82 DAYS AMONG THE PIKE AND PERCH 



The pike of the Great Ouse were splendid, thick-set fish ; 

 I cannot call to mind any water that I fished in where the 

 fish would equal, let alone beat them. That record year 

 I speak about, I find that my best thirty fish, taken on 

 spinning baits, weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds, 

 that is an average of five and a half pounds per fish ; and 

 my notebook says that I was out on twenty-five different 

 days. One of those days, and where I went, I will try to 

 describe in a short chapter of a very few pages. 



When you reach the railway station at St. Neots, it is 

 a pretty long walk to the paper mill at Little Paxton ; but 

 come along ; a three miles' walk all through the little 

 town and across the common will land us there all right. 

 Before crossing the bridge to the further side of the river 

 I always had a peep into the pool below, and if the water 

 was clear and the sun shining some giant chub could be 

 seen swimming near the surface ; some of those chub 

 must have weighed seven pounds apiece. After crossing 

 the bridge turn down stream to the right hand, and march 

 along to the first meadow ; there is an old post about 

 eighteen inches high there, with a flat top ; this was a wel- 

 come resting-place after the walk from the station. Here 

 we put our tackle together my ten-foot spinning rod, the 

 four-inch reel, and the undressed line described in previous 

 chapters, with the salmon gut trace and my flight, also 

 described in Chapter VIII. I had a dozen or more very 

 fine and bright sprats in my bag, in addition to the usual 

 artificials I carried. The landing net is put together, and 

 all things are ready. 



The bag or haversack that I carried for years down there 

 had been made originally for a parcels postman ; but it 

 was awkwardly deep for him, so I purchased it, and it 

 turned out one of the best investments I ever made. It 

 was amazing what it would carry ; more than twenty 

 inches deep and about the same width, with a broad bottom, 

 a seven-pound jack would go head first down it, and not 

 much of his tail showing above the top. I put a stout par- 



