FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 a mechanical sort of way. I often argued the matter with him while 

 we were pike fishing from the same punt, with the keeper in the middle 

 rowing us slowly, so that Jardine at one end, and I at the other, could 

 cast our spinning or paternoster baits so as to cover all the water within 

 reach of a good fishing cast. Jardine had a great objection to casting 

 even a yard more than was necessary, although he could, when it was 

 needed, make a very long cast with great accuracy. He had his faults, like 

 most of us, and made many enemies by his somewhat bluff and uncom- 

 promising manner if some one was not pleasing him, but although I knew 

 him for about thirty years, and worked with him on many committees, 

 and fished with him on many delightful winter expeditions after pike, 

 and occasionally in the spring after trout, we never had a cross word. 

 He was a good all-round angler in every branch of the sport, including 

 fly-fishing for trout and salmon, and sea fishing, but his chief delight 

 was pike fishing, and certainly no man ever caught so many, or such large 

 fish, on such fine tackle as he did, and he fished from boyhood until he was 

 nearly eighty. He was a most fair and generous companion when fishing, 

 always ready to give his friend the best chance; there is no doubt he died 

 more happy than he would have done if anyone had beaten his splendid 

 brace of pike — one of thirty-six pounds and one of thirty-seven pounds — 

 which are now, I believe, in the Museum at Tring. Of pike between twenty 

 pounds and thirty pounds he took more than he had any record of, and all 

 casting in the Thames style, which includes drawing in the line with 

 the left hand and letting it fall in coils at one's feet, and also gathering it 

 in with the fingers of the left hand into a little ball held in the palm of the 

 hand. To do this he drew off the reel fifteen or twenty yards of his fine 

 dressed line of plaited silk, and then, with a sort of shuttle movement, 

 as he says Francis Francis called it, he gathered the line in a series of 

 small coils into the palm of the left hand — easy to do when the knack is 

 acquired — ^and then making the cast and letting the line run through the 

 fingers. 



A GOOD PIKE ROD 



The favourite pike rod of Mr Alfred Jardine was one made in three joints, 

 with butt and second joint of carefully selected East India bamboo cane, 

 with two tops of greenheart, both of which pack into the butt, a great 

 convenience, the angler having his second top safe, and always handy 

 if needed. The rod has a large butt button and large porcelain rings; 

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