PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



PIKE- TACKLE. 

 SPINNING AND TROLLING-RODS. 



An idea happily now nearly exploded has prevailed 

 amongst trollers since the time of Nobbes of the Dark Ages, 

 that a pike-rod should necessarily be a clumsy rod a thick, 

 unwieldy, weighty, top-heavy weapon in fact, a sort of cross 

 between a hop-pole and a clothes-prop. Whatever our pike- 

 fishing ancestors may have been in the matter of skill, it can- 

 not be denied that their rods and angling gear generally were in 

 every way vastly inferior to our own, and, indeed, such as to 

 make any display of what we should consider science out of 

 the question. 



On no part of the fisher's equipment has more patience 

 been lavished, with the result of greater advances, than on the 

 all-important item of the rod. That so far at least as trolling- 

 rods are concerned there was plently of room for improvement 

 may be gathered from the receipt given for the construction of 

 a trolling-rod by the authoress of the 'Boke of St. Albans,' 

 about A.D. 1486, wherein the implement in question is recom- 

 mended to be of at least fourteen feet long ; the ' staffe ' or butt 

 measuring ' a fadom (fathom) and a half,' of the thickness of 

 an 'armgrete,' or about as thick as a man's arm, and the joints 

 to be bound with stout ' hopis of yren ' (iron hoops) ! 



In the first volume I have given a description of the dif- 

 ferent woods used in rod-making, and I will not therefore 

 repeat it here, the more so as both hickory, greenheart, and ash 

 that is, almost all the principal rod-woods may be, and are, 

 very commonly employed in the manufacture of Spinning and 



