Snarljaw
A pike, and I want to be clear that's the whole entry as far as most anglers round the Rivelin and the old mill ponds are concerned. Ask them what a snarljaw is and they'll tell you it's just a big pike, and they're not wrong exactly. They're just leaving out the bit where it comes half out of the water to get you.
Ordinary pike ambush too, but nothing like this patiently. A snarljaw holds station in the reeds at the pond edge without so much as a fin-twitch, sometimes for the better part of a day, and the moment something warm-blooded gets within a body length of the water it goes from stationary to airborne in one motion, jaw first. I've seen one clear its own length onto a bank to take a dog by the back leg and be back in the water before the owner had turned round.
The teeth angle backwards, so whatever it takes does not come free by pulling. It does not need to hold on long -- the strike drags you the necessary distance, the water does the rest, and a snarljaw is a poor thing to fight in its own element in the best of circumstances.
Nobody has worked out whether snarljaws breed with ordinary pike or simply are ordinary pike that have spent long enough this side of the reservoir wall -- and Hellsborough keeps more reservoir than Sheffield ever needed, all of it feeding something that isn't a water board. Cut one open and the anatomy is unremarkable pike anatomy, right down to the swim bladder. The only tell before the strike is the eye -- flat black, no ring of colour round the pupil at all.
Field note: keep dogs and children back from still water at the mill ponds by a full body length more than looks necessary. The strike range is longer than the fish looks capable of.
| Type | Lurker |
| HP | 2 |
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