16 ANGLING FOB PIKE. 



summer, no time is so good as early morning, from soon 

 after daybreak up to eight or nine o'clock; the next best 

 time is tbe evening. In frosty weather pike usually bite for 

 two or three hours only during the day — generally some time 

 between eleven and three. Windy days, especially in summer, 

 afford better sport, as a rule, than calm ones. When rivers 

 are clearing after a flood, the fish may be expected to bite 

 better than at any other time. Cloud is decidedly good in 

 summer, if there is no wind; but on windy days sunshine is 

 certainly preferable. In winter, take as much sunshine as you 

 can get, unless it be on one of those exceptional occasions when 

 the water is very low and very clear. 



For the benefit of those of my readers who have absolutely 

 no knowledge of jack-fishing, it will, I think, be as well for 

 me to give here a slight sketch of the various methods em- 

 ployed, and explain under what circumstances they are re- 

 spectively useful. Let me, first of all, point out that the 

 jack of the present day have in many rivers become almost 

 as highly educated as trout, and that the coarse gimp or wire 

 tackle which our ancestors used has had to give way to tackle 

 in which salmon-gut, in a great measure, takes the place of 

 gimp. Even salmon-gut will, I feel assured, be found too 

 coarse for the pike of the future. Indeed, I am by no means 

 certain that the time has not arrived when what is known as 

 lake-trout gut should be used in Thames jack-fishing. As 

 to this I will tell a fish story — a true one — and leave the reader 

 to draw his own conclusions. 



Some three or four winters ago I punted down to Hambleden 

 Lock, below Henley, and passing through the lock, moored my 

 punt at the top of a well-known hole famous for pike and perch 

 in winter. It was not a large place, and required fishing 

 carefully, so I put out a lively dace on ordinary jack float- 

 tackle, with very fine gimp close to the bait, and above that 

 salmon-gut. The bait worked beautifully, and went over eveiy 

 portion of the hole, but no jack seized it. At the end of 

 an hour I determined to see if the perch were feeding, so put 

 up another rod, and fished for perch with a two-hook paternoster 

 of the finest undrawn gut, baited with minnows. I had no 



