NOTE los 



stiff. Do not wash them before you bait, because you 

 are very likely to rub off some scales in the process. 

 As soon as the hook is thrown into the water, off goes 

 the bran, and the fish sparkles and glitters with his 

 skin unblemished. 



Some people spin the minnow for pike. This is but 

 a sorry business ; but those who are disposed to practise 

 it will find it fully described under the instructions 

 for catching trout. In this mode, as with the snap, 

 the casts are made much in the same manner as in 

 trolling. 



The pike is sometimes shot by those who have a fancy 

 for such sport. A light charge is put into the gun ; and 

 all the art displayed in the performance consists in 

 making due allowance for the refraction of the water, 

 according to the depth and distance of the fish. It 

 often happens that the fish is very much mutilated by 

 this process. 



September and October are fine months for pike- 

 fishihg; but if the angler can stand the weather, the 

 winter months are decidedly the best for large fish. 

 Thorough pike-fishers always insist that they catch the 

 finest fish on sharp, frosty days, when there is a thin 

 film of ice spread over the surface of the water; and 

 we have ourselves taken good fish, after having had to 

 break ice an inch thick to get our bait into the water. 



Note to Chaptek V 



Thia is an entertaining chapter, and it embodies sundry 

 venerable legends respecting the voracity and size of pike ; but 

 this is done with considerable discrimination, and it will be 

 observed that Blakey does not fall into the common error of 

 assuming that the pike is to be taken anywhere and anyhow. 

 There are times, of course, when this fresh-water shark is just as 

 capricious and difficult to tempt as the shyest of fish, and the 

 young angler will do well to approach the pike, not as if he were 

 eager to rush headlong at every clumsy lure that is hurled at his 

 head, but as if he were tlie fish which Blakey says he always 

 foupd him, viz, a discerning fellow, difficult to catch in preserves 



