THE PIKE 171 



in 1862, when my father spent ^3,000 in draining Dowalton 

 Loch, the largest sheet of water in Wigtownshire. Legends of 

 huge pike inhabiting its depths had ever been current in the 

 neighbourhood, but, strange to say, among thousands of pike 

 and perch captured when the waters ran off, there was no fish 

 taken of a greater weight than 1 2 lb. It was supposed that 

 the larger fish had been smothered and lost in some hundreds 

 of acres of mud laid bare. 



Pike lend themselves readily to the fisherman's proverbial 

 appetite for the marvellous. I once asked an old gillie of 

 mine, usually very laconic, whether there were pike in a 

 certain loch. 



" Pike ! " he exclaimed, with a ring of sarcasm in his voice. 

 I had touched the spring of his loquacity, for he proceeded — 

 " Ae day I was gangin' along the side o' yon loch, an' I see'd a 

 thing in the watter, I thocht it was a tree. An' then I saw twa 

 e'en in it." 



" And what was it, Sandy } " said I. 



'* Oh, it was a pike," quoth he. 



*' And what did you do, Sandy '^. " 



*' I gaed back from the loch for fear of him ! " 



Then, with the craft of a true artist, he fell silent. Words 

 could do no more. I could not induce him to hazard an 

 estimate of the weight of this great fish ; but it must have 

 been vast, for never, before or since that time, did I ever hear 

 Sandy say so much about anything. 



In 1897 the late Lord Inverurie addressed an enquiry 

 through the Fishing Gazette into the authentic records of large 

 pike taken within recent times in the British Islands. Mr. 

 Alfred Jardine, a well-known authority upon pike-fishing, 

 furnished the following list, of which he considered the details 

 " beyond dispute." It will be noticed that, although more 

 large pike are reported from Ireland than from Great Britain, 

 only five Irish captures are included in Mr. Jardine's catalogue, 

 owing to the difficulty of verifying the details. None are 



