And not all his catch are sure to be pickerel. Down below there in the twilight of the warmest water next the bottom are perch and dace, bass and eel, and all these are likely to hunger for shiner. The largest eel I ever saw caught came up through the ice in this way and I have even known the clumsy and stupid sucker to come out of the hole on the hook, making the fisherman think for a moment that he had hold of the one big pickerel of that particular pond. I cannot conceive of a sucker actually attempting to eat a shiner, even when impaled, impeded and wriggling, so such must have come by the hook in some other way, probably accidentally caught as they came by. As for that monster fish, there are times, even when the fishermen are not telling me about him, that I believe he exists. Besides the two varieties of Esox mentioned there is another which is common to all suitable waters of North America, Europe and Asia. That is Esox Lucius, as Linnaeus named him, the common pike. This fish is very like the pond pickerel in appearance and he sometimes grows to weigh forty pounds or more and to a length of four feet. Such a one might well be too large to come up through the hole which the fishermen have cut for his little cousins, the brook pickerel. It is quite possible that one of these Jonah-swallowing leviathans rules the pickerel in each pond kingdom; like a Morgan among millionaires. Of the pike, which he loved well, Isaac Walton has much to say and I cannot refrain from quoting a few of his most loving phrases, which are those which tell how he should be cooked. *****