CHAPTER VI. 

 THE PIKE (continued). 



TROLLING WITH A DEAD GORGE. 



The reel, line, and tackle — How to bait a dead gorge — Working the 

 trolling bait — Different methods of dead gorging. 



Trolling for pike with a dead gorge bait is a sport that I 

 don't hold with, if the place operated on can anyhow be 

 got at with a spinning bait. All hooked fish, no matter how 

 small, must be killed after swallowing a dead gorge. It is 

 true there is a disgorger made now that will occasionally 

 get up gorge hooks without hurting the fish very much, 

 more particularly live gorge tackle; but the fact that the 

 gimp of a dead gorge is threaded completely through the 

 bait, and also that a lead is cast round the shank of the 

 hooks, prevents the disgorger just named from getting 

 to the points of the hooks on purpose to push them, back. 

 But as there are certain waters containing good pike that 

 cannot possibly be got at by any other plan, I must just 

 briefly look at it, but this chapter will be a very short one 

 indeed. 



Certain backwaters, pools, railway cuttings, etc., etc., are 

 very often so choked up with weeds that there is scarcely a 

 hole a yard square anywhere all over the surface, and yet 

 good jack are known to be in those waters, the object of a 

 dead gorge being so that when it is moved up and down in 

 a sink and draw movement and a pike swallows it, there are 

 no hooks, no leads, and no float to catch among the weeds 

 and so help him to shake himself free ; and if the pike does 

 thread himself in and out among those weeds you stand a 

 chance of getting him out if line and tackle are strong, 

 which they ought to be in dead-gorging, and the weeds 



