74 THE PIKE 



smolts going down to sea in.the spring were becoming 

 periodically fewer. 



Pike, as a rule, prefer streams that are compara- 

 tively sluggish and fairly deep. But they are very 

 cosmopolitan in their tastes, Bohemian in their habits, 

 at times infest the shallowest of rivers, and, at certain 

 periods of the year, may be found even upon the 

 shallows. Every trout fisher who plies a minnow 

 early in the season over a gravelly bed of, say, a foot 

 or eighteen inches deep will be able to vouch for 

 encounters with pike of moderate size. 



While the pike himself will be happy in the 

 choicest of hunting grounds in a river, being able to 

 seek his game with the unfailing stimulus of an 

 opposing current, the angler derives positive benefit 

 from running water. There is always, of course, a 

 certain amount of sentiment to be pardoned in 

 comparing the charms of lake versus river. Every- 

 body likes water in motion. It is the painted 

 ship upon the painted ocean that is the type of 

 horrible stagnation. Our rivers, too, are of many 

 moods ; we have the roar of the great rushing 

 salmon river, the tinkling murmur and intermittent 

 babble of the trout stream over its shining gravel ; and 

 then, for the pike fisher, there is the silent, slow-going 

 volume of water ever stealing seawards, with its eddies 



