PIKE FISHING IN RIVERS 77 



colour or texture of cloth, for on the severest of 

 winter days he will find it convenient to put off the 

 overcoat, and possible to finish up a day's sport in a 

 tingle of healthy satisfaction. 



There is a type of river that affords peculiar 

 enjoyment in pike fishing. I have one in my mind's 

 eye at the present moment. It is a winding alternation 

 of holes and shallows. There are incidental eddies 

 at recurring intervals, deep places overhung with 

 alders and willows, and, at the beginning and end, a 

 mill pool. In such water the character of the sport 

 is greatly enhanced by uncertainty as to where and 

 when you may meet with your pike. His proper 

 place should be in one of those harbouring holes, or 

 under an overhanging bank ; but there are times, 

 governed apparently by no fixed rules, when he 

 absents himself from headquarters and raids the 

 shallows where trout or dace may be disporting. 



The vagaries of the fish and his habits may be 

 admirably studied along such rivers as this. In them 

 you may hook your pike with worm or even paste, 

 and I remember on a summer morning, in a well- 

 preserved trout fishery of the Kentish Stour, floating 

 a medium-sized alder over what I took to be a trout 

 lying on the gravel, and fairly rising and hooking a 

 jack. He was a frisky youngster of something between 



