him
before that he simply lets go the bait and swims off, secure in
his immunity bath. After he has started to really go away with his
prize a steady pull is quite sure to result in his capture.

Two varieties of pickerel commonly inhabit our ponds. One,
technically known as Esox reticulatus, is the Eastern pickerel,
known sometimes as green pike or jack, but more often as pond
pickerel. He is a big green fish, a golden lustre on his
reticulated sides and in colonial times he was known as chain
pickerel from this dark linking on his golden green surface. I do
not hear the name now and I doubt if it is much, if any, used. The
pond pickerel waxes fat on minnows and other small fry and in the
course of a long life grows to be two feet or more in length and
specimens have been caught weighing seven pounds, perhaps more. It
is rather interesting to learn from the fishermen that certain
ponds are apt to contain pickerel of a certain size, in the main,
as if the conditions of food supply and the freshness of the water
or the amount of sunshine were only sufficient to bring the most
of them to a definite period of maturity, where they stopped. But
this is, of course, only a general rule, with many exceptions. One
of these is the big fish. Every pond contains him and every
pickerel fisherman who aspires to dignity in his class has hooked
this big fellow and lost, him and is able to tell you
circumstantially at much length just how. Most of them know the
exact location in each pond where he lurks and are confident that
this winter they will win in the encounter with him to which they
confidently look forward. Usually the fisherman hauls this monster
up to the hole in the ice but is unable to get him through because
the hole is too small. Tales like this, heard now and then about
the fire while we watch the traps, give assurance that the
fishermen are really very human after all and not of the Peter Pan
species.

*****

The other variety of pickerel is Esox americanus, the banded
pickerel, known hereabouts mainly as brook pickerel, because he
loves grassy streams. But the brook pickerel frequents the ponds
as well, loving best those of weedy bottoms and shores and slight
depth. He is a slim, little green fellow, usually not over a foot
long and his dark banded sides easily distinguish him from the
smaller specimens of his reticulated neighbor. The brook pickerel
is found only east of the Allegheny Mountains, from Massachuse