!_' . IMSUORGIXG. 



if you give liim time to cool and reflect, your cha ce is 

 small of seeing him again. 



Sometimes a pike will jump out of water like a salmon, 

 when hooked. Always drop the point and slacken lino t > 

 him when he does so, until he is well in his native element 

 again, when you can resume your command of him. It 

 is not a common trick, but I have seen it happen some 

 few times. 



A pike is never safe with spinning tackle until he is in 

 the landing-net. ! Get him there as speedily as possible. 

 He is always in danger of getting off justasyouarealiout 

 to land him, because if you use a landing-net you have to 

 bring him near the surface. 2 Never let your man imkr 

 a clash at the fish, or he may chance to catch your hooks 

 in the net and lose your fish which is by no means the 

 object you have in view. Let him sink the net well, and 

 as you bring the fish round sweep him into it tail first* 

 If he goes in head first your hooks catch tho net, the fish 

 sometimes gives a spring, and you have to sit down and 

 mend your tackle at least occasionally you have to 

 do so. 3 



1 And even -when in the net I have known them jump out. I wns onco 

 f.x'iini: at Hampton Court with my old acquaintance, tho lato Mr. Frank 

 Matthews, the well-known comedian. He hooked a fish of about seven 

 pounds; Wisdom, our fisherman, attempted to land it while it was some 

 distance off, and as ho held tho net extended it jumped out again into tho 

 water and escaped; ten minutes afterwards I caught the name fish again* 

 and I had the head preserved as a curiosity. I have, too. known .1 fish <so 

 through the bottom of an old net, and playing a heavy fish in this predica- 

 ment offers both variety, novelty, and excitement. 



* The gaff is a most useful auxiliary here, for big fish particularly, 

 though it is by no means as easy to gaff a pike as it is a salmon. 



* I lost a ten-pound fish in this way in the Kennot some time since : I 

 was perch-fishing, and the net was much too small for him. I had no 

 assistant. The bank was too rotten to finger him ; a dozen times I got his 

 tail in the net, but he always contrived to slip out at the critical momonc. 

 At last I slipped it over his head, determining to fetch him out with. a 

 swing; but. at the instant of reaching the bank, he jumped out ag;iin and 

 into the water, leaving the paternoster hooks fast in the net. 



