Nothing that swims, or walks, or flies does he spare when his appetite is whetted by the sharp wind sweeping

The half-frozen dyke,

That hungers into madness every plunging pike.

Woe be to his children, or his brother, mother, or cousin, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, should they cross his path; and I have not the slightest doubt, speaking ichthyophageously, if not ichthyologically, that under sufficient provocation he would tackle one of his own ancestors, even to the third and fourth generation. This is all 'thorough,' and is in keeping with the grim muzzle and steely grey eyes which fix upon the observer with unwinking and ferocious glare. The very rush and flash with which he takes his prey has in it a fascination, and I have more than once seen a man drop his rod from sheer fright when a pike, that has been stealthily following his bait, suddenly dashes at it by the side of the boat or at the moment it is being lifted out of water.

The pike, I am happy to say, is daily rising in the estimation of anglers as a game and, in the largest sense of the word, sporting fish. This is partly owing, no doubt, to the difficulty, with an ever-increasing army of anglers, of obtaining decent trout or, still more, salmon fishing (in fact, a good salmon river has now become almost as expensive a luxury as a grouse moor or a deer forest), and partly also because the art is now pursued with greatly improved appliances.

We live in times in which, as I observed in the first page of the first pamphlet I ever wrote on jack-fishing, no 'well informed pike is to be ensnared by such simple devices as those which proved fatal to his progenitors in the good old days of innocence and Izaak Walton, and were we now to sally forth with the trolling gear bequeathed to us by our great grandfathers of lamented memory, we should expect to see every pike from John o' Groat's to Land's End rise up to repel with scorn the insult offered them. No! depend upon it the dwellers in what Tom Hood called the 'Eely places' havė

come in for their full share of the education movement, and the troller who at the end of the nineteenth century would expect to make undiminished catches must devote both time and attention to refining to the very utmost every part of his equipment.

'Every hook in the spinning flight, every link in its trace, becomes in his view an object of importance, because it is not only positive but comparative excellence which he must aim at. Other trollers will take advantage of the latest 'wrinkle,' if he will not, and the art is not only to fish fine, but, if he wants to make the best basket, to fish finer than anybody else, at least on the same water. It is perfectly true that when the pike is sharp-set he is, as I have said, practically omnivorous, but where fine fishing and perfection of tackle come in is on the occasions when he is not regularly on the feed, and when his appetite is dainty and requires to be tickled. At these times the man who fishes fine will fill his creel, whilst he who uses coarser tackle will, in all probability, carry it home empty.

'But it is not only as regards the basket that fine fishing is an object worth aiming at. It is the only mode of fishing that really deserves the name of sport; to haul out a miserable pike with an apparatus like a barge pole and a meat-hook neither demands skill nor evokes enthusiasm. There is no "law" shown to the fish, and not the slightest prowess by the fisherman; it is simply fish-slaughter, not sport.'

PIKE-TACKLE.

SPINNING AND TROLLING-RODS.

An idea-happily now nearly exploded-has prevailed amongst trollers since the time of Nobbes of the Dark Ages, that a pike-rod should necessarily be a clumsy rod a thick, unwieldy, weighty, top-heavy weapon-in fact, a sort of cross between a hop-pole and a clothes-prop. Whatever our pikefishing ancestors may have been in the matter of skill, it cannot be denied that their rods and angling gear generally were in every way vastly inferior to our own, and, indeed, such as to make any display of what we should consider science out of the question.

On no part of the fisher's equipment has more patience been lavished, with the result of greater advances, than on the all-important item of the rod. That so far at least as trollingrods are concerned there was plently of room for improvement may be gathered from the receipt given for the construction of a trolling-rod by the authoress of the 'Boke of St. Albans,' about A. D. 1486, wherein the implement in question is recommended to be of at least fourteen feet long; the 'staffe' or butt measuring a fadom (fathom) and a half,' of the thickness of an 'armgrete,' or about as thick as a man's arm, and the joints to be bound with stout 'hopis of yren' (iron hoops)!

In the first volume I have given a description of the dif ferent woods used in rod-making, and I will not therefore repeat it here, the more so as both hickory, greenheart, and ash -that is, almost all the principal rod-woods-may be, and are, very commonly employed in the manufacture of Spinning and

Trolling-rods. The wood really most suitable for the purpose, and which as time goes on will, I have no doubt, come to be more and more used, is bamboo. This wood possesses in a special degree the qualities required for a spinning-rod, being both light, strong, and of sufficient stiffness, and, it may be added, pliability also, for the most perfect casting' of a spinning bait and for the 'playing' of it when it has been cast.

I daresay many trollers-much better fishermen than I am -will warmly, not to say hotly, dissent from this proposition. Every angler has his own hobby on the subject of rods. One man swears by a bamboo rod, another by lancewood or hickory, and a third would lose half the enjoyment of his day's sport if it were not to be effected by his trusty greenheart of early and well-beloved associations. Its owner might say, and say with truth, The difference you speak of in weight is exceedingly. small, and there is a certain "swishiness" and elasticity in greenheart or hickory which is not to be got out of the most carefully selected bamboo.' I find myself that I get quite as much play, or 'swishiness,' as I want out of a four-jointed bamboo rod with a greenheart top, and as regards weight, the difference, slight as it is, tells decidedly in favour of the hollow wood.

The other hollow woods are practically useless for pikerods. The white cane, the greater part of which comes from Spain and America, and is a fragile and delicate creature compared to its swarthy Indian cousin, is used principally for roach-rods-White Cane Roach-rods,' as they are temptingly described in the catalogues-and it is fit for nothing else; for this special purpose, however, it is perfection. Another cane also that is quite inferior to the East Indian is the Carolina; it is lighter and longer between the knots, and is commonly employed only in bottom-fishing rods of the commoner qualities. Last on the list comes the jungle cane, a specialty of China, but found also in many other parts of Asia. It grows as thick as a man's body, and is put by the Chinese to a variety of uses, amongst others hollowing out the

pith and converting the skin into water-pipes. It is this skin, or rind, only, with which we have to deal in rod-making, and that must be taken from a cane about as thick as a man's wrist. This is split up into narrow slips, and these slips, when planed and smoothed down, become the solid grained-looking pieces of wood constantly forming the upper splices of top joints.

But to my text. One of the most charming spinning-rods I ever possessed-or rather possess, for I am happy to say it still exists-came to grief in the butt, and instead of having a new butt of the same wood, bamboo, made in its place, I thought I would try an experiment, and had substituted for the injured member a butt made of ash. The composite weapon thus produced-ash butt, second and third joints bamboo, top greenheart-seems to combine in an exceptional degree the qualifications to be desired in a spinning rod. Especially the play and casting capacity of the rod are remarkable, and I think of all the spinning-rods I have, or have had pass through my hands, this is my favourite. The two centre bamboo joints are all that remain of a mottled East Indian cane which I chose from amongst the hundreds in Mr. Farlow's warehouse when a stripling. It has since had tops enough to stock a tackle shop. Can it be that association has prejudiced me also in favour of my schoolboy friend? Many memories may certainly cling round an old rod, and, perhaps, few veteran anglers could be found to dissent from the following lines in which Stoddart has given expression to the sentiment :—