The Book of the Pike: A Practical Treatise on the Various Methods of Jack Fishing; with an Analysis of the Tackle Employed--the History of the Fish, & C. Also a Chapter on Spinning for Trout in Lakes and Rivers

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R. Hardwicke, 1865 - 254 pages
 

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Page 214 - A rod twelve feet long and a ring of wire, A winder and barrel, will help thy desire In killing a Pike : but the forked stick, With a slit and a bladder, — and that other fine trick, Which our artists call snap, with a goose or a duck, — Will kill two for one, if you have any luck ; The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile, To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile. When a Pike suns himself, and a-frogging doth go, The two-inched hook is better, I know, Than the ord'nary snaring. But still...
Page 152 - He rolls and wreathes his shining body round ; Then headlong shoots beneath the dashing tide, The trembling fins the boiling wave divide. Now hope exalts the fisher's beating heart, « Now he turns pale, and fears his dubious art ; He views the tumbling fish with longing eyes, While the line stretches with th...
Page 165 - Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock; Although between it and the garden lies A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream, That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar, Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on, Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crown'd with the minster-towers.
Page 180 - Mascall, who, in 1590, presented the world with ' A Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line, and of all other instruments thereunto belonging...
Page 132 - ... is a copy — This is, in fact, to a certain extent, a modification or adaptation of the principle of the pronged ring recommended for the bottom joint. After being lapped over to within about half-an-inch of the ring, the wire is made to branch out in the shape of a V, the upper points or sides forming a continuation of the ring itself. These sides act as a sort of guard to the ring to throw off the line, if it should curl over, much as the sloping sides of a gate, on a barge walk throw off...
Page 214 - Dumfriesshire, kept a gander, who had not only a great trick of wandering himself, but also delighted in piloting forth his cackling harem, to weary themselves in circumnavigating their native lake, or in straying amidst forbidden fields on the opposite shore.
Page 62 - Rusticum,' exactly reverses the dictum : Lo ! the rich pike, to entertain your guest, Smokes on the board, and decks a royal feast. . . . An assertion which is perfectly in consonance with the facts of the case as it pointedly figures in the Cartes de diner of most of the grand and royal banquets of former times— as, for instance, the feast at the enthronisation of George Nevil, Archbishop of York, in 1466 ; the feast given to Richard II. by the celebrated William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester...
Page 222 - States," published by Bentley, in 1849. He calls the Spoon a " murderous instrument," and says that the mascalonge, one of pike-species of America, takes it readily. It is to be observed that no mention is made of the Spoon in either of the earlier American impressions of this work, and that the account was only added, with the " second part," in the London Edition of 1849, in which he speaks of it as a
Page 32 - My son had scarcely turned himself round when the fish came up behind and immediately seized his other hand crosswise, inflicting some very deep wounds on the back of it ; the boy raised his first-bitten and still bleeding arm, and struck the monster a hard blow on the head, when the fish disappeared. The other boys assisted him to dress, bound up his hand with their handkerchiefs, and brought him home. We took him down to Mr. Brown, surgeon, who dressed seven wounds in one hand ; and so great was...
Page 9 - Suabia, with a brazen ring attached to it, on which were these words in Greek characters : — " I am the fish which was first of all put into this lake by the hands of the Governor of the Universe, Frederick the Second, the 5th of October 1230.

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