14 THE PIKE. 



black as ink, and quite soft. I should say that those calcu- 

 lations as to the weight a jack will put on in a given number 

 of years will depend a good deal on the nature and character 

 of the water he inhabits. I believe it would have to be an 

 extra good water for a jack in a natural way to reach four 

 pounds when three years old, and then increase to seven 

 pounds in his next year. If he is an inhabitant of an in- 

 different pond, where he only could get an occasional 

 frog, a young moor hen, or a mouthful of tadpoles, it would 

 probably take him ten years to put on four pounds. 



As I said at the outset of this chapter, the pike is a fish 

 that is very much sought after by the angler, and good pike 

 fishing, out of public waters at any rate, can hardly now-a- 

 days be expected. When I say good fishing, I mean as it was 

 even during my memory, where a dozen good fish to one rod 

 in a day's spinning was thought nothing extra. Or go back 

 a little further still ; but for all that during the memory of 

 an old angler still living, who told me last time I saw him, 

 that he could remember the time when flags and rushes 

 grew in abundance all along the brink of the Trent, and had 

 seen the big jack bolt out of the reeds every few steps ; and 

 when employed as puntsman by the late Dr. Waterworth 

 and Mr. Cafferata, he could remember them taking as many 

 as thirty pike during a single afternoon, many of them fish 

 from eight to fifteen pounds apiece. It was also nothing 

 unusual for Tom Beck (an old netter still living), to go down 

 the river to the Meering ferry and Sutton Holme in those 

 days, and take in a net a hundredweight of good jack during 

 a single evening. I can myself remember very well, the 

 late Sam Hibbert, when he rented the Staythorpe fishery on 

 the Trent, getting some splendid bags of pike, nearly every- 

 time he cared to go. But since those days pike fishermen 

 have increased a hundred-fold, and any public water known 

 to contain jack is nearly hunted to death, with the result that 

 they are wofully thinned down ; and it is only occasionally 

 that a good bag is made. Suitable pike waters should be 

 constantly re-stocked now-a-days, and a stringent bye-law 

 should be made and enforced, to regulate the size of jack 

 allowed to be taken. All this means money, but still I 

 firmly believe that angling and preservation societies will 



