76 A BOOK ON ANGLING 



mechanical contrivances have been put into use, but I have 

 seen none yet worth adopting.* 



A plain winch is best with not too heavy a check, so as to 

 run the line off easily if the fish requires it. A winch that 

 will hold sixty or seventy yards of medium sized dressed 

 eight-plait line is desirable, and it should be pretty stout in 

 the frame, as it will have to stand wear and tear and rough 

 usage in all sorts of weathers. For this reason the metal 

 reels will be found preferable to the wooden ones. 



The last, and perhaps most important, point to be con- 

 sidered is the flight of hooks on which the bait is to be fixed ; 

 and about this there is a great variety of opinions, some 

 anglers preferring large hooks and some small hooks, some 

 many hooks and some few, some triangles brazed or unbrazed, 

 some doubles and some singles ; in fact, almost every possible 

 combination of hooks and gut or gimp has been tried. The 

 tackle in most general use is the old-fashioned three triangles 

 with a sliding lip-hook (see Plate IV, Fig. i, p. 76). Some use 

 four triangles and a lip-hook, some have a double set of hooks 

 or a triangle or two on either side of the bait ; but I have 

 never found that the multiplying of hooks beyond a certain 

 point increases the certainty of capture rather, indeed, the 

 reverse, for the hooks are apt to entangle and one interferes 

 with the action of the other. I have seen the hooks which 

 have been rejected by a pike on several occasions come up 

 all hooked and tangled together, almost in a ball, and each 

 hook had evidently been instrumental in dragging the other 

 from its hold. How much more useful would have been one 

 single fair-sized hook well stuck in. Added to this, anglers 

 should remember that it is far more difficult to drive four or 

 five hooks simultaneously into the jaw of a jack than it is 

 to drive one. Let the angler take a single hook, place the 

 point against any substance and give it a pull so as to embed 

 the barb, and then let him take an ordinary spinning flight 

 and fix the points of two hooks in each triangle on the same 

 substance and take a pull at the flight, and I do not think I 

 am far out in my calculation when I say that it requires five 

 times the force to bury the barbs of the many that would be 

 required for the single hook, and of course the more the 

 number of hooks is increased the less chance there is of the 

 barbs being buried, and consequently the greater chance 

 there is of the pike's getting off the tackle. The angler may 



* Experienced pike fishers speak well of agate or porcelain eyes. ED, 



