HOW AND WHERE TO SPIN. I2t 



The usual mariner in which a pike seizes the bait is cross- 

 wise, and in this position it is probable that the points of 

 several hooks will be pressed upon by some part of the mouth, 

 whilst the bait also to which they are attached is held by his 

 sharp teeth and powerful jaws. The whole of this resistance 

 niust be overcotne, and that sharply and at a single stroke, 

 before a single hook can be expected to penetrate. Nor does 

 the action of the fish himself, as in the case of salmon-fishing 

 with the fly, tend to drive the hooks home. The salmon, as 

 soon as he has taken the fly, turns head downwards, and dis- 

 covering probably, almost instantaneously, the deception that 

 has ^eep practised upon him, instead of holding on to, naturally 

 lets go of the fly in his mouth, the result of the two opposite 

 simultaneous evolutions heing, with considerable probabiUty, to 

 strike the hook firmly in. In the case of the pike all this is 

 reversed. The pike does not, a? a rule, immediately turn in 

 the opposite direction, nor has he the slightest inclination, at 

 any rate for some few brief moments, to eject the bait which is 

 not a, sham but a reality. 



What he does do is generally to sail about quietly with the 

 bait in his mouth, sometimes holding on to it, and even appa- 

 rently tugging at it more or less vigorously until brought up 

 close to the side of the boat, leading the inexperienced spinner 

 to imagine that he has been hooked, whilst, in point of fact, 

 for the whole time he has only been 'holding on.' When 

 frightened, or, perhaps, when realising that there is something 

 abnormal about the bait he has just seized, he will — I was 

 about to say, drop it, but that he cannot do owing to the nature 

 of his jaws and his teeth — he will free his mouth from it by a 

 vigorous shake, somewhat after the action with which a terrier 

 shakes a rat. 



It is at this moment that the best chance lies of the pike 

 hooking himself, but it is, at the best, evidently a very uncertain 

 pne, and I should advise the troUer not only to strike as soon 

 as he runs a fish, but to continue striking until the fish com- 

 mences a sort of tearing struggle, , which is a very different 



