THE BOOK OF THE PIKE 



say, which should test in the neighborhood of twenty- 

 three pounds. Muskellunge and great pike lines are 

 built to test up to forty pounds, but I doubt if it is 

 ever necessary to employ such a "rope" in casting 

 artificial lures; indeed, to my mind, the weight would 

 militate against distance and control, as it would inter- 

 fere in playing the fish. My largest great pike was 

 taken on a size G line, testing only eighteen pounds, 

 which, in the great majority of cases, would be suffi- 

 ciently strong. The modern great pike fisherman does 

 not expect to drag a fish around in the water as the 

 small boy drags his toy boat. 



As to lures, I would simply say, select standard 

 bass attractors, though the hooks should be some- 

 what larger, stronger, and well attached. The smash- 

 ing power of a great pike's jaws is considerable. Al- 

 ways there should be a tail-hook, something not needed 

 for bass. There is no necessity, as I see it, for the large, 

 many-hooked lures sometimes illustrated in catalogues 

 and displayed in tackle-store windows. Undoubtedly 

 a full-grown great pike can swallow the largest artifi- 

 cial lure upon the market, but you cannot handle it 

 with the regulation casting rod, neither is there any 

 necessity that you should. I once saw a man fishing 

 for muskellunge upon a Northern Minnesota lake, and 

 his "caster" was a regulation six-foot tarpon rod, to 

 which he had attached a salt-water reel containing 

 300 feet of line! Wait, there is miore. He was using 

 live bait — ten-inch suckers! He caught some good 

 fish, too. Just the same, the real heart-joy of angling 

 was not for him. Parenthetically: Just the other day 

 I picked up an outdoor magazine in which a v>Titer 

 recommended suckers a foot long as muskellunge bait. 



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