THE PIKE. 5 



in disengaging hooks from pike. Always carry a short 

 hieavy bludgeon, and as soon as Mr. Jack is safely landed, 

 hit him two or three smart raps fair between the eyes ; this 

 will effectually stun him and cause him to widely open his 

 mouth, when the hooks can be poked out with a long 

 disgorger. But I must get back to my text. It has also 

 been put on record that the body of a child was once found 

 in the stomach of a pike. I have never found anything so 

 strange as that in any of the jack I have opened ; but rats, 

 chickens, young ducks, moor-hens, and fish of various kinds 

 I have often discovered. Pike have been known to get 

 themselves in strange difficulties, and no possible chance of 

 extricating themselves ; but I should question if ever a pair 

 of them were in a queerer fix than the two exhibited in the 

 South Kensington Museum. These two jack, that weighed 

 together about 191b., and nearly of the same size, are firmly 

 fixed together, the head of one, up to the termination of 

 the gills, being tight in the throat of the other. A boatman 

 saw them struggling together in Loch Tay, locked in each 

 other's jaws, and promptly gaffed them, sending them to Mr. 

 Buckland without being separated, who took a cast of them. 

 We can only wonder what these fish were doing — fighting, 

 perhaps. I should not suppose that one of them opened his 

 mouth with the deliberate intention of swallowing the other, 

 for they are both of a size, unless one of them was suffering 

 from some curious deformity of vision. In Sweden, the land 

 of enormous perch and pike, it is no infrequent occurrence 

 for very large perch to swallow the baited hooks of station- 

 ary night-lines, and then for pike in their turn to swallow the 

 hooked perch. In this case, though the pike himself is 

 hardly ever hooked, yet the perch, with the help of his 

 spiked fins and hard scales, sets so fast in the throat of the 

 greedy tyrant that he is unable to get rid of it, and both are 

 taken. Pike when hungry will seize almost anything that is 

 moving in the water which bears the least resemblance to a 

 small fish, a rat, or a young moor-hen ; but when he is not 

 on the feed hardly anything will tempt him. Expert pike 

 fishers know very well the difference between the " runs," as 

 they are called, when he is hungry, and when he is not. 

 When not hungry he will often play with a bait ; and have 



