i8o PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



is felt, and after disengaging the hook from the swivel to draw 

 the hooks and baits out head foremost through the orifice. 



Another plan recommended by Mr. Stoddart is, first, to 

 open the gill cover and cutting through the gills themselves 

 allow them to bleed freely. This done draw the gorge-hook 

 upwards tightly and when it is seen cut it out with a knife. 

 This is a beastly business however. It makes the troller have 

 rather the appearance, and, indeed, some of the feelings (or 

 what should be feelings) of a butcher ; besides, the appearance 

 of the fish is spoilt. 



In qualifying my opinion, as I have done above, as to the 

 amount of pain or suffering actually endured by a pike, and 

 probably by any other fish from the presence of a pair of 

 gorge-hooks embedded, say, in his gullet or entrails, I had before 

 my mind numerous circumstances which have occurred within 

 my own knowledge, and that of others who have left their ex- 

 periences on record, which seem to indicate that there is some- 

 thing radically different in the very nature of ' fish pain ' as com- 

 pared with that which it might be imagined would be suffered 

 by a warm-blooded animal under similar circumstances. With 

 this subject, however, I have dealt at large in a separate essa/ 

 already referred to. 



When considering the best plan of extracting a gorge-hook 

 from the entrails of a pike I have often wondered whether, if 

 the fish were allowed to retain the bait for, say, half an hour, 

 any portion of it would be found still attaching to the gorge- 

 hook ? His digestion has been aptly compared to the combined 

 effects of water and fire,' and after a few hours, According to 

 Mr. Jesse, not even a bone of the swallowed prey can be dis- 

 covered in his stomach. The same thing has been stated of the 

 salmon. 



Dr, Fleming even gives the salmon the pas in the matter of 

 eating over the pike, but he thinks that the former ' feeds with 

 a prettier mouth, silently and unobserved, and does not gobble 

 with arid eyes and crunching jaws like the pike, so that nobody 



' Frazer's History of the Salmon. 



