130 MAY 



XLIV 



This is a favourable time for noosing basking pike 

 Pike and out ^ ^ e backwaters o f our trout- 

 Black Bass stream, and the miller is a great adept 

 at this game. It is really a very delicate art, espe- 

 cially when the fish are small. Eighteen baby 

 jack taken with fine wire one morning near 

 Itchen Abbas weighed no more than nineteen 

 ounces. I have never seen a trout caught by 

 this means, and I believe it to be hardly possible 

 to do so. 



It has never been decided, I believe, whether the 

 too common pike is an indigenous fish in British 

 waters, or whether it has been introduced artificially. 

 Probably it is a native, but its unwelcome presence 

 in many lakes and streams is certainly owing to its 

 cultivation in monkish times. Its fecundity and 

 rapid growth made the pike valuable in providing 

 a steady supply of fish for Fridays and other fasts ; 

 but, all assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, it 

 affords unpalatable, or at best, insipid food. Colonel 

 Thornton, whose amusing Sporting Tour formed the 

 subject of one of Sir Walter (or as he then was 

 Mr. Walter) Scott's earliest and most scathing con- 



