PIKE AND PICKEREL. 



"By blue lake marge, upon whose breast 

 The water-lilies love to rest, 

 Lurking beneath those leaves of green 

 The fierce pike seeks his covert screen, 

 And thence with sudden plunge and leap, 

 Swift as a shaft through air may sweep. 

 He seizes, rends, and bears away 

 To hidden lair his struggling prey." 



Pickerel-fishing is a sort of intermediate branch in the art of aiig-l'iu 

 It is. a degree higher than perch or rock-bass fishing, and several dcgreetp.^^ 

 lower than trout and salmon fishing, in the estimation of skilled de\^6t 

 of rod and line. The pike and pickerel, however, furnish sport foi" me 

 multitudes of fishermen remote from the streams and lakes affording black 

 bass, brook trout or salmon -fishing. 



The habitat of these closely allied species of the pike family c^iverji 

 perhaps a wider geographical range than any other variety of fish worthy 

 of classification under the head of American game fishes. They arc fmi 

 in most of the inland lakes and rivers, of the Eastern as well as the \\^es;t- 

 ern states, and nearly every man or boy familiar with any kind of fiie^h 

 water fishing wall recognize one or both of the species readily, although 

 the confusion of fish lore is such that their identity is often as badly mixed 

 as that of the two Dromios. To make "confusion worse confounded," the 

 pike-perch is in many localities popularly supposed to be the true pike, and 

 the genuine pike passes for pickerel. No one need err in identifying 

 either of two last-named — i. e., pike and pickerel — -if the simple test 

 named in the article on the mascalonge be borne in mind. 



It may not be generally known that pickerel will occasionally rise to 

 the fly — though fly-fishing for this species would be a very uncertain and 

 unsatisfactory sport. It is only an incidental by-play when fly-fishing for 

 black bass, and under such circumstances will be found a novelty, interest- 

 ing by way of variety. The pike, proper, will seldom, if ever, rise to the 

 fly, but is a bold biter and will take the minnow, frog, trolling spoon, or 

 other bait, in a ravenous manner, and furnish exciting play. The pike 

 sometimes attains a weight of eighteen or twenty pounds, and in a few 

 instances fish of this species have been taken weighing twenty-five 

 pounds. 



Professor Jordan describes the members of the pickerel family, five in 

 number, thus : "Common Eastern pickerel (green pike); snout much 



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