1902 Fish Notes 293 



because at the inclement season of their approach, which 

 is often timed at night, the east coast is not the resort of any 

 who can contrive to live away from it. They come from the 

 north-east for the most part, these winter wildfowl, and only 

 the watchful gunner and the enterprising poulterer can, as a 

 rule, tell you of their coming. With the fish it is all so 

 different. Here are tens of thousands of silent, secretive 

 visitors, coming and going, unseen, unheard. The only out- 

 ward sign of their movements vouchsafed to the general 

 unscientific public is the fishmonger's slab. Here the experi- 

 enced housewife knows that she will find salmon at one 

 season and at another cod and whiting. Dory and garfish 

 will not, as a rule, lie alongside shad and bass. At one time 

 there is a plethora of herrings ; at another mackerel or gur- 

 nards will predominate. 



The amateur fisherman, who is generally something of a 

 naturalist in his own unfettered way, takes more intimate 

 account of these travels among familiar fishes. He knows 

 well that the shoaling bass that came with the swallow 

 depart with it. The brief visits of the shad to our rivers he 

 heeds but little, for the shad is, though not unknown in that 

 aspect, a most uncommon capture on the hook. It is in 

 autumn and winter, however, that he has most occasion to 

 note the movements among the shoals. The cod and whit- 

 ing come along the shore in this season with the sprats and 

 herrings, and the sportsman may repair to his favourite 

 resort, be it Deal or Aldeburgh, as confident of finding the 

 fishes of the season as the wildfowler of bagging his mallard 

 or widgeon. As a personal observation of this general west- 

 ward flight of wildfowl this season, I may mention that before 

 the end of September I had, on the Devon coast, seen six or 

 eight small flights of duck, both mallard and scoter, going in 

 every instance to the westward. With the migrating fish of 

 the Channel it seems to be otherwise. They move in from 

 the open Atlantic, and we get the first evidences of their 

 arrival from the south Irish fishing fleets — or rather from 

 fleets working the bays in the south of Ireland — their 

 progress up-Channel being then noted at consecutive ports 

 from west to east. 



VOL. I. — NO. 4. U 





