PIKE FISHING IN LAKES 39 



a wealth of ancestral ivy; sometimes the noble 

 forest trees have their umbrageous foliage mirrored 

 in the surface, lending a succession of shifting hues 

 to the water as the sun progresses on its daily journey. 

 Yonder is an ancient rookery, under which, before 

 the delicate May leaflets have broadened to maturity, 

 the farmers and tradesmen around have their annual 

 rook-shooting festival; the jackdaws and the bats 

 which circle around you at eventide make their home 

 in the ruins or in the church belfry, and across, 

 on the other side of the lake, is the smooth up- 

 land with the mansion fair and square, flanked by 

 ministering shrubberies, in the distance. There are 

 hundreds of such beautiful domains, and to one of 

 these let me conduct the reader upon a winter day 

 which does not quite answer to the softly blowing 

 wind and dark lowering weather which Dame Juliana 

 Barnes considered the correct conditions for angling. 

 There is a great deal of spurious dogmatism 

 talked about the weather in fishing, yet there are 

 some rules which it would be wise to treat with 

 respect. Thus in pike fishing on a lake the thing 

 to be least desired is a surface unruffled by the 

 wind. It is not always the case that pike refuse to 

 run when the wind is in the north or east, nor that 

 they are bold and dashing when it is south and west ; 



