Sport in the Stour 
ing, and if the fillets are properly cut 
from the flank, rejecting, in the or- 
thodox manner, the whole of the back, 
then, fried in batter and served with 
sauce Tartare, I confidently reeommend 
them to the epicure, certain that he will 
not know them from whiting. Pike in 
season are a most lovely iridescent 
golden color, and, as I can tell from 
personal experience, they can some- 
times make a very good fight for their 
life when in condition, and when they 
are fished for in sporting fashion with 
tolerably light tackle and an ordinary 
small salmon rod. If this is done, an 
incessant heavy strain must be kept 
up, as otherwise the pike will have his 
teeth well into your line almost before 
you have begun to play him. Gimp, 
of course, puts a stop to this manceuvre, 
and you can simply and artlessly haul 
him out sooner or later, while you take 
your time comfortably, knowing your- 
self to be safe. This is magnificent, 
but it is not sport. 
I remember, one lovely evening in 
June, catching nine pike, varying from 
twelve to twenty-seven pounds in 
weight, in the course of two hours’ 
trolling, with dace as a bait. Never 
shall I forget the beauty of the scene— 
the setting sun, the occasional flash of 
a kingfisher, the whirr of a wild duck’s 
wings singing overhead through the 
evening air, the swaying of the reeds 
to what we used to call a ‘‘trout 
breeze,” to distinguish a light wind 
from the ‘‘salmon breeze,” which is 
distantly related to half a gale. I can 
see the water plants, some rare, some 
beautiful, some both scarce and lovely, 
and hear the plash of the oar, as Du- 
gald Cameron, our Highland fisherman, 
alert and wary, gently dropped us down 
over the likely places. 
One of these pike, the largest of the 
287 
party, gave some trouble. As a rule, 
after the first rush, they sulk or retire 
into private life at the bottom of the 
pool, where they carefully wind the 
line round a snag or a clump of weed, 
and so get a purchase which enables 
them to cut themselves loose. Then is 
the time, when they disappear in this 
way, to stir them up as sharply as your 
tackle will allow, otherwise your fish 
and your best flight of hooks may swim 
away down the river and pass for ever 
out of your life. As the pike’s want of 
gameness enables you to land him long 
before he is exhausted by the play of 
the rod, it follows that the struggle is 
by no means over when he is safely out 
of the water, for then you must beware 
of his bite. In the case of my twenty- 
seven pounder, he made his teeth meet 
in my inexperienced finger, while I was 
attempting to relieve him of the hook, 
just as if he had been a dog from whom 
I was taking a bone. Dugald, who 
would naturally have performed this 
delicate operation for me, was so elated 
at the size of our fish that he relapsed 
at once into Gaelic and into an attempt 
to execute the Highland dance of tri- 
umph, sorely impeded by limited space, 
the necessity for trimming the boat 
and for sticking to his oars. Inside 
him—I mean, of course, the pike—was 
a perch of two pounds and three quart- 
ers in weight, enough in all conscience 
to swallow at a gulp, but those bull-dog 
jaws and that throat could have disposed 
of a baby whale, and still, like Oliver, 
have asked for more. To us, degen- 
erate products of a debilitating civiliza- 
tion, it seems impossible to digest a 
whole fish (other than a whitebait) 
head, tail, scales, and bones, to say 
nothing of the perch’s peculiar dorsal 
fin; but the pike, with all his teeth and 
jaws, disdains to chew his food, and 
