PICKEREL. 177 
fishers endeavor to remedy by allowing the pike or jack, 
as tliey call him, to gorge the bait. A pickerel, like a 
trout, rushes up, strikes his prey, and immediately returns 
with it to his haunt ; he then ends it round, having gen- 
erally struck it crosswise, and sw^allows it. This he takes 
much longer to do than a trout, and the English works 
on fishing direct you to wait five minutes or till he runs 
again, and then, by striking smartly, you can fix the 
hook into his gills or stomach, from which nothing but 
the knife will remove it. The disadvantage, however, is 
that the pickerel often eject instead of gorging the bait, 
and when the fisherman, having impatiently awaited his 
five minutes, comes to strike, he strikes naught but the 
thin water or the stem of a water lily. After a few such 
disgusting results, he will probably determine, as the 
writer has, to strike at once, unless, by one of those 
exceptional cases to all good rules, some peculiar diffi- 
culty forces him to proceed otherwise. The w^ord spoon, 
that has been so frequently used, is derived from the use 
originally of the bowl of a pewter table-spoon, into one 
end of which was fastened three hooks, and into the other 
a swivel attached to the line, and which, by playing and 
flashing through the water, attracted the fish ; the old- 
fashioned spoon is now out of use, and entirely super- 
seded by Buel's patent. Pickerel, especially the smaller 
varieties, will take a fly, but not very readily ; and this 
can hardly be said to be an established mode of fishing 
for them. 
There is another style of pickerel fishing which is 
amusing, to say the least of it, and is practised exten- 
sively throughout the State of New York. You take a 
8* 
