AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
177 
exhausted, attempt to lift him out with the rod and line 
only; for the moment he quits the water, he will open his 
mouth, and from his own,w T eight, tear the hook from his 
stomach; and the fish will be lost to the angler, although 
it must inevitably perish. 
In trolling, the bait should never be thrown too far: in 
small rivers the opposite bank may be fished with ease, 
and the violence of its fall upon the water, in extensive 
throws, soon spoils the bait, by rubbing off its scales, and 
alarms the Pike, instead of enticing him. 
The bead hook is used by putting the lead into the 
mouth of the live bait and sewing it up; the fish will live 
some time, and, notwithstanding the lead, will swim with 
the support he receives from the line, with nearly the 
same ease as if at liberty: this is the most successful way 
of tempting the Pike. 
Pike are to be allured by a large bait, but a small one is 
more certain to take them: never suffer weeds to hang 
upon the hook or bait when recast into the water, and 
which cannot touch the surface too softly. Always prefer 
a rough wind, and when the stream is clear for trolling: 
Pike never bite in white water after rain, &c. If a Pike 
goes slowly up the stream after taking the bait, it is said 
to be a signal of a good fish. 
The next Pike in size to the foregoing, taken by the 
troll, was in December, 1792, by Mr. Bint, in the pool 
at Pacldnton, (the Earl of Aylcsford’s,) being from eye to 
fork two feet eleven, full length three feet ten and a half; 
circumference one foot ten inches, and weighed thirty- 
four pounds and three-quarters. 
In 1S04 a Pike was taken out of the same water, with 
a carp, that weighed ten pounds, stuck in his throat, and 
which had choked him. The Pike when empty was thirty 
pounds weight. 
Mr. Wilson caught a Pike by trolling in the Driffield 
Canal, near Brigham, which weighed twenty-eight pounds, 
measured two feet round the belly, and three feet five 
inches in length; and what was singular, five pounds of 
solid fat were taken out of his inside. 
Sir Cecil Wray’s Pike, caught in June, 1799, at the 
draining off the water from the lake at his seat at Sum- 
mer Castle, in Lincolnshire, weighed forty-seven pounds 
gross, thirty-six pounds, after being cleaned, of eatable 
meat; was forty-eight and a half inches long, and two feet 
two inches in circumference: this fish must have sot into 
the lake when very small, and had acquired this enor- 
mous size in twenty-two years; for at that time the lake 
was laid dry. Sir Cecil computes that he consumed three 
fish per diem, progressively larger as his own size in- 
creased, and that he at least destroyed 24,000; all of which, 
in the latter years of his growth, must have been valuable 
Y v 
fish; so that the cost of his support exceeded, by some 
hundred times, his own value. A river Pike grows fast 
until he arrives at twenty-four inches; he then ceases to 
extend so rapidly in length; (for, in good water, with 
plenty of feed, a Pike spawned in March, will, by the 
March following, be grown from sixteen to eighteen inches,) 
and proportionably thickens; afterwards he will be much 
longer arriving at his full bigness, (which is about forty- 
six inches) from the length of thirty, than he was in ac- 
quiring the first thirty inches. 
In May, 1706, Mr. Bishop of Godstow, between Weir 
and Wytham Brook, landed the largest Pike ever remem- 
bered to be taken in the Isis; it was four feet two inches 
long, two feet ten in girth, and, after being disgorged of 
a barbel nearly six, and a chub upwards of three pounds, 
weighed thirty-one pounds and a half. 
In June, 1796, a male Pike was caught in Exton Park 
pond, (Lord Gainsborough’s,) the length forty-two and a 
half from eye to fork, and from nose to tail forty-nine 
inches; the girth twenty-eight inches, and weighed thirty- 
seven pounds and a quarter. Neither this, nor the 
fish taken in the Isis, was so well grown as Sir Cecil 
Wi-ay’s. 
In 1797, a Pike, weighing near forty pounds, and mea- 
suring in length three feet six, and in girth two feet, was 
caught in a pond at Totteridge, in Hertfordshire; a tench 
of four pounds, and four pounds and a half of solid fat, were 
taken from his inside. 
In Munden Hall Fleet, a Pike was found that had been 
killed by a very long frost; in its putrid state it weighed 
forty-two pounds, but had wasted considerably; was three 
feet six inches long, and two feet nine inches in girth ; the teeth 
were nearly as long, though not so stout, as those of a 
greyhound: the head of this fish was dried with the skin 
on, and long preserved at the hall as a great curiosity, not 
only on account of its immense size, but from a peculiarity 
in the lower jaw, which had bristles like those growing- 
on the breast of a turkeycock, proceeding from the under 
part of it. This head was given to the Rev. Mr. Kay, of 
South Bemfleet, in Essex, by Mr. Lugar; and from Mr. 
K.’s house some friendly collector of natural curiosities 
took the opportunity of marching off with it, during a 
very severe illness with which that gentleman was afflict- 
ed in the year 1792. 
In some places Pike are taken by what is termed dip- 
ping; the hook used is a large sized gorge hook, very 
slightly leaded on the shank, and baited as in trolling, 
only the mouth of the fish is to be sewed up, and the back 
fin cutaway, and then looped to the swivel; the line is 
let out from the reel to a convenient length, and the bait 
is dropped in any small openings where the water is not 
