70 ON SEA-FISHING. [PART I. 



People really seem generally to regard sea-fish 

 as a low order of brutes, almost destitute of com- 

 mon instinct, and upon which any care or atten- 

 tion would be quite thrown away. A fisherman, 

 who piques himself on the fineness of his river- 

 tackle, and would sedulously clip off the sixteenth 

 of an inch of gut which might project beyond a 

 knot, or discard a whole length, if it happened to 

 be at all flat or opaque, will yet be content to have 

 next his hooks, when Sea-fishing, snooding as thick 

 as an ordinary salmon-line, and often untwisted 

 so as rather to resemble mop-yarn than what it 

 pretends to be, this roughly tied on coarse rusty 

 hooks, and the rest of his apparatus clumsy to 

 match. Now such a person need scarcely be re- 

 minded that all annuals, sea-fish included, have an 

 instinctive sense of danger, and that it would be 

 difficult to convey to any one the knowledge that 

 a trap is laid for him, more effectually than 

 by exhibiting next the hook such very obvious 

 machinery for his destruction. Why, it's a positive 

 insult to the intelligence of the fish ! " If a thing 

 is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well," says 

 the old proverb; and yet many a man at the sea- 

 side, when inclined to " have a turn at the Whit- 

 ing/' without taking the slightest trouble about 



