CHAPTER V 



THE PIKES AND THEIR COUSINS 



' Oiir plenteous streams a varied race supply : 

 The bright-eyed perch, with fins of Tjrrian dye ; 

 The silver eel, in shining volumes roU'd ; 

 The yeUow carp, in scales bedropt with gold ; 

 Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains. 

 And pikes, the tyrants of the watery plains.' 



MY earliest interest ia the Pikes came, I tMnk, from an 

 English friend, who told me that he had seen a large pike 

 leap from the water and knock a young bird from an overhanging 

 limb, and then complacently devour it. I have also read in 

 certain veracious prints that a pike, or a big pickerel, seized a 

 certain caK by the tail and slowly but surely dragged it into 

 deep water ; but it did not state that the fifty-pound pickerel 

 swallowed the one-hundred and fifty pound calf, though I am pre- 

 pared for almost anything, having seen a deep-sea fish that had 

 swallowed a victim a third larger than itself. And who has not 

 observed the ' gentle reader ' swallow fish stories of huge and 

 plethoric stature ? Be all this as it may, the pite or pickerel, has 

 an open countenance and a mouth of only too generous pro- 

 portions, so anything can be expected from it. 



Williamson, who wrote in 1750 A Pocket Compcmion for 

 Gentleman Fishers, hsid a high opinion of the jack or pike. To 

 illustrate its savage nature, he tells a story of one that dashed at 

 a drinking mule, seized its Ups, and doubtless did its best to drag 

 it in ; but the mule backed away and landed the pike. The author 

 refers to this as a new way of angUng, and states that the owner 

 of the mule became ' master of the Pike.' This author credits 

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