‘Well, no; pike are fairly kept down by using trimmers, and the Angling Association nets whenever it is possible. There’s not half so many pike as there used to be.’
‘There’s a story that when Professor Wilson was once rowing near the Ferry he picked up a couple of exhausted pike. They were of almost equal size, and one had tried to swallow the other head first, with the result that the head had fixed in its throat, choking it.’
‘Oh yes,’ responded Jem, ‘I have talked with one of the men who picked up the two fish. But it’s nothing fresh for two pike to try that game on. I have seen them myself chewing halfway up one another’s bodies. Pike cannot loose their jaws after they have once gripped a thing. I got a pike at Wray once with its teeth still fixed in the body of a two-pound trout.’
By this time we were progressing in the shade of the fir-woods. It was grand to hear the breeze whisper just above, and here and there came the rattle of a rivulet down the rocky bluffs. For an hour Jem rowed and paused alternately. A goodly haul of fish was present in the well of the boat at the finish.
With my face over the side of the boat, I looked down into deep, still water, and, though it was evening, the bottom, scarred with rocks and tiny cliffs, was in full view. In my idlings I conjured up from this flat boulder the image of a boat; from that muddied pile of fragments the semblance of a ruined cottage; here a patch of stoneless lake-bed stood for a field, with rugged heaps of rock for boundaries. But as daylight faded away the subaqueous panorama failed me. The sky above the fir-trees glowed with crimson and orange; the zenith was bright blue flecked with white cloud-wrack. Then, to the sound of cracking whips and hoarse voices, to the regular hoofings of horses and the discordant groanings and shriekings of braked wheels, the wood-waggon made its difficult, dangerous way down a dell to the narrow by-road. And further away up the slope the sound of the woodman’s axe died away as semi-darkness told him that the long day’s task was over.
We had now been afloat over four hours, so that a meal was due to us. Jem turned over his coat which had laid in the stern, and produced a large packet from his pocket. W—— had provided a basket of food, fortunately, so we fell to. I might have said that the meal was washed down by draughts of clear water from the lake, but the element upbearing our craft tasted—how shall I say it?—insipid, tasteless, or, perhaps more accurately, rather flat. After a short interval my companions produced tobacco and pipes, and a thick fragrance hung in the air. W—— took up his strain of tutor again.
‘In trolling, the chief things to bear in mind are soundless rowing, baits on a long line, face the wind if possible. A breeze, take it for granted, will never blow you exactly along the line you wish to follow. As to where to fish, round islets and near shoals are the best places, while about thirty yards from shore, where the lake-bed suddenly falls away to a great depth, is a very safe place for fish.’
The pipes were puffed pensively awhile after this; then Jem the lustful spoke out:
‘What a night this would be for lathing! In my father’s time this boat, instead of hauling four baits through the water, would have had a hundred or more. Laths, each with six hooks, would have been dotting the water thirty yards either side of us, and a boat-load of fish would have been landed.’
Without laths, however, our sport had been deadly enough, and at last, while the night was still young, the lines were finally hauled in, and through steely darkness we glided up the narrow sleeve of water between Curwen’s Isle and the mainland to Bowness and to bed.