OUR FISHERIES 6i 



bait is scarce and fresh mackerel have to be bought, cost many 

 sovereigns. By day these lines, carrying small hooks and 

 baited with mussel or worms, catch whiting and flat-fish, 

 gurnard and bass. By night, with larger hooks and either 

 fish or squid for bait, they take conger, ling, or skate. 



Hand-lining is another method. In this case not more 

 than two hooks are used on each line, generally on some 

 pattern of spreading wires ; but a skilful fisherman will control 

 half a dozen lines single-handed. Whiting just before dawn, 

 pollack and bream during the day, and conger and hake at 

 night are the chief fruits of the hand-line, and it has the 

 advantage of being used from small craft and without calling 

 for any heavier investment of capital than a year or two of 

 little economies may contrive. 



There is one other method of hooking in use among 

 professional fishermen — no account is taken in the present 

 chapter of angling methods — and that is known as railing, 

 whiffing, or plummeting, in which the bait, usually a small 

 bright strip of skin from the side of a mackerel's tail, is drawn 

 swiftly through the mackerel shoals in the wake of a sailing 

 boat. Heavy catches, of scores of mackerel per tide, are made 

 in this way, and on our south-west coast quite a considerable 

 number of men engage in this style of fishing during July and 

 August. 



Netting fish is a more complicated matter, more costly, 

 more laborious, and certainly more profitable on most parts 

 of our coasts, though the small hookers, their own masters, 

 owners of their boats and all the gear that therein is, may be 

 regarded as, on the whole, the most enviable class among the 

 fishing community. 



Netting fish, as practised on our coasts, must involve one 

 of four principles. The fisherman may set a trap to catch fish 

 singly — i.e. the trammel. He may drag it, corked above and 

 leaded below, round a shoal of fish previously seen and bring 

 these either ashore or alongside his boat — i.e. the sean, or seine. 



