Most people who know it best, and I agree with them, think it inferior to any fresh-water fish for the table except the carp and sucker. Its flesh is soft and dry, and unless of large size is not flaky, and it is, moreover, very full of small bones. One of ten pounds, stuffed with a savory dressing and baked, is not unpalatable, but cannot be compared favorably with the whitefish, black-ba.s.s, or trout.

The pike when of large size is a good game-fish. Its weight and strength, added to its bold rushes when hooked, are very trying to light tackle. One of fifteen pounds is worthy of the angler's most serious attention on an eight-ounce rod. Its manner of fighting is similar to that of the mascalonge, though in a lesser degree, and it does not continue its resistance so long. After a few frantic rushes it weakens very materially, and if kept away from weeds soon gives up the struggle for freedom.

In England, where game-fishes are much scarcer than in this country, the pike is considered a fine game-fish and is much sought after by bait-fishers, and with a wonderful array of murderous traces, minnow-gangs, and spinning tackle. In the United States, where there are so many better game-fishes, it is not often made the object of special pursuit. Most pike are caught by anglers in northern waters when fishing for black-ba.s.s.

Ordinary black-ba.s.s rods and tackle are very suitable for pike fishing, though where they run large, eight to fifteen pounds, an eight or nine-ounce rod is to be preferred to a lighter one. A good multiplying reel, a braided line, either silk or linen, size F, and Sproat hooks, Nos. 2-0 to 3-0, are better suited to large pike than black-ba.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration THE EASTERN PICKEREL]

[_Esox reticulatus_]

[Ill.u.s.tration THE WESTERN PICKEREL]

[_Esox vermiculatus_]

[Ill.u.s.tration THE PIKE-PERCH]

[_Stizostedion vitreum_]

[Ill.u.s.tration THE YELLOW-PERCH]

[_Perca flavescens_]

A minnow, or a trolling-spoon of small size with a single Sproat or O'Shaughnessy hook, may be employed in casting from a boat along the edges of weed patches, lily-pads, and wild rice, and along the shoals and bars. The same tackle can be utilized for trolling in the same situations. Where the conditions are favorable it is advisable to allow the boat to drift, in order to dispense with the noise and confusion of rowing or paddling. The directions already given for black-ba.s.s fishing, as to playing and landing the fish, will answer just as well for the pike.

As the pike seems to suggest the trolling-spoon, this is a good place to say a few words concerning that little-understood article of fishing tackle. In the first place, it should never have more than a _single_ hook, and that should never be handicapped by adding a minnow, frog, or strip of fish or bacon-skin, as is so often done. The hook should be left free to perform its function, untrammelled by extraneous and useless appendages. If the angler pins his faith to them, by all means give them a fair chance on a hook without a spoon; it is not only more logical, but more sportsmanlike. Give the fish a chance, also, and of two evils let it choose the least by using them separately. Seriously, the spoon is a most alluring and attractive bait in itself. Its bright and shining appearance when spinning and glancing through the water is well-nigh irresistible to a predaceous fish, and is in itself all that could be desired as an effective lure.

The original trolling-spoon (made by Buell) was the bowl of a dessert spoon, with a hole in the broadest end for the line, and a single hook soldered to the narrow end. It is as effective as the best trolling-spoon made to-day. With a single hook, either loosely attached or soldered to the spoon, one is more apt to hook his fish, and more certain of landing it, to say nothing of the cruel and inhuman practice of using the triangle of three hooks usually attached to most trolling-spoons.

Manufacturers generally affix a triangle of hooks to trolling-spoons, disguised by a bunch of red and white feathers that are worse than useless. The spoon is made of many shapes and of various sizes, and often of two or three spoons combined. They seem to vie with each other as to who can turn out the most ridiculous contrivance, for the farther it departs from the original spoon the more useless it becomes.

Manufacturers are not all anglers, and endeavor to produce what is most novel and attractive to the prospective customer. Such appliances sell to the uninitiated and unwary, but do not catch many fish, or even anglers of experience.

And the same remarks will apply in a measure to the gang or trace of several hooks, usually employed in trolling or spinning the minnow. A minnow, hooked through the lips--and it may be a dead one--with a single hook, will move more lifelike, and be really more attractive to the fish, than the whirling, wabbling one, bristling with a dozen hooks. It is cruel and heartless to employ so murderous a device. I have seen the mouths of ba.s.s and pike and lake-trout lacerated and mutilated, sometimes the lips and upper jaw torn completely off, by the triangle of the spoon or the half dozen or more hooks of the gang or trace. If their use cannot be dispensed with on the score of inutility, a single hook being far more successful, their employment should be relinquished in the name of humanity.

The pike will not often rise to the artificial fly, but will take it if allowed to sink a foot or two after casting. Many years ago, in Wisconsin, I devised the "polka" black-ba.s.s fly, and on its first trial, at the very first cast, it was seized by a pike of six pounds. The polka has a body of red floss silk, with spotted wings of the guinea fowl. I have frequently taken the pike with other red-bodied flies, as the Abbey, red ibis, king of the water, and Montreal, but the polka was always the favorite. Flies with bodies of peac.o.c.k harl, as coachman, Henshall, Governor Alvord, etc., are very useful, as well as some with yellow bodies, as professor, queen of the water, and Lord Baltimore. The afternoon hours, especially toward sundown and until dusk, are the most promising for fly-fishing. Large flies are also successfully used in trolling for pike, from a rather slow-moving boat. For fuller instructions for fly-fishing the reader is referred to those given for the black-ba.s.s, which will answer very well for the pike, especially where the two fishes inhabit the same waters.

Fishing through the ice for pike or pickerel has quite a fascination for some persons, even for those who never fish in any other way. And there is a certain kind of enjoyment in it, though actual fishing, as we understand it, has but little to do with it. If the ice is glare and free of snow, one can vary the amus.e.m.e.nt with skating. The bracing, nipping air on a clear day, with the sun shining brightly on the winter landscape, has its charms, and fishing through the ice is a good pretext for a winter outing. A dozen or more holes are cut through the ice in a circle, its diameter extending over the feeding grounds of the pike, whether small or great in extent. A fire may be built in the centre, if far from the sh.o.r.e on a lake, or on the sh.o.r.e itself if convenient to the holes. The holes being cut and a fire made for comfort, the next thing to do is to place the "tip-ups," as they are called, and bait the hooks, when there is nothing more to be done but to fill one's pipe and wait by the fire for the antic.i.p.ated event--the rising of a signal proclaiming a "bite."

Tip-ups are made in several ways, but the simplest plan, which is as good as any, is to provide a piece of thin board, say two or three feet long and two or three inches wide. A few inches from one end a hole is bored, through which is thrust a round stick, like a section of a broom-handle, and long enough to extend well across the hole in the ice.

A short line, usually three or four feet long, with suitable hook and sinker, is tied to the short end of the thin board, through a small hole bored for the purpose. The hook is then baited, placed in the water, and the thin board is laid down on its edge, with the short end at the middle of the hole in the ice, and the round stick straddling it. It will be readily understood that a fish pulling on the line at the short end of the thin board, or lever, will raise the long end, thus indicating to the watcher the looked-for event. The long end of the lever may be shaved to a point, to which a signal flag may be affixed.

Where the fish are plentiful it will keep one pretty busy running from one hole to another to take off the pike or rebait the hooks.

When residing at Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I found that fishing through the ice for pike and yellow-perch was a favorite sport. I indulged in it once for pike and several times for perch, for the latter is a firm, sweet, and delicious pan-fish in the winter. Driving over La Belle Lake in my sleigh to the "pickerel grounds," where my man had cut the holes the day before, the tip-ups and lines were soon arranged and the hooks baited with live minnows. A fire was then built on the sh.o.r.e, near at hand, to warm the chilled fingers. It was pretty tame when considered from the angler's point of view; but with the keen, crisp winter air, and the bright sun sparkling on the pure white snow, on which I occasionally took a spin in the sleigh, it was quite an enjoyable experience. In the course of a few hours several pike were taken and left lying on the snow, where they soon became frozen stiff. Upon my arrival at home they were placed in a tub of cold water, when all but one or two revived and began to swim about; the latter were probably too thoroughly frozen or may have been dead before being frozen. Apropos of this: I had some minnows in a live box, at the edge of the lake near my home, that thawed out alive in the spring after being frozen all winter.

They were evidently the same minnows, as there were no dead ones, and the live ones could hardly have got into the box from the lake.

The mediocrity of the pike as a game-fish is doubtless a just estimation in a majority of cases, but once in a while one will exhibit game qualities that will surprise the most doubting and contemptuous angler, compelling his admiration, and forcing him to admit that there are exceptions to all rules, but more especially in fishing. I was once one of a party of black-ba.s.s fishers on a lake in Wisconsin. In one of the boats was a lady of Milwaukee, who was justly considered one of the most expert and level-headed anglers in the party. She always stood up in her boat, was a marvel in casting the minnow, and played a ba.s.s to a finish in a style both graceful and artistic after a short, sharp, and decisive contest. She used the lightest rods and tackle, and the best. On this occasion, after landing a number of gamy ba.s.s and logy pike, she hooked a pike of about six pounds that put her six-ounce rod to the severest test, and gave her twenty minutes of the liveliest work that a fish is capable of. It leaped repeatedly from the water, and rushed not only straight away, but twisted and turned and doubled in a manner that would have done credit to the gamest ba.s.s. Finally she brought it to the landing-net in triumph, though she was, to use her own expression, "completely tuckered out." I venture to say that no man of the party would have been successful in landing that pike, with the same tackle, in the same length of time.

A woman who is an expert angler will risk her tackle to greater lengths than a man, and will take more chances in subduing a fish within a reasonable time. This is not because of recklessness, or because she does not understand or appreciate the tensile strength of her rod. On the contrary, she knows her tackle well, and has the utmost faith in its potentiality. I knew a lady friend who was never more than thirty minutes in bringing to gaff any salmon of from twenty-five to thirty pounds. And my Kentucky friend, Mrs. Bachmann (formerly Mrs. Stagg), killed her tarpon of two hundred and five pounds in eighty minutes.

THE EASTERN PICKEREL

(_Esox reticulatus_)

The eastern pickerel, also called chain pickerel in the North, and jack in the South, was first described by Le Sueur, in 1818, from the Connecticut River. He named it _reticulatus_, owing to the "reticulations" or the netted character of the markings on the body.

Its range extends from Maine along the coastwise streams to Florida and Louisiana. West of the Alleghanies it has been reported from the Ozark region of Missouri and Arkansas, but I am rather inclined to doubt it.

In its general form the pickerel resembles a small pike, though it is more slender, has a larger eye, and its coloration is quite different.

The ground color is either olive-brown or some shade of green, the sides with a golden l.u.s.tre, and the belly white. The sides are marked with many dark lines and streaks, mostly oblique and horizontal, forming a kind of network. There is a dark vertical bar below the eye; the dorsal fin is plain; the lower fins sometimes reddish; the caudal fin occasionally has a few dark spots or blotches.

In its habits of feeding and sp.a.w.ning it is similar to the pike, sp.a.w.ning in the early spring. It is found in weedy ponds in the North, and in the quiet, gra.s.sy reaches of southern streams. It feeds mostly on small fishes and frogs. It grows to a foot in length, usually, sometimes to two feet and weighing seven or eight pounds, though its usual maximum weight is three or four pounds.

In the New England states it is regarded by many as not only a fine game-fish, but an excellent food-fish as well. Others despise it on both counts, and there you are. To many a Yankee boy fishing for pickerel was the highest ideal of angling, but with the larger experience of mature years his idol has been thrown from its pedestal, and he, too, has learned to look askance at the friend of his youth. But while the pickerel is not a game-fish of high degree, it is capable of furnishing a fair amount of sport with light black-ba.s.s tackle in waters not too weedy.

Ordinary black-ba.s.s rods and tackle are quite suitable for pickerel fishing, either with bait or fly, though the hooks should be larger, about 1-0 to 2-0, on gimp snells or heavy silkworm fibre. Where the weeds are too thick to admit of playing the fish a reel can be dispensed with, and a plain, light bamboo or cane rod, in its natural state, can be subst.i.tuted for the jointed rod. It should belong enough to furnish considerable elasticity, say twelve feet, as its flexibility must subserve, somewhat, the purposes of a reel.

The pickerel will take a sunken fly in shallow water, after it has been fluttered on the surface awhile. The red ibis, soldier, Abbey, polka.

Montreal, and coachman are all good pickerel flies, if cast toward the dusk of evening.

Skittering is a favorite method of fishing for the pickerel in weedy ponds. It is practised with a long cane rod, and line of about the same length as the rod, with or without a reel. A spoon bait, frog, or a piece of white bacon-rind cut in the semblance of a fish, or a frog's hind legs, skinned, are skittered or fluttered on the surface near the lily-pads and pickerel weeds. The fish should be kept on the surface if possible, when hooked, and drawn into open water; otherwise it may become entangled in the weeds and lost.

The pickerel may also be taken by still-fishing from a boat with the live minnow or frog. On open water, a very successful way is trolling with a small spoon and single hook, or a dead minnow. For these methods the reader is referred to pike or black-ba.s.s fishing on previous pages.

I have found the pickerel as far south as eastern Florida, where it is known as "pike," though it is rarely met with, and owing to its rarity is held in pretty fair esteem as a game-fish. In the marshes and rice ditches of South Carolina, and some sluggish streams of south-east Georgia, it is rather more plentiful, though usually of inferior size and dusky coloration. I once caught several on the Cooper River in South Carolina when fishing with very light tackle for "bream," which were unusually active and strong, and which impressed me as ent.i.tled to a better reputation as a game-fish than is commonly accorded to it by anglers. On the whole, the eastern pickerel is not half a bad fish, as English anglers would say. One might go farther and fare worse.

THE WESTERN PICKEREL

(_Esox vermiculatus_)

The western pickerel was first described by Le Sueur from the Wabash River. He named it _vermiculatus_, owing to the "wormlike" appearance of its markings. He collected it about 1818, but his description was not published until 1846. It inhabits the Mississippi Valley, south to Arkansas and Mississippi, and the tributaries of Lakes Erie and Michigan. It is not found east of the Alleghanies.

It is formed on the same general lines as the other members of the pike family, but is rather more slender and rounder, with a shorter head, proportionally, but a larger eye. Its color is olive-green, or grayish green, darker on the back, and belly white. The sides are covered with many dark curved streaks, inextricably mixed, or forming reticulations.

The coloration is quite variable in different waters. A dark vertical bar is usually present below the eye; the sides of the head are variegated.

It is common in the gra.s.sy streams of the Middle West and weedy bayous of the South-west, never exceeding a foot in length. The late Dr. Elisha Sterling, of Cleveland, Ohio, once sent me a plaster cast of one not more than eight inches in length, with the ovaries exposed, showing the ripe ova. It is not of much importance as a game-fish or as a food-fish.

It sp.a.w.ns in early spring, and feeds on small fish, frogs, and tadpoles.

It may be fished for in the same way, and with the same tackle as recommended for c.r.a.ppies on a previous page.

THE BANDED PICKEREL

(_Esox america.n.u.s_)

The banded pickerel, Long Island pickerel, or brook pickerel, as it is variously known, was one of the first of its family to be recognized. It was described by Gmelin, in 1788, from Long Island. New York. He named it _america.n.u.s_, or "American pike," as a variety of the European _Esox lucius_.

It is found only east of the Alleghanies in coastwise streams from Ma.s.sachusetts to Florida. It is almost a duplicate of the little western pickerel in its general form, and represents that species in eastern waters. The characteristics of fin rays, scales, and squamation of cheeks and gill-covers apply equally to both species.

The ground color is dark green; belly white; sides with about twenty distinct, blackish, curved, vertical bars, often obscurely marked, but not distinctly reticulated. There is a black vertical bar below the eye, and a horizontal band extending from the snout, through the eye, to the gill-cover. The lower fins are often quite red. I have collected it on the east coast of Florida of a beautiful emerald-green coloration, without distinct dark markings, and with orange-colored lower fins--a most beautiful fish.

Although an interesting little fish, it is of no importance to anglers and is merely mentioned here, with the little western pickerel, to enable the reader to identify the different members of the pike family.

It sp.a.w.ns early in the spring. It seldom grows beyond a foot in length, and is usually much smaller. Fishing for it is on the same plane with sunfishing, and the lightest tackle should be employed.