106 THE PIKE 



bran with the others, and at the waterside you had 

 the angler with his bag at his back and his gaff 

 slung in some convenient way. He wandered along 

 the river-side, and, arriving at a hole or eddy or 

 place where his experience told him a pike would 

 be lurking, he would drop the bait in the quietest 

 possible manner into the water, first of all close 

 to the bank. The bait should touch the bottom, 

 and then by a deft up and down movement of the 

 rod with the right hand, and an indrawing with the 

 left of the line, to be coiled on the grass by his side, 

 he would bring the bait out of the water, and with 

 not more than a yard of the line hanging from the 

 top would make the next cast a little further out. 



Working the water by this roving and sinking 

 method, slowly or briskly as he might be inclined, in 

 favourable rivers, it was thus possible to fish, as the 

 saying goes, every inch of the water with the thirty 

 yards of line at his disposal. The real sport of the 

 method came when the fish attacked the bait. As a 

 rule the pike would seize it by the middle, and the 

 skill of the angler, which could only be gained by 

 experience, was displayed to begin with by his im- 

 mediately distinguishing the strike of a fish from such 

 an obstruction as a weed. The line would then be 

 left in all respects free, and if the pike was in earnest 



