168 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
computation, five hundred hungry pike. Suppose they each 
take but five smolts a day for a week on end, that means 
the slaughter of exactly 17,500 young fish which, with luck, 
would have returned to the river as full-grown grilse and 
salmon. And note that, in the river in question, there are 
many still reaches besides this particular one, fringed with 
reeds and swarming with pike, through which every descending 
smolt has to run the gauntlet. There is only one fish known 
to me which defies the pike—the stickleback, to wit, which, 
though the pike may fill his mouth withal, he has to eject 
because of the prickles, and cam eject, for the horny armour 
of the little creature prevents the recurved palatal teeth fixing 
it inextricably. The perch manages to hold its own with the 
pike, even in enclosed waters, partly in virtue of its defensive 
spines, and partly because of its great reproductive powers ; 
nevertheless, small perch very commonly fall a prey to the 
omnivorous tyrant. 
The tactics of the pike in pursuit of prey are stealth and 
ambush, culminating in a fierce rush. His mottled coat is gay 
enough when you have him on the bank ; but in the water it 
agrees so well with the weeds and shadows that the fish 1s very 
difficult to detect. Then he has a strange power of holding 
himself, not head to stream, as most fish lie, but at almost any 
angle to the current—stiff, motionless, indistinct, more like a 
stock than a living creature. 
Countless stories have been printed about the insatiable 
voracity of the pike, and these it boots not to repeat here ; 
but I may describe one incident which came under my own 
notice. A friend was trolling in the Scottish lake above 
referred to and hooked a large pike, which offered a poor 
resistance. When we landed it, we found that it was emaciated 
to the last degree, a fish which, in proportion to its length, 
ought to have weighed more than 20 lb. In effect it only 
brought the index down to 9 lb, The cause was soon apparent. 
Far down in its gullet was a large double night-line, or trimmer 
