124 EDIBLE FISHES OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



coastal merchant service, to make notes of any such occurrence, specifying 

 date, state of tide, trend of current, direction of wind, calmness or otherwise 

 of the surface water, along with the direction in which the shoal is believed 

 to be moving, would be certain to produce good results, and would fix incon- 

 trovertably the southern and northern range of this fine Murjil. 



The Tuggerah Lake and Lake Illawarra cases cited do not in any way 

 militate against the contention here advanced, since under the circumstances 

 of the closure of the natural outlets the individual fishes on their way to the 

 sea were blocked, and becoming massed together within a small area, those 

 that were in the rear, in their uncontrolable anxiety to gain the safety and 

 seclusion of the more open waters, pressing forwards in large masses with 

 this object, absolutely forced the vanguard ashore. 



We must again join issue with the Commissioners on their assertion that 

 the Mullet, after spawning, smiply move from one river or inlet to the 

 other, remaining presumably in the latter until the breeding season again 

 draws near, when they go out to sea, school, and then return to the rivers in 

 which each was orii^inally bred ; such an idea, we contend, is preposterous, is 

 unsupported by facts, and is utterly opposed to the known habits of all 

 anadromous or semianadromous fishes ; from the account given by Macleay, 

 it appears that this idea is borrowed from the ])rofessional fishermen, than 

 whom, with rare exceptions, no more unreliable body of men, as to the facts 

 connected with their own calling, can be found the world over. 



Notwithstanding the enormous shoals w^hich are known to occur as surface 

 fishes oft' our shores during the earlier months of the year, no systematic 

 attempt, so far as we are aware, has yet been made to capture them before 

 their arrival on, or in the vicinity of, the spawning beds ; then, however, the 

 destructive seine net comes to the front, and good and bad, adult and young, 

 salable and unsalable species are alike immolated on the altar of the 

 Mullet. It is easy to see that an obstinate continuance in such a course, 

 must end, and indeed is already far advanced theretowards, in the depletion, 

 if not absolute denudation, of fish life in our metropolitan waters, and all 

 others round w^hich large centres of population have gathered, or may in the 

 future so do. The fact is that the rising generation of fishermen have to be 

 taught that the harvest of the sea must be gathered in the open, and that 

 they must not be content, as their fathers are, to drag the same harbor 

 beaches and estuarine mud flats, day after day, month after month, and year 

 after year ; failing their capacity to learn this it will eventually become 

 necessary to import a sufiicient number of our north country men with 

 their families, or of the equally hardy and daring fishermen of Canada and 

 the New England States, to work our ocean fisheries, who by the exercise of 

 greater skill, and the employment of siiperior methods for placing the catch 

 on the market would gradually supersede the haphazard system at present 

 in vogue. 



It is generally considered that the Sea Mullet will not take a bait, but this 

 is denied by Tenison AVoods, who, in his account of the species, states that 

 it " atfords good sport to anglers in the Hunter and other eastern rivers." 

 " The bait," he continues, " is a small worm, but a far better kind is the fine 

 silky green conferva which grows on the surface of stones or logs which 

 have been long in the water. Mullet will take this with great avidity. The 

 weed must be cut rather long and wound ax'ound the hook. It must not be 

 confounded with the coarse green wooly conferva which covers tlie bottom 

 like a blanket ; Mullet will not touch this ; the other they eat so greedily 

 that not a particle can be found on the stones and logs of the rivers where 



