1 



FLY FISHING IN THE SEA 173 



whitebait fly (p. 148) is the best, so far as I know, but some 

 prefer a piece of fish-skin. 



The last time I sea-fished was in a Norwegian fjord. I was 

 using a paternoster and catching whiting, flat fish, and cod- 

 lings, but with a fly rod I might have had much better sport, 

 for every few minutes large shoals of billet were breaking the 

 surface and beating it into foam, splashing about after some 

 smaller fish which they were pursuing. Gulls hover over billet 

 as they do over the bass, and immediately the coalfish appeared, 

 the birds came swooping down from their resting places on 

 the mountain-side, and shrieked and fought for the small fry. 



Both for pollack and coalfish the fly should be cast and 

 drawn through the water, and if the fish run over a pound I 

 should certainly not use more than one fly. 



I hope these remarks will not .lead anybody to take a 

 rowing boat at Brighton or Hastings and begin casting vaguely 

 about a mile or so off the sea front. Neither should I advise a 

 stroll along the beach at Eastbourne ! or Cromer, fly rod in hand. 

 No ; to obtain sport with the fly it is necessary to go to places 

 frequented by fly-taking fish, and sport will, of course, depend 

 to a very large extent on the local knowledge available in the 

 person of the fishermen whose interest in the game must be 

 excited by any means the fly fisher thinks best. 



I think it was Pliny who said that the mullet was a stupid 

 fish; but things have changed now, and the beautiful mugilidae 

 of the end of this century are as wide awake as the most ex- 

 acting angler could wish. There is a tradition that these fish 

 rise to the fly, but if I say that there are ' instances on record ' 

 (a good and useful old phrase) of grey mullet having been 

 caught by fly fishermen, perhaps I shall have put my case as 



1 But a friend of mine tells me he has more than once had fine sport with 

 large bass off Beachy Head in September. He cast a white fly from a small 

 yacht which was sailed very slowly near the shoals of these fish. 



