WINTER. 77 



of a mass of decayed weeds, and in not more than a foot 

 depth of water, something arrow-like speeds straight away, 

 churning up the water as it goes. There is no half- 

 heartedness about the smack bang of the transaction. 



The fish, as you may wager without seeing the result, has 

 taken every one of the hooks into his safe keeping, and 

 has only to be allowed to take his own course to be added 

 to the spoil already accumulated. Given strong tackle, 

 well tried before the day's angling begins, there is little 

 excuse for the loss, by breaking away, of a well-hooked 

 pike, however large it may be ; barring such accidents as 

 fouling with trees, or hanging the line up in some irre- 

 trievable position. And a sixteen-pound pike on a spinning 

 flight does not give in all of a moment. Your pike never 

 fights out the battle like some of the fish that have been 

 spoken of in the course of these pages, but he puts out all 

 his strength and speed when hooked only with snap tackle, 

 and is by no means a contemptible antagonist. This fellow 

 leaps out of the water after a thirty yards gallop, and 

 plunges into a weed bank. But I winch up to him in the 

 boat, dislodge him, and gaff him, to put the crowning- 

 weight to the sum total, which the keeper's man bears, 

 staggering, away with me in a rush basket to the station. 



The venerable practice of trolling with the dead gorge 

 has latterly gone a good deal out of fashion, and it cannot 

 be denied that its deadly nature is a fair argument against 

 it when the preservation of the pike is in question. Let 

 the fish be ever so small, after it has taken the murderous 

 gorge into its gullet, its career is ended, and even pike 

 must have sportsman's law, and the youngsters be returned 

 to the water when possible. But I must plead guilty to a 

 sneaking kindness for this form of pike-fishing, upon which, 

 in the seventeenth century, old Robert Nobbes wrote a 



