The pike, termed for its voracity the fresh-water shark, is found in most of the larger lakes and rivers of Great Britain. It grows to an immense size—is easily produced as a pond fish—and, being a bold determined biter, affords excellent sport to the lovers of the art. It is taken with natural and artificial baits, as frogs, mice, minnows or any kind of fry; and when the weather is favourable very little skill is requisite to obtain abundant sport in a well-stocked water. The best mode of pike-fishing is trolling. Vide Trolling.
The pike’s voraciousness is well known: what is here mentioned of it is singular. In 1810, a hook baited with a roach, was set in the manor-pond, at Toddington, Bedfordshire; the next morning a large pike was caught, which with difficulty was got out. It appeared that a pike of three and a half pounds weight was first caught, which was afterwards swallowed by another, weighing thirteen pounds and a half, and both were taken.
It has been before remarked, that pike are frequently shot, when floating near the surface of the water. Other sorts of fish are often so destroyed. In June, 1808, Mr. Byrne, the Earl of Lonsdale’s gamekeeper, shot in the river Eden, at Beaumont, near Carlisle, the extraordinary number of eighty-six fish, at two shots; the smallest fish was seven inches in length.
The smaller lakes, which are so profusely scattered over the surface of this county, vary in the species of fish which they respectively produce, as much as they do in their own natural size and character. Some of them afford trouts, others pike only, and many are stocked with both. That this union cannot long subsist, I should be inclined to infer from one remarkable circumstance, and it is a convincing proof of the rapid destruction which the introduction of pike into a trout lake will occasion. Within a short distance of Castlebar there is a small bog-lake, called Derreens; ten years ago it was celebrated for its numerous and well-sized trouts. Accidentally pike effected a passage into the lough from the Minola river, and now the trouts are extinct or, at least, none of them are caught or seen. Previous to the intrusion of the pikes, half-a-dozen trouts would be killed in an evening in Derreens, whose collective weight often amounted to twenty pounds.
Indeed the appetite of one of my pike was almost insatiable. One morning I threw to him, one after the other, five roach, each about four inches in length. He swallowed four of them, and kept the fifth in his mouth for about a quarter of an hour, when it also disappeared.
Fish appear, also, to be capable of entertaining affection for each other. I once caught a female pike during the spawning season, and nothing could drive the male away from the spot at which the female disappeared, whom he had followed to the very edge of the water. A person who had kept two small fish together in a glass, gave one of them away; the other refused to eat, and showed evident symptoms of uneasiness till his companion was restored to him.
The boldness of a pike is very extraordinary. I have seen one follow a bait within a foot of the spot where I have been standing; and the head keeper of Richmond Park assured me that he was once washing his hand at the side of a boat in the great pond in that Park, when a pike made a dart at it, and he had but just time to withdraw it.
A gentleman (Major Payne) now residing at Weybridge, in Surrey, informed me, that, walking one day by the side of the river Wey, near that town, he saw a large pike in a shallow creek. He immediately pulled off his coat, tucked up his shirt-sleeves, and went into the water to intercept the return of the fish to the river, and to endeavour to throw it upon the bank by getting his hands under it. During this attempt, the pike, finding he could not make his escape, seized one of the arms of the gentleman, and lacerated it so much that the wound is still very visible.
The digestion of the pike is so rapid, that, in a few hours, not a single bone of a roach which it has swallowed can be discovered. This may account for the fact of a pike, who has gorged himself to the full, holding a small fish in his mouth whilst the digestion of his previously taken prey has been going on, and swallowing it as soon as that process had been effected.