TROLLING FOR PIKE. 127 



The trolling-line should be at least fifty yards in 

 length; and we have found even this, with large fish in 

 broad water, quite little enough. This line should be 

 wound on a reel or winch fixed to the bottom joint of the 

 rod. Some prefer wooden reels or pirns, apparently 

 without sufficient reason. One of the very best trollers 

 we know never uses anything of the sort, but lets his 

 line trail on the ground as he fishes along. For our own 

 part, we employ the winch as handy and convenient, but 

 do not like a multiplier, because it winds up too fast and 

 noisily, and pays out too stiffly. This, however, is mere 

 matter of taste. 



Everybody has some theory about a line. For our- 

 selves we prefer a good one of pure horse-hair to every 

 other. In the first place it is not so liable to kink, if pro- 

 perly managed, as some other lines; and, in the next, it 

 holds no water, dries quick, springs well, and never be- 

 comes dabby and sticky. This latter quality, is, we ap- 

 prehend, so valuable to the angler, that it must necessarily 

 overcome all other considerations. What troller has not 

 experienced the miseries which arise from wet flabby lines, 

 which hang about his clothes and feet like spider's webs, 

 and raffle about amongst the grass, etc., like a skein of 

 crumpled silk? It is true a genuine unadulterated horse- 

 hair line of the requisite length and strength for trolling 

 is a very expensive affair; but then it will last a man's 

 life with care and good luck. A friend of ours, residing 

 on the continent, manufactured a magnificent line, twenty- 

 four hairs in thickness and one hundred yards in length, of 

 pure horse-hair, for his own fishing; the bare material 

 for which, without taking time and labour into consider- 

 ation, cost him five-and-twenty shillings. Now, taking 

 into account the cost of the article which would be 



