20 DAYS AMONG THE PIKE AND PERCH 



was in the early days of my angling career, on rivers where 

 a dozen good pike in a day's spinning was not counted as an 

 extra good catch, but simply a fairly good one. Or go 

 back a little further still ; but even this is in the lifetime 

 of an old friend who has lately plummed his last swim. 

 The last time I saw him he told me that he could remember 

 the time when flags and rushes grew in abundance all 

 along the brink of the Trent, and had seen the disturbed 

 jack bolt out of the reeds, not here and there an odd one, 

 but every few steps he took. And when employed as 

 keeper by the late Dr. Waterworth and Mr. Cafferata, he 

 attended those celebrated anglers ; and they thought no- 

 thing of a bag of pike numbering thirty fish, many of them 

 from eight to fifteen pounds apiece. 



Tom Beck, an old netter who lived next door to me 

 during my residence on the Trent, has given me, chapter 

 and verse from his old notebook, records of marvellous 

 takes of pike from a dozen well-known spots on that 

 river. A famous corner of his, and a very convenient spot 

 to sweep his net round, was the flag-strewn bend just below 

 Meering Ferry, a hundredweight of good pike often resulting 

 from a single haul. 



I can also remember when the late Mr. Sam Hibbert 

 rented the Staythorpe fishery on the Middle Trent, he got 

 heavy bags and good fish nearly every time he cared to go. 

 Then look at those days of long ago when we roamed the 

 canals, fen drains, and rivers of Lincolnshire, how the jack 

 would fly at our old wobbling spoon, or an imperfectly 

 mounted and spun roach. 



During the fifteen or sixteen years that I roamed the 

 Trent I found many places that jack, and good ones some- 

 times, could be got from. Somehow or other, in spinning 

 over the corners, eddies, slacks, weir pools, and streams of 

 that river, no matter what I used, nor how many hours 

 during the day I put in, I never got a heavy bag, six fish 

 being the most during one day. 



Taking it all round, the eight years I spent on the Great 



