Snap-fishing is certainly a less scientific method of angling for pike than that with the gorge or live-bait; for when the hooks are baited, the angler casts in search, draws, raises, and sinks his bait, until he feels a bite. He then strikes strongly and drags or throws his victim on shore; for there is little fear of his tackle giving way, as that used in snap-fishing is of the largest and stoutest kind. “This hurried and unsportsmanlike way of taking fish,” it is observed in the Troller’s Guide, “can only please those who value the game more than the sport afforded by killing a jack or pike with tackle, which gives the fish a chance of escaping, and excites the angler’s skill and patience, mixed with a certain pleasing anxiety, and the reward of his hopes. Neither has the snap-fisher so good a chance of success, unless he angles in a pond or piece of water where the jack or pike are very numerous or half starved, and will hazard their lives for almost any thing that comes in their way. But in rivers where they are well fed, worth killing, and rather scarce, the coarse snap-tackle, large hooks, &c. generally alarm them. On the whole, I think it is two to one against the snap in most rivers; and if there are many weeds in the water, the large hooks of the snap, by standing rank, are continually getting foul, damaging the bait, and causing much trouble and loss of time.”
Pike sometimes rise at an artificial fly, especially in dark, windy days. The fly ought to be dressed upon a double hook, and composed of very gaudy materials. The head is formed of a little fur, some gold twist, and (if the angler’s taste inclines that way, for it is probably a matter of indifference to the fish) two small black or blue beads for eyes. The body is framed rough, full, and round, the wings not parted, but made to stand upright on the back, with some small feathers continued down the back to the end of the tail, so that when finished they may exceed the length of the hook. The whole should be about the bulk of a wren.
During clear and calm weather in summer and autumn, pike take most freely about three in the afternoon: in winter they may be angled for with equal chances of success during the whole day: early in the morning, and late in the evening are the periods best adapted for the spring.
This fish is also angled for in a variety of ways by fixed or set lines, and also by trimmers, or liggers, as they are provincially called in some parts of England. Horsea Mere and Heigham Sound are two large pieces of water in the county of Norfolk, not far from Yarmouth, noted for their pike, as partly immortalised in old Camden’s famous lines of lengthened sweetness long drawn out,—
“Horsey Pike,
None like.”
Mr. Yarrell received the following returns from a sporting gentleman, of four days’ fishing with trimmers in these waters, in the month of March, 1834: viz. on the 11th at Heigham Sounds, 60 pike, weighing 280 pounds; on the 13th at Horsea Mere, 89 pike, weighing 379 pounds; on the 18th, again at Horsea Mere, 49 pike, weighing 213 pounds; on the 19th, at Heigham Sounds, 58 pike, weighing 263 pounds: the four days sport producing 256 fish, weighing together 1135 pounds.
As the mode of using trimmers in these extensive broads affords great diversion, and is rather peculiar, we shall here quote Mr. Yarrell’s account of it. “I may state that the ligger or trimmer is a long cylindrical float, made of wood or cork, or rushes tied together at each end; to the middle of this float a string is fixed, in length from eight to fifteen feet; this string is wound round the float except two or three feet, when the trimmer is to be put into the water, and slightly fixed by a notch in the wood or cork, or by putting it between the ends of the rushes. The bait is fixed on the hook, and the hook fastened to the end of the pendent string, and the whole then dropped into the water. By this arrangement the bait floats at any required depth, which should have some reference to the temperature of the season,—pike swimming near the surface in fine warm weather, and deeper when it is colder, but generally keeping near its peculiar haunts. When the bait is seized by a pike, the jerk looses the fastening, and the whole string unwinds,—the wood, cork, or rushes, floating at the top, indicating what has occurred. Floats of wood or cork are generally painted, to render them more distinctly visible on the water to the fishers, who pursue their amusement and the liggers in boats. Floats of rushes are preferred to others, as least calculated to excite suspicion in the fish.”
Pike are occasionally taken in the English lakes above 30 pounds in weight, and Dr. Grierson mentions one killed in Loch Ken, in Galloway, which weighed 61 pounds. The color of the young fish is of a greenish hue, but it afterward becomes rather of a dusky olive brown upon the upper parts, marked on the sides with mottled green and yellow, and silvery white on the abdomen. We do not think highly of its flesh, although by many it is held in some esteem.