A PIKE STORY. 31 



to be taken, but it will be with no ordinary bait. 

 Roach, bleak, dace, and minnow he knows far 

 better than we do ; we must give him something 

 else. You say you have ten weeks from the 

 time you begin ; now don't you commence as all 

 these muffs have at once, but wait till a little 

 rain comes. I know the rush pool well ; as I 

 tell you, wait for a little rain, arid then fish when 

 the water is slightly coloured. He is short of 

 food," he soliloquised, " he must be there, for it 

 is not a little that will feed or fill him. The eels 

 will begin to run then, and he likes them very 

 well, 111 be bound, for want of better, but we 

 will tempt him with something nicer. 



"Now, my boy," he continued, "I tried a 

 dodge the other day, and what do you think" 

 (slapping me on the back), " I say, what do you 

 think of a gold fish, not an artificial one, but a 

 real one, one out of six I shall take down to the 

 rush pool with me, carefully put away in a bait- 

 kettle, all alive ? If that will not tickle his fancy, 

 you are done, and must pay the money ; but 

 if you have any luck, you will hook him. Fish 

 about a dozen or twenty yards where the stream 

 comes in, and you will have him, as sure as a gun. 



