1 82 WA TERSIDE SKETCHES. 



with the bank should be essayed. Where rushes fringe the 

 river this precaution should never be omitted. Time and 

 practice alone make a good spinner, and there are veteran 

 anglers who, chiefs at trolling, are in the last rank as 

 spinners. On the other hand, a masterful spinner is more 

 likely to be an effective troller. 



Spinning may not be the pleasantest or surest, but there 

 can be no hesitation in pronouncing it the most artistic 

 method of pike-fishing. But there is spinning and spinning, 

 and many men delude themselves into the fancy that their 

 clumsy splatter-dashing is the correct thing. The best 

 spinner is he who, like Caleb Plummer, goes as near to 

 nature as possible. Spinning with the artificial contrivance 

 makes you independent of the bait nuisance. Procuring 

 bait, dead or alive, is, as many of my readers will ruefully 

 admit, frequently a more formidable undertaking than getting 

 the pike, and to travel a distance either in train or dogcart, 

 on foot or on horseback, with a can full of splashing fish 

 that will give up the ghost unless the water be continually 

 changed, is a penalty and not a pleasure. . 



The various spoonbaits, phantom fish, shadowy fancies, 

 and well made imitations of a more substantial nature, are 

 so numerous and cheap, and answer the main purpose of 

 sport so well, that the spinner may laugh at contingencies 

 which give infinite trouble to trollers and live baiters. The 

 fish angled for who, after all, is not a totally disinterested 

 party has a better chance also, and the fisherman having 

 arrested his prisoner is able to exercise a very summary 

 jurisdiction upon him. However, on the question of pike- 

 fishing, opinions will, always differ, and pike-fishers, touching 

 the respective methods which this sketch has suggested, will, 



