Angling with the Live- Bait. 309 



pike-fishing is from the point of its junction with 

 the Medwin to Douglas Water foot. 



Pike-fishing was, if not the earliest, at least one 

 of the earliest forms of angling in our country, and 

 the most primitive methods in use were live-baiting 

 and trolling with the dead-gorge bait. In the first 

 English contribution to the literature of angling, 

 and among the first books printed in England the 

 Book of St Alban's, published in 1486 Dame 

 Juliana Berners thus treats of live -baiting for 

 pike : " Take a frosshe and put it on your hoke, 

 at the necke, betwene the skynne and the body, on 

 the backe half, and put on a flote a yerde there fro, 

 and caste it where the pyke hauntyth, and ye shall 

 have hym." Jack's love for frog has not cooled 

 during the four centuries that have elapsed since 

 the days of the good prioress, and often has his 

 passion brought him pain. Barker, Walton, and 

 many more old worthies held the lure in high 

 estimation ; and it is still true that the angler who 

 is bent on sport will be likely to find it 



" When a pike suns himself, and a-frogging doth go." 



Improvements have from time to time been 

 effected in the tackle for baiting the frog, but 

 many of our modern weapons of war are, more or 

 less, merely modifications of the original forms, 

 adapted to cope with the more wary pike of these 



