THE BOOK OF THE PIKE 



taken something like fifteen or twenty years ago. 

 Anyone who has followed the records as published in 

 the Field and Stream contests can but conclude that a 

 thirty-pound muskellunge may be considered as a 

 large fish. The average angler who takes a twenty- 

 pound muskellunge is to be congratulated. Now we 

 are down where the average angler does his fishing. 

 I am under the impression that a fish under ten pounds 

 is more active than one over, allowing for individ- 

 uality. Of course, added weight tests tackle, but mere 

 avoirdupois is not gameness. A man of 214 pounds 

 will not prove as good a sprinter as will one of 140, 

 though the former will require a stronger hammock 

 than the latter. Every angler desires to take a forty- 

 pound muskellunge. I hope to have such an one 

 mounted and hung above my fireplace. Once upon a 

 time I took an eighteen-pound fish, and that was a 

 red-letter day in my ichthyic experiences. Strange, is 

 it not, the man who haunts a good muskellunge water 

 a season through must be content with an eighteen- 

 pound 'lunge, while a dry goods clerk from Chicago, 

 who had hardly seen a rod and reel before coming to 

 the lake, should take a forty-pounder the first morning ? 

 I have already discussed the three species of mus- 

 kellunge, though I am not willing to give them specific 

 rank, thinking them less than sub-species. (See 

 Chapter III.) In order to refresh your minds, a brief 

 recapitulation. There is, first of all, the Great Lakes 

 fish and the St. Lawrence fish, body grayish-silver, the 

 ground color flecked with irregular blackish spots 

 (Esox masquinongy) ; followed by the fish of the Ohio 

 drainage, including a few New York and Pennsyl- 

 vania lakes, in which the ground color is overcast with 



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