SURFACE-FEEDING SEA FISH 359 



one really successful bait for large grey mullet is macaroni. 

 This gives me some hope that the Italian paste, either 

 flavoured or not with some biological preparation, will prove a 

 useful substitute for the mussels, pilchards, and other natural 

 baits which the professional fishermen have so much difficulty 

 in obtaining. 



j. A. c. K. catches his mullet in this wise. His fishing 

 ground is in the Fleet, a great backwater which separates the 

 Chesil beach, west of Portland Roads, from the mainland of 

 Dorsetshire and lies midway between Weymouth and Portland. 

 Two bridges cross it, one carrying the railway, and the other - 

 known as the Passage Bridge the public car- 

 riage road. At times this water teems with 

 mullet, and occasionally big bass put in an ap- 

 pearance. The best mullet fishing is done during 

 the ease of the tide. j. A. c. K.'S tackle consists 

 of a stiff eighteen-foot greenheart salmon rod, a 

 large Nottingham reel carrying 200 yards of 



HOOK FOR 



hemp line, ten feet of stout salmon gut, at the MUI.I.K.T 

 end of which is a Pennell-Limerick No. 8 hook. MACARONI 

 Above it are five or six other hook links of 

 medium salmon gut, six or seven inches long, 

 lapped to the main length on gut at intervals of eighteen inches 

 or thereabouts. Two feet above the bottom hook is a pistol 

 bullet which is split and squeezed on to three inches of fine 

 copper wire, the ends of the wire being lapped round the gut 

 at a knot. The hook baits are pieces of ordinary macaroni 

 pudding, and the gathering or ground bait boiled macaroni 

 chopped up fine. Each bait consists of about three-quarters of 

 an inch of macaroni which is big enough in the tube to admit 

 the hook without splitting. The hooks have to be carefully 

 covered and hidden. When everything is ready the angler takes 

 the running line above the point where the gut is joined to it 



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