" BAITS AND BAIT-CATCHING. 59 



A mere enumeration of the endless varieties of artificial 

 pike-baits brought out by tackle-makers during the last ten or 

 twenty years, would demand a chapter to itself. Besides the 

 better known, or, so to speak, 'more generally recognised' 

 varieties, such as phantom minnows, archimedian baits, &c., 

 there are whole tribes of ' water-witches,' ' kill-devils,' ' Beelze- 

 bubs,' and the like. Their name is legion ; and so far the last 

 two patronymics, at least, seem not to be altogether inappro- 

 priate. Indeed the names of artificial baits are very commonly 

 their sole recommendation ; their merits exist only in the 

 imagination of their inventors or the puffing placards of cheap 

 tackle-vendors. Indeed, like the heroes of the celestial em- 

 pire, whose splendid qualities, inscribed on their backs, can- 

 not be perceived until they run away, the best points of 

 artificial baits are really discovered by their purchasers only 

 when they have seen 'the backs of them.' 



So far as my experience goes, artificial baits — and I have 

 tried a good many of them —are altogether inferior to natural 

 baits for pike fishing. It is only when the latter are exhausted, 

 or cannot be obtained, that the former should be resorted to. 



In addition, however, to the difficulty of the enumeration, 

 before alluded to, there is, as I observed in the ' Book of the 

 Pike,' a still further reason for relegating the subject of arti- 

 ficial baits and their selection to the appreciation of individual 

 anglers — namely, that the ' fashions ' appear to be perpetually 

 changing. The fashions, I mean, not amongst the catchers, 

 but amongst the caught. Fish tastes in such matters last appa- 

 rently about as long as a lady's for her last new bonnet. The 

 bait found most killing on some particular water or river one 

 year may probably be superseded by a different one the next, 

 and unless a new edition of this book were called for every six 

 months — a luxury that even the most sanguine author can 

 hardly calculate upon — the information which it might give of 

 these ephemerm would be constantly becoming obsolete. The 

 * spoon-bait,' for example, created quite a furore when it first 

 came out, but it seems of late years to have lost its attractive- 



