1 68 ALONGSHORE i" 



usually start towards the end of July, and catch 

 the mackerel on lines trailed behind sailing boats, 

 their bait a bright strip of skin cut from a mack- 

 erel's tail. Up to the middle of August the best 

 catch was six dozen in a day, when it should have 

 been two or three hundred (ten dozen to the hun- 

 dred) by breakfast time. Hooking was not worth 

 while, except with frights aboard prepared to pay 

 for their sailing, whatever the sport. And with 

 the seine-nets it was worst of all. Once in July 

 three hundred and a half fair-sized mackerel were 

 hauled ashore; otherwise such shots as were made 

 resulted mainly in seaweed and sand-crabs, with at 

 most a dozen or two small mackerel. The absence 

 of the early mackerel we could explain; for they 

 are known to live in the spring on tiny marine 

 organisms and larvae, whereas later on, in the 

 summer, they chase and devour the shoals of fish- 

 fry that we call brit, and people eat as whitebait. 

 (Hence the uselessness of trying to hook them on 

 baits in imitation of small fish till the latter half of 

 the season.) This year, owing to continued easterly 

 winds, the temperature of the water was five 

 degrees below normal — a difference very consider- 

 able to microscopic life. Had the early mackerel 

 come into the bay they would In all probability 



