ioo THE PIKE 



I have seen anglers in the Midlands adopting 

 another method of this early epoch viz. allowing the 

 whole length of the line, without winch, to trail after 

 them. Nobbs approves of this as a very good plan 

 provided there are no such impediments as shrubs or 

 bushes behind, but urges the objection that drawing 

 the line over the ground wears it out rapidly.^ He 

 approvingly notes that it dries sooner, and that when 

 the pike is hasty and furious there is no bother in 

 unwinding ; ' the shortest way to trepan him is to have 

 your line at command and in complete readiness.' 



Our next step in the evolution takes us far into 

 the next century, when Thomas Best, who was 

 Keeper of his Majesty's Drawing-room in the Tower 

 of London, published in 1787 a slender 121110. book 

 which was exceedingly popular, for it ran through 

 many editions in the eighteenth and early part of 

 the nineteenth centuries. In the tenth edition, which 

 I have before me, the title-page proclaims careful 

 revision, correction, and enlargement, and the preface 

 opens with the satisfactory assertion that since the 

 first publication upwards of 20,000 copies had been 

 sold. 



The author of this modest work had at any rate 

 something of an acquaintance with the pike, describing 

 him as a solitary, melancholy, and bold fish, who feeds 



