138 THE PIKE. 



the astonished gander, but forced him to perform 

 half-a-dozen somersaults on the surface of the 

 water. For some time the struggle was most 

 amusing, the fish pulling and the bird screaming 

 with all its might, the one attempting to fly and 

 the other attempting to swim from the invisible 

 enemy ; the gander the one moment losing and the 

 next regaining its centre of gravity, and casting 

 between whiles many a rueful look at his snow- 

 white fleet of geese and goslings, who cackled out 

 their sympathy for their afflicted commodore. 

 At length victory declared in favour of the 

 feathered angler, who, bearing away for the nearest 

 shore, landed on the smooth green grass one of the 

 finest pike ever caught in the castle loch." 



A rough and ready style of " trimmering " some- 

 times practised on the Norfolk Broads, known as 

 " liggering," has slain thousands of fine fish. A 

 " ligger" consists merely of a bunch of dry rushes 

 or sedges, to which a few yards of strong line is 

 tied and then wound round the bundle, leaving 

 about a yard depending, which is secured by a 

 small peg stuck in the rushes. On the line is a 

 perforated leaden bullet, and below that the gorge- 

 hook baited with a small live roach. Fifty or more 

 of these " liggers " were sometimes set afloat on 

 the windward side of the Broad, generally over- 

 night, and travelled slowly in the direction of the 

 wind. When the bait was seized, the line came 

 away from the peg, and as the bundle of rushes 

 revolved in the water under the strain of the 

 unrolling line, the pike gorged the bait This 

 mode of fishing (I believe it is now considered to 

 be poaching) helped largely to deplete those once 

 celebrated pike waters. Pike arc more nocturnal 



