 
 tant some six or eight miles ; they were jolly 
 fellows and good all-round sportsmen. Francis 
 Francis was exactly in his element ; and with 
 much chat about angling, shooting and coursing, 
 we passed some very pleasant hours, until the near 
 approach of midnight broke up our merry party. 
 The next day we had a delightful ride through 
 grassy lanes ; the hedgerows on either side were 
 planted with oaks and elms ; the foliage was beauti- 
 ful even then, in its late autumn tints. By nine 
 o'clock we had completed our six miles drive, and 
 arrived at the waters we were to fish two lakes ; 
 the largest, fifty acres in extent ; the other, about 
 thirty acres, a few fields distant, on a higher level. 
 A small brook, formed by the overflow of the top 
 lake, meandered between the two, finally leaping 
 down two or three pretty cascades into the lowest 
 and more important sheet of water, near to which, 
 on a gently sloping acclivity, stood the mansion, a 
 handsome edifice, erected in the early part of the 
 century. Here again we were impressed with the 
 magnificence of the timber and the grand masses 
 of evergreens of all kinds. The place was beauti- 
 fully laid out and trimly kept such a marked
 
 THE THIRD DAY. 197 
 
 contrast to the wildness of the demesne where we 
 had spent the two previous days, in which the 
 absence of culture was the peculiar charm. 
 
 A noble bridge of brick spans the lake, and 
 forms a fitting and elegant approach to the resi- 
 dence. The waters of the upper lake extend some 
 distance along a valley. At the lower and deeper 
 end is a boat-house, and, near to this, the pen- 
 stock and overflow. All about here the water is 
 from 8 to 12 feet deep, margined with sedges and 
 bulrushes, broken up into little bays excellent 
 paternostering water, and most of it easily fished 
 from the banks. 
 
 The boat we used afterwards, so as to negotiate 
 the central and upper portion of the lake, which 
 was not practicable from the shore, because of 
 trees and tall bushes growing close to and in the 
 water. I began with a small dace on a stout-gut 
 paternoster tackle, and was soon playing a heavy 
 fish, which Francis thought I stood no chance of 
 killing ; but, within a quarter-hour of fine sport, 
 I landed a handsome pike that just topped 16 Ibs. 
 Then Francis, fishing with live-snap, caught a 
 twelve-pounder ; and these two fish, with some 
 others of fair size, although much less in weight, 
 made a pretty show, when one of our friends of 
 the previous evening, and a keeper, came to see 
 what sport we were having, and drink a libation 
 to our continued success. 
 
 Most anglers who had the advantage and pleasure 
 of Francis Francis's friendship will remember how 
 that past master of the gentle art hated to be 
 bored and interfered with while he was fishing, 
 especially by any one who knew little or nothing 
 about angling. There is nothing so vexing as to
 
 198 THE PERCH. 
 
 be worried with advice and suggestions from 
 superficial anglers I mean those who observe little 
 and note still less when they go a-fishing, and 
 think, for instance, that because chub, roach, or 
 barbel, have once been caught in a certain place, 
 they can always be captured there ; and that, where 
 pike may be caught in December or January, that 
 they will be found in the same locations in the 
 autumn months, which is seldom, if ever, the case. 
 
 And so it came to pass that the keeper got 
 severely dropped on, for he stuck close to Francis, 
 who was carefully spinning a likely piece of water, 
 and he kept repeating, "You take my advice, sir, and 
 go to the top of the lake and try there ; a friend of 
 mine, sir, last March, caught a twenty-pounder, sir, 
 on them shallows." At length Francis, who could no 
 longer endure this reiterated advice, turned round 
 to the keeper, and said, " Confound your friend 
 and his 20 Ib. pike, and you too. If you don't 
 hold your jaw, I'll chuck you into the water." So 
 the keeper departed, and left us to ourselves. We 
 then got afloat, fished the central part of the lake, 
 and thence back to the deeper water, where the best 
 fish are almost sure to be in the autumn ; and 
 the result justified our choice, for Francis, who 
 was spinning low and deep, struck a heavy fish, 
 which fought so desperately for life and liberty 
 that it was nearly half an hour before we got a 
 glimpse of it, and then, from its dimensions, it was, 
 to all appearance, a fish of 30 Ibs. 
 
 The boat had drifted, and I was reluctant to put 
 down the anchor, for fear of the pike (which was 
 now being played on a shortened line) getting 
 entangled round the anchor-chain. But we had 
 got so unpleasantly near to a pile standing up in,
 
 END OF A HOLIDAY. 199 
 
 but just below, the surface of the water, that, to 
 avoid this danger, Francis kept a tight tether on 
 the fish. He had it almost near enough for me to 
 gaff, when well, we did not catch that pike, for 
 the flight came away from its mouth, through a 
 hook snapping at the bend. The following year 
 a 28 Ibs. pike was caught at the same place by an 
 acquaintance of mine, which I saw, and a very 
 handsome fish it was. It may have been the one 
 we interviewed, and so nearly persuaded to go 
 home with us. 
 
 After resting awhile, we proceeded to the lower 
 lake, and rowing to the far side so as to have the 
 wind at our backs, we put out two dace on snap- 
 tackles, and while Francis continued to spin, I 
 paternostered. Pike fed fairly well ; the livebaits 
 accounted for some good-sized fish, and once 
 my friend and myself were playing pike simul- 
 taneously. 
 
 The view from the centre of the lake was very 
 lovely. The bridge of many arches, mostly ivy- 
 grown, stretched across the water ; and gently 
 rising ground on all sides bounded the vision. To 
 the left the white stone mansion, and beyond, 
 masses of trees on the sloping hill, yet in sufficient 
 foliage to display a charming variety of green the 
 sombre colour of the firs, and the purple and copper 
 of the beeches. Near a bed of rushes we saw the 
 swirl of a feeding fish within casting distance, over 
 which Francis at once spun his bait, to be as 
 promptly accepted. 
 
 I never saw a pike give better sport. Had it 
 been a tyro handling the rod and line it would 
 have been long odds in favour of the fish escaping. 
 But the pike was played to the gaff, duly landed,
 
 200 THE PERCH. 
 
 and proved to be the best of the three days' catch. 
 It bumped the beam at 19 Ibs. The fading light 
 warned us it was time to put up our rods, and pack 
 our fish. The friend who had volunteered to drive 
 us to the railway station was within sight, crossing 
 the bridge ; our holiday was ended, and we left for 
 London, satisfied with our sport, and more than 
 pleased with the hearty welcome we had met with 
 at our friend's farmhouse.
 
 INDEX 
 
 "ABBEY-MILLS" spinner, 86 
 
 Acerina, 157 
 
 America, pike in, 3 ; black 
 
 bass, 177 
 
 American lines, 52 
 Anecdotes, of pike, n, 13, 14, 
 
 17, 18, 19, 24, 28, 34, 198 ; 
 
 of perch, 154, 172 
 "Archer" spinner, 167 ; tackle, 
 
 85 
 
 " Archer-Jardine " leads, 60 
 Ausonius quoted, 7 
 Australia, fishing in, 185 ; heat, 
 
 185 
 
 Autumn-fishing, 199 
 Avon, 74, 100, 141, 153 
 Azov, sea of, 173 
 
 Badham, Dr., quoted, 9, 146, 
 
 157 
 
 Baily, quoted, 72 
 
 Bait, 61, 75, 76, 79, 123, 127, 
 
 163, 165, 185 
 
 Baits, two, taken by pike, 24 
 Bait-can, 97, 171 
 Baiting, 65 
 Barker, quoted, 137 
 Bass, 176, 177 
 Bass, black, 177, 178; food, 181 ; 
 
 description, 182 ; nest, 183 ; 
 
 spawning, 181, 183 
 Beeton, Mrs., quoted, 38 
 Birmingham Canal, 149 
 Bloch, quoted, 9 
 
 " Boke of St. Albans," quoted, 
 
 137 
 
 Borne, Max, quoted, 6 
 Bottle-trimmers, 140 
 Bough- trimmers, 140 
 Bowlker, quoted, 13 
 Bramshill Park, 187 ; house, 
 
 1 88; lake, 190 
 Bream, 6, 192 
 Bridge-ring, 44 
 Broads, Norfolk, 138 
 Bromhead, H. B., quoted, 71 
 Brown, Moses, n 
 Buckinghamshire, 101 
 Buckland, Frank, quoted, 6, 9, 
 
 19, 28, 124, 148, 152, 158, 
 
 174. 177. 183 ; casts made by, 
 
 143 
 Byron, Lord, quoted, 27 
 
 " Cachalot " bait, 82 
 Camden, quoted, n 
 Carp, 32, 192 
 Casts of fish, 125, 143 
 Casting-nets, 77 
 Caviare, 173 
 " Chapman " spinner, 84 
 Chaucer, quoted, 6 
 Cheney, A. W. , quoted, 3, 5 
 Chitty, quoted, 55 
 Climbing perch, 154 
 " Convolute " baits, 79 
 " Coxon" reel, 46 ; spinner, 84, 
 167
 
 2O2 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Crocodile" bait, 87 
 
 Cruelty of gorge-baiting, 107 ; 
 
 of plugging, 158 
 Ctenolates, 184, 185 
 Culture of black bass, 178 ; 
 
 mascalonge, 5 
 
 Dagenham Breach, 149 ; lake, 
 
 23 
 
 Daniel, quoted, 19 
 Darenth River, 33 
 Dead-bait, 105, 172 
 " Diamond Jubilee " bait, 83 
 Disgorger, 1 2 1 
 Dogmersfield Lake, 125 
 Dove River, 24 
 Drying lines, 56 
 Ducks, eaten by pike, 12 
 "Duplex" bamboo float, 92; 
 
 floats, 91 
 
 Eel, eaten by pike, 12 
 Eels, as bait, 79 
 Esocidtz, i ; American, 3, 4 
 sox, I, 3 
 
 Fables, 16, 18, 19 
 
 " Facile " lip hooks, 63 
 
 " Farlow's " leads, 60 ; new 
 
 pike float, 90 ; registered 
 
 flights, 63 
 Fence-months, 142 
 Field, Basil, his double bait can, 
 
 97 
 
 Fishery Bill, 142 
 
 "Fishing Gazette " float, 90 
 
 Flies, best for perch, 173 
 
 Flights, 62, 166 
 
 Floats, 90, 1 68 
 
 Float-fishing, 162, 167, 169 
 
 Flying triangles, 62, 65 
 
 Francis Francis, quoted, 73, 86, 
 151, 163 ; repartee to keeper, 
 198 ; tribute to, 190, 196, 197 
 
 " Francis " flight, 64 
 
 Franck, Theophilus, quoted, I 
 
 Franklin, Sir John, quoted, 154 
 
 Frogs as bait, 123 
 
 Frome, River, 24, 74, 103 
 
 Gaff, 117 
 
 Gaffing, 1 1 8, 199 
 
 Gags, 119 
 
 GaK-n, prescribing perch, 156 
 
 Gander, as bait, 137 ; combat 
 
 with pike, 137 
 Gedd, I 
 
 "Glass-eye," 173 
 Glynde, 172 
 Golden perch, 184 
 Goode, Browne, quoted, 180 
 Goose, as bait, 137 
 Gorge-bait, 113 
 
 Gorge-fishing, objections to, 107 
 Gorge-tackle, 106, 109 
 Cry s Its, 181 
 Guard-ring, 44 
 
 Haunts, favourite, of perch, 147 ; 
 
 of pike, 71, 74, 99, 100, 191 
 Hawkins, Sir John, quoted, 18 
 "Helix "baits, 81 
 Heraldry, fish in, 155 
 Hofland, quoted, 19 
 Hog-backed spoon, 165 
 Hooks, 62, 165 
 
 " Interchangeable " tail-bait, 82 
 Inverurie, Lord, 20, 149 
 Ireland, 20, 22, 23, 24, 78, 84 
 Irish clergyman's grace, 88 
 
 Jack, I 
 
 "Jardine," "pectoral spring," 
 
 pike-snap, 95; "perfected," 
 
 snap-tackle, 94 ; pike rod, 41 ; 
 
 reel, 50 ; spiral leger-lead, 
 
 133 
 
 Keene, quoted, 55, 59, 151 
 Kennet, 151 
 Kingsley, Rev. C., 188 
 Knife, 121, 122 
 Knobs, 45 
 
 Labrax, 176 
 Lambeth, 6 
 Lapland, 149
 
 INDEX. 
 
 203 
 
 Leads, 59, 93, 133, 135, 164 
 
 Leger, 131 
 
 Leger-leads, 135 
 
 Ligger, 138 
 
 Lines, 51, 165 ; drying, 56 ; 
 
 waterproofing, 53 
 Live-bait, 76, 89, 95, 123, 124, 
 
 135 
 
 Loch Tay, 86 
 Luce, I, 6, 7 
 Lucit, I 
 Lucius, 4 
 
 *' Magnet " spinner, 165 
 Man, eaten by pike, 14 
 Manley, Rev. J. J., quoted, IO, 
 
 137, 152 
 
 Man o' war trimmers, 139 
 
 " Marston " dead-bait snap- 
 tackle, 105 
 
 Mascalonge, 3, 4 ; culture of, 5 
 
 Microptertis, 182 
 
 4 'New "reel, 48 
 Newnham, quoted, 33 
 Nobbes, quoted, 108, 137 
 "Nottingham" reel, 46 
 Nottingham style, 72 
 
 Odiham, 187 
 Oligorus, 183 
 
 Ova, of perch, 148 ; of pike, 6, 
 7 
 
 Paintings of fish, 143 
 
 Pairing, of perch, 183 ; of pike, 
 
 7, 100 
 
 Paternoster, 125, 159 
 Paternostering, 128, 159 
 Pennant, quoted, 148, 177 
 Pennell, H. C., quoted, 8, 19, 
 
 62, 95, no, 118, 151, 152 
 Pennell's gorge-bait tackle, 1 10 ; 
 
 live-bait snap-tackle, 94 ; 
 
 perch-flight, 166 
 Perca, 145, 172 
 Perca-zander, 174, 175 
 Perch, 145 ; angling for, 159 ; 
 
 allies of, 173 ; as bait, 139, 
 
 152; as food, 156; cooking, 
 157 ; courage, 148, 153 ; food 
 of, 146, 154 ; haunts of, 147 ; 
 intelligence, 153, 162, 163 ; 
 rarely found in heraldry, 155 ; 
 ova, 148 ; packing live, 1 54 ; 
 pairing, 183 ; size, 147, 148 ; 
 spawning, 142, 147 ; vitality, 
 
 154 
 
 "Phantom" baits, 85 
 
 Pickerel, i, 3, 4 
 
 Pike, I ; age, 26 ; American, 
 3 ; angling for, 38 ; as food, 7, 
 31, 35 ; as vermin, 107 ; au- 
 thentic weights, 20 ; brain, 
 34 ; British, I, 5 ; cannibals, 
 II ; colours varying, 2, 5 ; 
 cooking, 37 ; culture of, 5 ; 
 dappled, 6 ; duel between, 
 25; food of, 10, ii, 13; 
 German, 6 ; gratitude of, 35 ; 
 growth, 7, 8, 9, 26 ; in anti- 
 quity, 7 ; in middle ages, 6, 7, 
 31 ; intelligence, 34 ; kept in 
 carp ponds, 32 ; lies about, 
 17, 19 ; maturity, 25 ; migrat- 
 ing, 33; ova > 6, 7; pairing, 
 7, loo ; pugnacity, 14, 29 ; 
 spawning, 7, 8, 142 ; species, 
 3 ; speckled, 6 ; surgical opera- 
 tion on, 35 ; taking bait, 113 ; 
 tame, 35 ; trophies, 143 ; 
 voracity, II, 15 ; watch found 
 in, 14 ; weight ideal, of, 23 
 
 Pike-gag, 119 
 
 Pike-perch, 173; as food, 173, 
 
 174 
 
 " Piscator," quoted, 9 
 Pity, none for a pike, 113 
 Pliny, quoted, 7 
 Plugging, 158 
 Pope, A., quoted, 145 
 Pope, 157 
 
 " Redspinner," see Senior 
 
 Reels, 46, 89 
 
 "Reversible helix," spinning 
 
 bait, 8 1 
 " Reversible tail," spinning 
 
 bait, 82 
 
 Rods, 39, 126, 159 
 Rolfe, H. L., paintings by, 143
 
 204 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Roving, 1 68, 171 
 Ruffe, 157 
 Run, 114, 115 
 
 Saigon lines, 53 
 
 Senior, W., quoted, 31, 58, 133 
 
 " Serpentanic " bait, 83 
 
 Serpentine, perch caught in, 148 
 
 Shotted gorge-hook, III 
 
 Silk, quoted, 178 
 
 Silver perch, 185 
 
 " Simplex" leads, 164 ; reel, 47 
 
 Slapton Ley, 150 
 
 Schleswig, 173, 175 
 
 " Snap "-tackles, 93, 105 
 
 " Sneck-bend trebles," 67 
 
 Snipe, 195 
 
 Spawning, of perch, 142, 147 ; 
 
 of pike, 7, 8, 142 
 Spinning, 62, 68, 75, 124, 165 
 "Spiral" bait, 83 
 Spoon baits, 83 
 Stains for guts, 59 
 " Sticklebackitis," 25 
 Stoddart, quoted, 113 
 " Sun Nottingham " winch, 49 
 Swivels, 60 
 
 Tench, as food for pike, 10, n 
 Tennant, Sir E., quoted, 154 
 Thames, 73, 101, 130, 134, 147, 
 
 149 
 
 " Thames " flight, 62 ; style, 72 
 Therapon, 185 
 Time, best for pike, 130 
 Traces, 57 
 Treble hooks, 65 
 Trimmers, 140 
 Trimmering, 138 
 Trimming, 138 
 Trolling, 108 
 
 Virginia Water, 151 
 
 Walton, Isaac, quoted, II, 156 
 Wandle, 33 
 
 Warwick, Dr., quoted, 34 
 Water, as supplying food, 32 
 Watch found in pike, 14 
 Waterproofing lines, 54 
 Whittlesea Mere, 24 
 Wilson, quoted, 184 
 Windermere, 150 
 Woodcock, 195 
 
 Tackles, 38, 159, &c. 
 Tackle-case, 116 
 Taxidermy, 154 
 Temperature, 102 
 
 Yarrell, quoted, 150 
 
 Zander, 174 
 
 THE END. 
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BDNGAY.
 
 A. CARTER & CO., 
 
 137 ST. JOHN STREET ROAD, 
 LONDON, E.C, 
 
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 Timber Stores - MERLINS PLACE. 
 
 Built Cane Pike Rods, Spiral Lock Joints, two Tops 
 
 2 10s. 
 
 With Steel Centre, 3 10s. 
 "Imperial" Whole Cane Pike Rods, Double Cork 
 
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 Mottled Cane OP Greenheart Spinning Rods, 
 
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 Case, 7s. 6d. 
 
 CATALOGUES POST FREE. 
 
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 A large assortment of these Rods, built specially for Pike fishing, 
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