io6 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



original and fascinating of any of the writer's longer poems. 

 But this is digressing. 



To return to my text, the Where of pike-spinning. I have 

 said that the spots to select are, as a rule, rather where fish can 

 be caught, than in' ' unfishable ' waters where they are known or 

 supposed to be more numerous or larger. The water below 

 my shallow on the Avon furnishes a very good example of this. 

 Some way lower down it becomes a narrower and much deeper 

 stream, and it is here that Sir Edward Hulse's keepers and 

 water-bailiffs locate their best fish and the most of them. 

 Whether they are there or not I cannot say, though the water, 

 I admit, looks exceedingly well calculated to hold heavy fish, 

 but this I can say, that my attempts to fish it with the spinning 

 bait have never been really successful — I mean in the way of 

 making a good bag. 



There is another reach of the Avon lower down called 

 Sandy Balls, overhung by the romantic beech and fir-covered 

 cliffs of the New Forest, which local superstition peoples with 

 pike of altogether pre-historic dimensions, yet I have never 

 succeeded, that I c^n remember, in catching a pike out qf this 

 celebrated ' hold,' nor have I ever seen anybody else do so. 

 In the ' drawns ' and shallow rushes of water, on the contrary, 

 by which the mazy stream is tapped in order to water the sur- 

 rounding meadows, I have had excellent sport, repeatedly 

 killing pike 6f nine or ten pounds weight, out' of a stream 

 where it seemed almost too small to throw the spinning bait. 



Below one of these rushes or sluice-gates a curious incident 

 happened to: rny wife, in the presence of myself and the late 

 Lord Anglesey's keeper. I thought the double capture suf- 

 ficiently remarkable to be sent to the Field. 'When pike- 

 fishing to-day with my wife in Lord Anglesey's water on the 

 Avon, a very singular circumstance happened. Mrs. Pennell, 

 when spinning above the Flax Mills, caught two pike at the 

 same time. The first fish was hooked in the usual way, and 

 about a foot and a half above the flight of hooks a second 

 fish was foiind, twisted up in the gut trace, the line, having 



