JACK CAUGHT WITH A WITHY NOOSE. 189 



easily done ; and some prefer it to wire because it looks 

 more natural in the water and does not alarm the fish, 

 while, should the keeper be about, it is easily cut up in 

 several pieces and thrown away. I have heard of rabbits, 

 and even hares, being caught with a noose of this kind of 

 withy, which is as * tough as wire ;' and yet it seems hardly 

 possible, as it is so much thicker and would be seen. 

 Still, both hares and rabbits, when playing and scampering 

 about at night, are sometimes curiously heedless, and 

 foolish enough to run their necks into anything. 



With such a rude implement as this some fish-poachers 

 will speedily land a good basket of pike. During the 

 spawning season, as was observed previously, jack go in 

 pairs, and now and then in trios, and of this the poacher 

 avails himself to take more than one at a haul. The fish 

 lie so close together — side by side just at that time — that 

 it is quite practicable, with care and judgment, to slip a 

 wire over two at once. When near the bank two may 

 even be captured with a good withy noose : with a wire a 

 clever hand will make a certainty of it. The keeper says 

 that on one occasion he watched a man operating just 

 without his jurisdiction, who actually succeeded in wiring 

 three jacks at once and safely landed them on the grass. 

 They were small fish, about a pound to a pound and a 

 half each, and the man was but a few minutes in accom- 

 plishing the feat. It sometimes happens that after a heavy 

 flood, when the brook has been thick with suspended mud 



