1 68 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 



computation, five hundred hungry pike. Suppose they each 

 take but five smolts a day for a week on end, that means 

 the slaughter of exactly 17,500 young fish which, with luck, 

 would have returned to the river as full-grown grilse and 

 salmon. And note that, in the river in question, there are 

 many still reaches besides this particular one, fringed with 

 reeds and swarming with pike, through which every descending 

 smolt has to run the gauntlet. There is only one fish known 

 to me which defies the pike— the stickleback, to wit, which, 

 though the pike may fill his mouth withal, he has to eject 

 because of the prickles, and can eject, for the horny armour 

 of the little creature prevents the recurved palatal teeth fixing 

 it inextricably. The perch manages to hold its own with the 

 pike, even in enclosed waters, partly in virtue of its defensive 

 spines, and partly because of its great reproductive powers ; 

 nevertheless, small perch very commonly fall a prey to the 

 omnivorous tyrant. 



The tactics of the pike in pursuit of prey are stealth and 

 ambush, culminating in a fierce rush. His mottled coat is gay 

 enough when you have him on the bank ; but in the water it 

 agrees so well with the weeds and shadows that the fish is very 

 difficult to detect. Then he has a strange power of holding 

 himself, not head to stream, as most fish lie, but at almost any 

 angle to the current — stiff, motionless, indistinct, more like a 

 stock than a living creature. 



Countless stories have been printed about the insatiable 

 voracity of the pike, and these it boots not to repeat here ; 

 but I may describe one incident which came under my own 

 notice. A friend was trolling in the Scottish lake above 

 referred to and hooked a large pike, which ofi^ered a poor 

 resistance. When we landed it, we found that it was emaciated 

 to the last degree, a fish which, in proportion to its length, 

 ought to have weighed more than 20 lb. In efi^ect it only 

 brought the index down to 9 lb. The cause was soon apparent. 

 Far down in its gullet was a large double night-line, or trimmer 



