298 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
enormous. If the pike should be hunted down as a common 
pirate, the eel deserves to be dealt with as a midnight 
assassin. The pike, at all events, is not known to devour 
the spawn of other fish, but eels work sad havoc on the 
“redds”’ of salmon and trout. The pike, also, may be taken 
with rod and line after showing fair sport, but nobody cares 
to angle for eels save for the pot. “ The Ele,” quoth Dame 
Juliana Berners, “is a quaysy Fysshe. A ravenour and de- 
vourer of the brode of Fysshe, and the Pike also is a devourer 
of Fysshe. I put them bothe behinde al other for to angle.” 
The mess which an eel will make with tackle intended for 
other fish is indescribable. Once, and once only, did I catch 
an eel when fly-fishing for trout. It was where a burn ran 
shallow over a shingly beach into the sea, a part of the 
current where I had learned to look for common trout grown 
uncommonly fat on tidal fare. My gut cast was of the finest; 
a Chinese puzzle was a joke to it after the eel, an insignificant 
creature about nine inches long, had dealt with it for the space 
of five or ten seconds. The fly was a small red spinner when 
it started. 
Luckily for anglers, the common eel does not attain the 
huge size which some of the family reach—the conger, for 
instance. An eel of 3 lb. is a large one, but they are taken 
sometimes considerably heavier than that. Frank Buckland 
gave the dimensions of the largest eel he ever examined and 
cast. It was taken in the river Mole, measured 4 feet 4 inches 
in length, 10 inches in girth, and weighed just under 10 Ib. 
The Grig, Glut, or Broad-nosed Eel (Anguilla Jlatirostis) 
FIns. TEETH. 
As in the common eel, save that | Those of the lower jaw are in a 
the distance between the com- single band, without longitudinal 
mencement of the dorsal and groove. Otherwise, as in the 
anal fins is shorter than the head. common eel. 
There has been considerable difference of opinion among 
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