OTHEE PISH AND GAME 283 



take freely small live fish, pieces :0f ouitouohe, and 

 small and medium -sized spoons. In rapids, in the 

 spring of the year, they frequently take the angler's 

 trout flies, and, though they seldom break water when 

 hooked, they are stubborn fighters, and on light tackle 

 afford capital sport. They are often taken in Cana- 

 dian waters up to six and eight pounds in weight. In 

 some parts of the United States, the pickerel is per- 

 sistently called "salmon"; but there is nothing much 

 more remarkable in this than the habit in the South 

 of applying the name " trout " to black bass, or the 

 more universal misnomer of pickerel applied to the 

 pike {Exos luoius). 



THE PIKE 



Marvellous are the stories that are told of the size 

 and ferocity of the pike kind, that go about like roam- 

 ing water-wolves, seeking whom they may devour, in 

 the depths of Lake St. John and its .tributary streams, 

 as well as in the large lakes away towards and beyond 

 the Height of Land. Many of these far exceed in 

 weight the generally accepted limit of size of the ordi- 

 nary Esox lucius, and I have frequently been told, in 

 consequence, that I was wrong in my identification 

 and nomenclature of the species, and that these long 

 and wide-jawed monsters of twenty, thirty, and even 

 forty pounds in weight were not the ordinary pike 

 at all — the pickerel of many American anglers, but 

 maskinonge, or Esox nobilior, the Lucius masqui- 

 nongy of Dr. James A. Henshall. It is a simple mat- 

 ter, of course, to satisfy one's self by observing the 

 scaling of the cheeks and gill-covers, and the number 



