186 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



marked, spread out on a tray, and heard the story from the 

 ■sportsman's own lips — the gentleman took six fish, the largest 

 being i3^1b., lolb., and gib. — total 4olb. 



There is a well-known lake neat Luton where it is not un- 

 usual for two rods to take a couple of hundredweight of 

 pike averaging seven pounds in a day. In an angling club 

 room in Shoreditch there is preserved the produce of one 

 gentleman's rod in a single day. On reaching a nobleman's 

 park in Kent he found the lake he was privileged to fish 

 frozen, with the exception of one small sheltered corner, and 

 more for the sake of not plodding back through the snow 

 without a trial than from any expectation of sport he here 

 threw in a live bait. Before he left the lake he had taken 

 fish of the following weights : — 281b., i81b. 140Z., gib. soz., 

 81b. 90Z., and 51b. 50Z. ; and five splendid fish they are 

 even in their stuffed state. 



Pike may be caught in summer time with a gigantic and 

 :gaudy fly worked like a salmon fly about two inches below 

 the surface. With a pliable spinning rod, and a water in 

 wliich aquatic vegetation flourishes, some business-like exe- 

 cution may be wrought in August or, if hot, in September, by 

 this plan. Fishing for pike with frog has gone out of fashion 

 I fancy of late years, but it is a killing process, rightly 

 managed. 



A small perch with its dorsal fin cut off makes a good and 

 tough spinning bait. Pike in their natural condition of life 

 .give the perch as wide a berth as possible. I once took a half 

 ■digested perch, nevertheless, out of a pike's stomach ; 

 mentioning which circumstance to an old fisherman he de- 

 scribed to me how once he had watched a pike pursue a 

 perch, which thrust its head into the bank, put up its bristles, 



