THE PIKE ^ 169 



hook, with the barbs deeply embedded on either side, so as 

 completely to bar the passage of food. The wretched creature 

 must have died eventually of starvation, yet it came gallantly at 

 the spinning-bait. 



In further illustration of the pike's voracity, one other 

 deserves to be cited, though of a very familiar type, because 

 it has been so well authenticated. In April, 1870, two boatmen 

 on Loch Tay, noticing a disturbance in the water, rowed to the 

 spot and saw two fish, which they supposed were fighting. 

 With a single stroke of the gaff, both fish were drawn into 

 the boat, when it was found that they were a brace of pike, 

 weighing together 19 lb. and nearly equal in size. The head 

 of one was firmly fixed as far as the pectoral fins within the 

 jaws and gullet of the other. A cast of this singular pair is, or 

 used to be, in the Buckland Museum at South Kensington. 



Pike are equally at home in lakes and in rivers ; and 

 albeit they prefer the steadier and slower parts of streams, yet 

 they can maintain their station in pretty strong water. They 

 spawn in spring, the season in Britain varying from the middle 

 of March to the middle of May, according to temperature 

 and elevation. The ova are reddish-yellow, rather large, 

 but smaller than, and not unlike, those of the Salmonida. 

 Buckland counted the eggs within a female pike taken with rod 

 and line from the Norfolk Broads in April, 1870. This fish 

 measured 3 ft. 8 in. in length, and weighed 32 lb. ; the ovary 

 weighed 5 lb. and contained 595,200 eggs. In a pike measur- 

 ing 3 ft. 7 in. and weighing 28 lb., taken in Loch Awe during 

 the previous October, the roe weighed only 21 oz., and 

 contained 292,320 eggs. Thus the roe of the larger fish 

 weighed nearly four times as much as that of the smaller fish, 

 though it contained only twice as many eggs ; which, of course, 

 is explained by the greater development of the eggs on the eve 

 of spawning. Unlike the salmon, which usually undergoes 

 long periods of abstinence before spawning, and nourishes its 

 roe at the expense of its muscular tissues, pike continue to eat 



