MODERN SEA FISHING 



placed on the hook alive, when pollack and bass will take 

 them readily. Peeled (unboiled) they are, like shrimps, a 

 capital bait for mullet, flat fish, eels and smelts. Sometimes 

 they are used boiled, but this I consider a mistake. If a live 

 prawn is used the hook should be simply put through its tail. 



Ragworm, Pollack Worm, or Mudworm. 

 The drawing of this curious and not too pre- 

 sentable creature will serve to identify a very 

 valuable worm. Its favourite haunts are the 

 odorous banks of mud in estuaries and harbours. 

 In such places ragworms frequently swarm in 

 thousands, and a quantity will be dug for a few 

 pence by any fisherboy. There is a larger kind 

 of ragworm which is found among the rocks far 

 away from the harbour mud. These are com- 

 paratively scarce, and are the same as, or akin 

 to, the worm which I have described as making 

 its abiding place at the extreme end of the 

 whelk shell inhabited by the hermit crab. There 

 are not a few places on the South coast where 

 these baits are unobtainable, and in many a 

 likely looking spot I have searched for them 

 in vain. 



The best way of keeping ragworms is to 

 RAGWORM put them in a shallow wooden box with a cover. 

 They must on no account be heaped up to- 

 gether, and if placed in a small tin should be mixed up with 

 seaweed. For keeping any quantity a large box is required, well 

 pitched inside. A little fresh sea water should be flowed over 

 the worms every day. A convenient-sized box for taking out 

 fishing is one about two or three inches deep, ten inches long, 

 and six inches wide. The worms should be kept at all times 

 in as cool a place as possible and out of the sun, the large 



