PIKE-FISHING. 183 



let me hope, agree to differ and object, if it shall so please 

 them, with that urbanity and gentleness of spirit which from 

 the beginning has characterised their fraternity. 



A serio-comic incident which occurred to me once upon 

 a time while spinning I cannot forbear recounting. Hearing 

 that in the small reservoirs attached to some print works 

 near Manchester there were pike, I soon procured the 

 manufacturer's permission, and started off from the metropolis 

 of cotton-dom with nothing but an artificial trout as bait. 

 It had never been remarkable for its perfection, and after 

 long use had become battered out of shape and colour. All 

 the reservoirs but one were carefully spun over with the 

 unlikely machine to no purpose. In the last a fish beyond 

 doubt struck at it four times in succession, and mightily 

 puzzled was I that nothing more productive had resulted. 

 An inspection, however, showed that the loose triangles over 

 the shoulder had not a sharp point between them, and it 

 became necessary with a bit of thread, and in a very rough- 

 and-ready manner, to substitute for them the more prickly 

 tail triangle. At the next spin I hooked my gentleman a 

 long, gaunt, wretchedly-coloured fish, with a body as thin as 

 a hake's. Not another "touch" was received during the 

 remainder of the afternoon, and I departed with my famine- 

 stricken wretch in the basket. Three months later at a 

 junction railway station in Lancashire I fell into conversa- 

 tion with a homeward-bound party of anglers whose rods 

 and baskets I considered sufficient warrant for self-intro- 

 duction. By-and-by I told the story of the starved pike, 

 starved as I was now able to say, for I had dissected him to 

 discover the cause of his preternatural lankiness. Amiddle- 

 .aged man broke forth into lamentation 



