Those mythical 20-foot pike won't go away. Simon Carswell of Limerick tells of fishing expeditions to Dromore Lake near Kildimo, 13 miles from their home, with his brother Desmond. It is said to be one of the deepest lakes in Munster, and as a consequence holds stores of 20-foot pike lurking down there. Initially, he writes, they started out fishing for perch, using sweetcorn, but, "being young at, and at times, a little cruel to our quarter-pound catch, would cast the perch out farther into the lake, let them sink and then reel them in, occasionally with a two- or three-pound pike on the end of the line. We could catch two fish with one piece of corn." Occasionally they met a man in a wet suit, with snorkel, mask and spear-gun. He would swim out to the middle of the lake, dive some 10 or 15 feet and, at times, return with an extremely large pike. Simon and his brother were thankful for a dry shore, sweetcorn and perch to lure their pike in.
The diver always told the boys the story of the spear-fisherman who saw a 20-foot pike about 10 feet below the surface and was so terrified that he never returned to fish Dromore Lake in that way again. He, the diver, was "the one that got away that day," says Simon. Fishing the lake eventually became boring to the boys and they turned to summer swimming and diving off the shore's rocks. "I never forgot about that 20-foot pike, though." In every country, it seems, there are similar stories of giant pike. Mrs Beeton believed that on account of its voracity this fish is called the fresh-water shark and "is abundant in most of the European lakes, especially those of the northern parts. It grows to an immense size, some attaining to the measure of eight feet in Lapland and Russia."
She quotes "a writer on sports" as telling of a lake near Castlebar where trout abounded until pike were accidentally introduced and finished the good trout. She gives recipes for baked and boiled pike but tells us that as an eating fish it is generally dry. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was first published in 1861. By now, those giant pike of Lapland and Russia may have gone.