226 MODERN SEA FISHING 



more expensive than angling in fresh water. This rate, which 

 is about a pound a day or a little more, would cover all one's 

 expenses at many an angling hotel in the Highlands, including 

 rights of salmon and sea-trout fishing. In Scotland, by the 

 way, it frequently happens that the landlord has a boat of his 

 own on the sea loch for which he makes no charge, while 

 the gillies who row one are well satisfied with 3^. 6d. a day 

 and a reasonable (in the Scotch sense) allowance of whisky. 

 By degrees, the boatmen at many places on our coast are 

 beginning to learn that to treat their sea-fishing customers 

 with greater liberality is good policy on their part. Wherever 

 there is an agent or corresponding member of the British Sea 

 Anglers' Society he is generally in a position to recommend 

 men whose terms will not be found unreasonable. Of course, 

 if a large heavy boat is hired which requires two men to work 

 her, 4/. or 5/. a week is not out of the way. 



A curious and unsatisfactory custom exists on some parts 

 of the Welsh coast. When the day is over, and the angler has 

 paid his ten shillings or a sovereign, and maybe broken his back 

 hauling in the heavy mackerel leads over the stern, one of the 

 boatmen places the fish in a box and walks off with them, say- 

 ing, as he does so, that he will be pleased to ' give ' the gentle- 

 man half a dozen fish to take home for dinner. There is no 

 class more liberal, as a whole, than the amateur fisherman, and 

 few of us would grudge the fish ; but when the boatman claims 

 the take as a matter of right it is an entirely different matter, 

 and one's British back is put up at once. 



A slight knowledge of the knots used by sailors is well 

 worth having. Not one person in a hundred knows how to 

 join two ropes together properly. This is done by what sailors 

 call a bend, a very simple knot indeed, and easily understood 

 by means of the illustration opposite. Next comes the reef 

 knot, which is always used when tying a reef in a sail, and is 



