70 DAYS AMONG THE PIKE AND PERCH 



Instead of considering this matter from a common-sense 

 point of view, and taking communion with himself, reason- 

 ing the matter fairly and squarely, and looking honestly at 

 all the favourable circumstances, he is so elated at his 

 success that he promptly sits down and writes a note to one 

 of the sporting papers, cracking up the wonderful merits of 

 Mr. So-and-so's artificial bait. And then the merry game 

 goes on ; Mr. So-and-so quotes that in advertisements in 

 other papers, and so a score or two of other anglers are 

 innocently deceived. That lucky angler might use the 

 same bait again a score of times and never find the same 

 favourable conditions, and never meet with like success 

 on any subsequent visit. This sort of thing is not fair to 

 the anxious novice. 



One lucky afternoon, that will be engraven on my 

 memory for years, I got forty- three pounds of jack on a 

 spoon bait, from a half-mile stretch of the Great Ouse ; 

 but the wind and water and everything else were extremely 

 favourable. Another day the " Clipper " accounted for 

 nine fish ; but I am not likely to strongly recommend those 

 two baits because they happened to be lucky on one or two 

 special occasions. 



I am very partial to a spoon bait ; I have one in my 

 possession that has been in at the death of numbers of fine 

 jack. This is one of the oldest forms of artificials, and in 

 my opinion still equal to any new-fangled invention. Pike 

 have been taken on spoons in every water where these fish 

 are found ; I have a record in my notebook of forty pike 

 being killed with spoon baits in a single season. 



This is a question that cannot be settled off-hand, because 

 some of my pike-spinning experiences have been curious, 

 and productive of strangely divergent results. One day 

 the jack in a certain stretch would take a bait of one par- 

 ticular shape and colour, utterly ignoring anything else; 

 while another day the rejected one of the previous occasion 

 would be the killer, and the lucky one left alone. So look- 

 ing at it by the eye of a long practical experience, I find it 



