THE BOOK OF THE PIKE 



an experience which may be good for one's soul, but 

 it is heart-breaking at the time. 



One of the best fights I ever saw a great pike put 

 up, one I hooked near the mouth of the Chippewa, 

 River, a Wisconsin stream, conducted. "Conducted" is 

 right, for, for full fifteen minutes the fish engineered 

 the doings. I was casting for bass at the foot of a 

 rocky ledge; that is, I had been casting all along the 

 rocks without results, then walked down to an eddy 

 below them, a bit of water more ideal for pike 

 than bass. I cast clear across the eddy to a fringe of 

 pickerel weed upon the far side. I thought I had 

 struck a snag, for my hook stuck. To my surprise, I 

 found that I was fast in a good fish. He sulked, some 

 hundred feet away. I pulled steadily (my tackle was 

 of the best) until I had coaxed him out into the current, 

 then he suddenly awakened, and for twenty minutes 

 kept me very busy indeed. Three times I had him 

 at my feet. Three times he managed to secure the 

 advantage of the strong current and was swept away. 

 I all but despaired of gaffing him. Once he leaped in 

 a hog-wallowing way, shaking himself, having secured 

 sufficient slack line for the maneuver. For a few sec- 

 onds I was mightily worried, for there are no more 

 dangerous tactics resorted to by any of the pikes. 

 Hooks held, line remained true. In the end I landed 

 the fish without assistance, though it was no credit to 

 me, for I had shouted lustily for aid, but there was none 

 to hear. That one battle looms largest on my mental 

 horizon of all my contests with great pike. Not because 

 it was an unusually big fish, and it was a good one, re- 

 ported in the newspapers ; but because of the surround- 

 ings and the length of the struggle, a full half-hour. 



