34 THE PIKE 



been my privilege and pleasure to fish, and this I do 

 with the prefatory announcement that in subsequent 

 chapters the technicalities of the various methods of 

 pike fishing will be dealt with by the competent pen 

 of my friend John Bickerdyke. It must at the same 

 time happen that passing hints as to spinning and 

 live baiting will necessarily be evoked as legitimate 

 to narrative. The reader will scarcely require to be 

 informed that pike are caught by live baits, or the 

 use of dead fish or artificial imitations, and that the 

 general baits for pike are (i) small living Cyprinidae 

 swimming as freely as a captive attached to a hook 

 and line can in a confined circle ; (2) fish of the same 

 moderate dimensions, dead, and armed with hooks 

 and swivels that will enable them to be worked in 

 imitation more or less of a live fish progressing 

 through the water ; and (3) artificial baits in number- 

 less devices and many materials in imitation of the 

 same. 



There are times, however, in the season when pike 

 will take with tolerable certainty what is nominally 

 called a fly. Even in trout fishing there are some 

 constructions of fur, feather, and tinsel which the 

 purist will not allow under any consideration to rank 

 as an artificial fly, and if misnomer there be in this 

 matter, it attains its maximum degree in some of the 



