THE PIKE. 109 



bai comes spinning and glittering towards you like a thing 

 of life, or more properly like a partly disabled fish trying to 

 escape. Wind the bait as near to you as you can, lift it out 

 of the water and repeat the cast, never let the bait sink to 

 the bottom, or the hooks may catch hold of some obstruc- 

 tion, and give you a lot of trouble to disengage them. Try 

 all sorts of dodges also during spinning, spin slowly, spin 

 quickly, let the bait spin near the surface, or down deeper 

 in mid water; or jerk it a little with the rod point; act, in 

 fact, all sorts of dodges. 



When you know there is a jack about, search all the water 

 within reach of the cast well, don't let a yard of water go 

 unfished. When a jack takes the bait, and he is hungry, he 

 generally takes care that it shall not be a doubtful matter. 

 Hit him rather smartly, as the hooks having rank barbs, 

 would fail to penetrate the hard mouth of the pike if you did 

 not strike well home. Some anglers, when they feel a fish, 

 give him a few seconds' grace. This is not absohitely neces- 

 sary, as a pike when he means to take a bait, seldom misses 

 his target, and striking and hooking can be done at once, as 

 well as if one waited. Pike are very often lost when spin- 

 ning, but mostly through the carelessness of the angler. 

 Play the fish firmly but carefully, and keep a tight line on 

 him, for if the line be slack and the hooks not very fast in, 

 he will shake his head like a bulldog sometimes, and pro- 

 bably shake hooks and bait out of his mouth. When you 

 have landed your fish, the next job is to get the hooks out of 

 his mouth, and it is " ware 'hawk " here. Don't put your 

 fingers in his mouth, or indeed close against it, for he can bite, 

 and to some tune too. He will snap at you like a savage dog, 

 and if he once gets a fair hold, you will most likely remem- 

 ber it for the rest of your natural life. The best plan would 

 be to rap him over the head with something heavy, and then 

 force his mouth open with a bit of stick, pulling out the 



