PIKE AND PIKE FISHING 325 



In Broadland the owners of private waters are not very 

 obliging in granting permission to pike fishers to invade their 

 waters until after the wildfowl shooting is ended, but there 

 is such a vast expanse of public water where the sport may 

 be indulged in, that the would-be angler need not concern 

 himself on this account. He need only remember the fish 

 are there, ready and waiting to be caught, whilst 

 auspicious weather, coupled with a fair amount of skill, will 

 ensure heavy baskets. 



The ways and means of taking pike are legion, and it is 

 to be regretted that as many are taken in the waters of 

 Broadland by poaching devices as are caught legitimately on 

 rod and line. We plead guilty to the soft impeachment, not 

 once, nor twice, but repeatedly ; our only excuse is that we 

 have been fishing on private waters and have been ex- 

 asperated beyond measure by the apparent shyness of the 

 quarry and we have felt compelled to quench by some means 

 or other an insatiable thirst for blood. 



In slightly commenting upon a few of these poaching 

 devices, liggers or trimmers should be first mentioned. When 

 these machines were in common vogue, twenty -five or fifty 

 years ago, pieces of brightly-painted wood were used which 

 could be easily seen and retaken, but as they grew into 

 disrepute and became illegal, less prominent and conspicuous 

 floats were adopted, a bundle of rushes being found to 

 answer equally as well, if not better. Again there are the 

 night-lines laid from a reed bed, a bank, or an island. Or 

 the crotched stick-trimmer is brought into play. It is as 

 ingenious as it is deadly, and is fashioned as follows : 



The poacher cuts from a hazel or elm bough a small crotch 

 similar to those used by boys for catapults ; holding his line 

 between the thumb and first finger, he passes it round the 

 back of his two first fingers, between the second and third, 

 round the front of third and fourth, through the second and 

 third, round the front of the first and second, and so on till he 

 has the requisite length of running line neatly folded in a skein, 

 which is then placed in the crotch. One end of the line is 



