PIKE-FISHING. 173 



the murderous jaws snap in a moment across the middle 

 of the bait. True, after being retained and run hither 

 and thither, you may be mortified to find your free gift 

 rejected and returned to your hands mangled, but you 

 have had the excitement of the "run," which is not the 

 less exciting because it is succeeded by the blank of dis- 

 appointment. You may, and you naturally do, condemn 

 yourself into thinking that, had you been spinning, the fish 

 would have been all the same yours ; why not, in the 

 absence of proof to the contrary, console yourself with the 

 reflection that he lay perdu between two banks of weeds 

 either of which would have caught your triangles, to your 

 loss of time and perhaps property ? 



There is but all these opinions are deferentially ad- 

 vanced, be it understood more variety in the old- 

 fashioned art of trolling than in the modern science of 

 spinning. To spin at all successfully you must keep up 

 a certain uniform speed, and where there are weeds (the 

 normal condition of pike waters) you cannot work very 

 near the bottom. The troller has therefore more to study, 

 and must regulate the rate at which he moves his bait by 

 the colour of the water, the strength of the current, and the 

 force of the wind. He may pause now and then to look 

 about him, and dawdle in his employment. The spinner 

 must slacken not, neither must his eyes wander from his 

 line. Take a couple of men who have been pursuing the 

 different methods during the day, and examine the right- 

 hand forefinger of each, and it will be strange if the 

 spinner cannot produce certain red, raw diagonal stripes 

 as witnesses to the truth of my argument. 



Sometimes you will find it necessary to let the bait at 



