WINTER. 73 



a rudely-stuffed specimen of a carp of 24 lbs., set up 

 as a scare-crow. Perch may be taken up to the middle of 

 March. By the time trout-fishing is over, which in the 

 stream in question is virtually at the end of July, the coarse 

 fish are ready again, and the grayling almost fit, in the 

 stream into which they were introduced some years ago. 

 There is finally an estuary not very far away where 

 salmon peel are occasionally taken. 



The centre, however, of all this fishing is the serpentine 

 lake, out of which, last Christmas, the nephew of the old 

 squire, in a short December afternoon, killed 80 lbs. weight 

 of pike. It is with no ordinary hope, therefore, that I enter 

 the boat and am pushed out upon the surface. Some men 

 are born to be unlucky, and, in angling, I have often 

 thought that I am one of them. There is not to-day a 

 breath of wind to ruffle the surface, or scatter the light 

 mist which still broods over the water. Although the thin 

 blue smoke which floats over the trees from the castle 

 chimneys shows that what little upper current of air there 

 is comes from the bleak north-easterly quarter, which 

 anglers never pray for, there may yet be a chance, for, 

 if the wind be verily honest and constant, you need not, 

 in pike-fishing, seriously trouble as to the point of the 

 compass from which it blows. Wind of some sort, however, 

 is a prime necessity in pike-fishing. 



I had rigged up without loss of time my spinning appa- 

 ratus. As the reader is probably aivare, there are many 

 spinning flights of different sizes, of different patterns, but 

 they are all based upon the one supposition that by their 

 means the bait is made to spin without an ugly motion, 

 and as nearly as possible to resemble the swimming of a 

 natural fish. I have tried all the flights that have been 

 invented, and having listened carefully to all the argu- 



