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CHAPTER XVI. 



PIKE AND PIKE-FISHING. 



Pickerel ; Jack ; Pike ; Luce ; Gedd. 



FIN-RAYS. D. 19; P. 14 ; V. 10 ; A. 17 ; C. 19. 



GENERIC CHARACTERS. Head depressed, large, oblong, blunt ; jaws, 



palatine bones and vomer furnished with teeth of various sizes ; 



body elongated, rounded on the back ; sides compressed, covered 



with scales ; dorsal fin placed very far back over the anal fin. 



Yarrell, vol. i. p. 383. ^ 



ALTHOUGH, in common with most anglers, I esteem 

 salmon-fishing and the capturing of trout, whether with 

 fly, minnow, or worm, pre-eminent among river sports, 

 the trolling for pike also in places where they are 

 known to attain great size and are tolerably abundant 

 is an amusement by no means uninteresting. 



Of late years, I have occasionally practised this 

 branch of the art with great success; my principal 

 scene of action being the river Teviot, or, in fact, two 

 or three pools belonging to it, which lie in the vicinity 

 of Roxburgh, a small village situated about three miles 

 from Kelso. As these pools, or the portions of them 

 where pike lie, (for they are not all throughout equally 

 infested by this species of water-pirate), are neither 

 extensive nor numerous, I generally managed to test 

 them quite sufficiently for the day in the course of an 

 hour or little more. In a brown water, and when the 

 fish were in taking humour, I sometimes confined 

 myself to a single hole or haunt, from which, ere the 



