26 DAYS AMONG THE PIKE AND PERCH 



the open water in front, where they were more likely to 

 see our baits. 



Some odd times pike will congregate in a baited swim, 

 and the angler wonders what made his barbel go so sud- 

 denly off the feed. A notable case in point comes into my 

 mind at the moment. I had sent a celebrated amateur 

 angler four thousand lobworms a week for three or four 

 weeks to bait up a big eddying swim at Clifden Hampden 

 on the Thames. After putting in eight thousand in 

 eight or ten days, he had capital sport every evening after- 

 wards for a week or more, when they suddenly went off 

 the feed, and three subsequent evenings failed to produce 

 a single fish. He wrote to me, and by return of post I 

 suggested pike in the swim. Live bait were procured, and 

 a couple of paternosters carefully worked all over the place, 

 with the result that nearly thirty pike, from three pounds 

 to seventeen, were captured. 



Once or twice during my own fishing days on the Trent 

 I have known the pike to take possession of the Corporation 

 barbel swim at Winthorp, and careful measures had to 

 be adopted to rid that place of their presence. 



It is a much easier matter to find the haunts of pike in 

 a good lake than it is in a river ; although I am aware that 

 in certain lakes most of the pike are in a very small space, 

 more than three-fourths of the water being practically 

 tenantless. The Dorsetshire Stour is a capital pike river, 

 and lends itself to spinning for these fish. I once explored 

 some miles of that river, and found holes and corners inter- 

 spersed with long shallow runs and flags and reeds and 

 small islands very much in evidence everywhere, all 

 these shallows being capital spinning water during the 

 autumn months. 



The Avon and the Frome in Somerset, Wiltshire, and 

 Hampshire, are in my opinion among the very best pike 

 haunts in the kingdom ; and most of the big specimen jack 

 exhibited in the London Angling Clubs come from that 

 locality. 



