112 THE BOEDER ANGLER. 



tient angler may perhaps trust to a barb being in the 

 pike's mouth, and strike more rapidly — although, in 

 doing so, we have found the pike hold on for a little, 

 as if surprised at our tugging, and then let go his hold, 

 and retreat unscathed. Should the angler be tempted 

 to try a pike-cast with a large minnow or parr-tail and 

 gut-tackle, he ought to strike at once, or the chances 

 are that if the pike swallow the bait he will sever the 

 gut with his teeth. Many people content themselves 

 with fishing for pike by means of set-lines — the brass- 

 armed double hook being baited in the ordinary way, 

 and thrown into a likely place, a cork attached to the 

 line suspending the bait at any depth. Eels, however, 

 when they are numerous, are apt to interfere sadly 

 with such baits — and everybody is not so lucky as to 

 fall in with 20-lb. specimens of the anguillidse, as Mr. 

 Stoddart relates he did in such a case in the Teviot. 

 To be such remarkably wary and sagacious animals, 

 river-trout sometimes do singularly stupid things — for 

 we once caught one, a pound and a half in weight, in 

 the Clyde in clear water, at a pike-line, the bait being 

 a two-ounce trout, with a great hook projecting on 

 each side of its mouth, and six inches of twisted brass- 

 wire connecting its tail with a strong cord ! Pike are 

 sometimes caught by setting a bait adrift suspended 

 from a bundle of rushes, a corked soda-water bottle, 

 or other " trimmer;" and we have know^n the jocund 

 rustics of the Till amuse themselves by fastening a 

 small trout to a duck's leg and making it swim 

 through a deadly haunt of the fresh-water shark, a 

 furious struggle ensuing, if a pike took hold, as to 

 whether the fowl was to be drawn under water or the 



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