THE COMPLETE ANGLER, 145 



bait, lie makes scarcely any stay with it at his hold, but goes off with it 

 again, you should not strike until he has rested a second time, allowing 

 him still about five minutes ; but if he should run off a third time before 

 the five minutes are expired, draw a tight line, and strike him instantly." 



There is another method of pike-fishing, called " snap" fishing. You 

 tie two large hooks, back to back, with their barbs pointing different 

 ways. Near the top of their shanks you tie a small hook, which is to be 

 inserted by the root of the dorsal fin of the live bait, and the two large 

 hooks are to lie down by the side of the bait, their bends not extending 

 below the belly of the dace or roach you fish with, but just even with it. 

 When you have a run, allow no time for pouching, but strike imme- 

 diately. There is another hook, called the " spring-snap," shaped like 

 the latter, but the backs of the hooks are held together by means of a 

 spring, which gives when a fish is struck, and then both hooks spring 

 suddenly and strongly out, and fix themselves inside the mouth of the 

 pike. The spring-snap is generally used with a dead bait, a roach being 

 the best one for the purpose. The snap-hooks are put in requisition in 

 the summer and early autumn months, when pike, finding plenty of fish 

 food in the rivers, are not very pressing in pursuit of the angler's lures. If 

 pike seize them then, they often reject them without pouching, so 

 that it is necessary to strike immediately. Hence the invention ot 

 snap-hooks. 



Trolling with the gorge-hook, or spinning for pike, are the two most 

 artistical ways of angling for him. I have explained how spinning is to 

 be practised in my remarks at the end of Chapter V., on trout-fishing. 

 Spinning for trout, pike, perch, and salmon is done in precisely the same 

 way. The spinning-flight of hooks for pike must be double the size of 

 that used for the capture of trout. Trolling is practised with the gorge- 

 hook, for a representation of which see the end of this chapter. The 

 gorge-hook, or hooks, are fashioned thus : Take two eel-hooks, and whip 

 them back to back, with their points outside : to their shanks attach a 

 length of twisted wire, looped at the end. From three to four inches of 

 wire will be sufficient, and over it for about two inches, beginning at the 

 inside of the bends of the hooks, fix some lead, rounded and thick near 

 the hook-bend, and tapering off gradually down the wire, until it becomes 

 no thicker than it. There should not be more lead than is necessary to 

 sink the bait. To the looped end of the wire a link of gimp a foot long 

 should be attached, the end of which is to be placed in the eye of a bait- 

 ing-needle, whose point is to be passed in at the mouth of the bait-fish, 

 and out at the middle of the tail. Draw the link to, and the wire and 

 lead on it will pass into the fish-bait, until their progress is arrested by 

 the bends of the hooks stopped at the angles of the mouth of the bait. 

 The barbs of the hooks must point upwards, never downwards. Your 

 link, with its baited gorge-hook, is to be looped on to a gimp trace of 

 about a yard in length, with two swivels on it, eighteen inches apart, 

 and the trace is to be looped on your prepared platted silk winch-line . 

 The trolling-rod should be from ten to twelve feet in length, with a few 

 very large rings upon it large enough to admit easily the top of the 

 forefinger, The rod should be very stout, and slightly elastic; its butt 



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