106 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



original and fascinating of any of the writer's longer poems. 

 But this is digressing. 



To return to my text, the Where of pike-spinning. I have 

 said that the spots to select are, as a rule, rather where fish can 

 be caught, than in 'unfishable' waters where they are known or 

 supposed to be more numerous or larger. The water below 

 my shallow on the Avon furnishes a very good example of this. 

 Some way lower down it becomes a narrower and much deeper 

 stream, and it is here that Sir Edward Hulse's keepers and 

 water-bailiffs locate their best fish and the most of them. 

 Whether they are there or not I cannot say, though the water, 

 I admit, looks exceedingly well calculated to hold heavy fish, 

 but this I can say, that my attempts to fish it with the spinning 

 bait have never been really successful I mean in the way of 

 making a good bag. 



There is another reach of the Avon lower down called 

 Sandy Balls, overhung by the romantic beech and fir-covered 

 cliffs of the New Forest, which local superstition peoples with 

 pike of altogether pre-historic dimensions, yet I have never 

 succeeded, that I can remember, in catching a pike out of this 

 celebrated ' hold,' nor have I ever seen anybody else do so. 

 In the ' drawns ' and shallow rushes of water, on the contrary, 

 by which the mazy stream is tapped in order to water the sur- 

 rounding meadows, I have had excellent sport, repeatedly 

 killing pike of nine or ten pounds weight, out of a stream 

 where it seemed almost too small to throw the spinning bait. 



Below one of these rushes or sluice-gates a curious incident 

 happened to my wife, in the presence of myself and the late 

 Lord Anglesey's keeper. I thought the double capture suf- 

 ficiently remarkable to be sent to the Field. 'When pike- 

 fishing to-day with my wife in Lord Anglesey's water on the 

 Avon, a very singular circumstance happened. Mrs. Pennell, 

 when spinning above the Flax Mills, caught two pike at the 

 same time. The first fish was hooked in the usual way, and 

 about a foot and a half above the flight of hooks a second 

 fish was found, twisted up in the gut trace, the line having 



