30 MODERN SEA FISHING 



gillie most positively ; 'no man effer has and no man effer will. 

 It's only the laddies who catch the cuddies from the rocks there 

 with small mussels that use the rods. Ye'll catch all the fish 

 ye need with these hand lines,' pointing to some rough gear 

 lying at the bottom of the boat. 



My friend was so impressed that he went to the trouble of 

 taking his rod back to the hotel. I stuck to mine, but I saw 

 that I had fallen in our man's estimation, the worthy fellow 

 eyeing me with a look which plainly said, 'A wilful man maun 

 gae his ain gait.' A few minutes later we were rowing down 

 the long narrow inlet of the sea, which must have been 

 beautiful indeed before some great glacier slowly swept over 

 it and rounded all the mountain tops. 



The anchor was cast a mile or so away from the hotel, on 

 the whiting ground. I used my pike rod and a paternoster 

 made out of single salmon gut ; in fact, fished much as I should 

 for perch, but with slightly stronger tackle. There were great 

 quantities of fish in the loch, and in a couple of hours a number 

 of large whiting, grey gurnets, codling, and some remarkably 

 fine plaice had found their way into the boat. The three hand 

 lines were worked by my friend and the gillie ; each hand line 

 had two hooks ; yet those six hooks in all caught fewer fish 

 than were taken on the two-hook paternoster, and before we 

 returned to the shore the gillie frankly admitted that the rod 

 was ' no so bad.' 



But the mere fact of having a rod of some kind or other 

 does not necessarily conduce to a large basket of fish. I was 

 fishing in a sandy bay in the Bristol Channel one summer day, 

 using a light bamboo rod and very light paternoster tackle, the 

 lower hook being close to the ground, for the fish most nume- 

 rous were plaice and sand dabs. A hundred yards from me 

 was another boat in which was an amateur fisherman, his son 

 and a boatman. The father was using a very whippy, salmon, 



