178 PICKEREL. 
small piece of flat board about nine inches across, and 
pass a stick through a hole bored in the centre so as to 
project above and below it ; the lower end is then loaded, 
and to the upper is attached a line of some twenty or 
thirty feet, that is baited with either a live or dead min- 
now. The line is coiled on one side of the w^ood, and 
leaving sufficient end for the bait to sink to a proper 
depth is fastened slightly in a slit cut in the wood like 
the thread of a spool. As many as you please to use 
are then placed in the pond and left to fish while you 
row^ about or otherwise employ yourself. If a pickerel 
takes the bait, the line is jerked out of the cleft, and 
uncoiling, allows him to carry off and pouch the bait, 
but when he undertakes to move away he is hooked 
by the resistance of the w^ood against the w^ater. The 
motion of tlie float can be seen from some distance, and 
it is quite interesting to chase one after another that go 
" bobbing around," as fish after fish is hooked. A plan 
somewdiat similar to this is described by Walton and 
other writers, and it is merely a modification of an old 
invention. 
The best season for j)ickerel fishing is after the first of 
September, although they are taken at all times, includ- 
ing their spawning seasons of February, March and 
April, and are quite good, voracious and abundant in 
July and August. The English pike is reported to show 
an abstinence from food in Summer that our fish never 
exhibit, and, indeed, diflers from ours in many particu- 
lars, and none more to his credit than his scarcity. In 
Summer our fish resort to the shallow water, as they are 
also said to do in their spawning season, and at both 
