COD, HADDOCKS, WHITING, BREAM, ETC 427 



abjure butter because it is not easy to fry a fish a good colour 

 therein ; but this frying medium gives a sweet nutty flavour 

 which is wanting in fish fried in oil or lard. 



Before you can cook your haddock it is necessary to catch 

 him. As to that there is no great difficulty, for he swims in 

 shoals and is exceedingly voracious. Having found him, fish 

 near the bottom with a paternoster, the hook being about the 

 size illustrated. Bait with mussels or lugworms or a piece of 

 pilchard, sprat, mackerel, or herring, and you will surely catch 

 him if he is at all on the feed. A bait which is deemed great 

 medicine consists of a small piece of squid placed on the 

 shank of the hook, the point being covered with a tempting 

 mussel. This is particularly useful on long lines, where the fish 

 have to hook themselves and are apt to draw the mussel off 

 the hook. The squid remains as a forlorn hope, and often 

 leads to the fish being captured. The man with a rod, who 

 can tell immediately the fish bites, and is accustomed to strike 

 sharply and at the right moment, will catch haddock on mussel 

 solus without any difficulty. I have caught a good many 

 haddocks when baiting my hooks with pieces of grey gurnard. 



HAKE (Merluaius vulgaris) and LING (Molva vulgaris} 

 are two fish which are frequently confounded by amateur sea 

 fishermen. Both of them, but more particularly the ling, 

 incline to the appearance of being a cross between a codfish 

 and a conger eel. In both the body is long and thin, and they 

 are furnished with long back and belly fins, starting near 

 the root of the tail and extending beyond the middle of the 

 fish. The hake is the more ferocious-looking fish of the two, 

 the rays of its two dorsal fins being spinous, while its mouth 

 is furnished with quite an ogreish double set of teeth of the 

 orthodox fee-fo-fum variety. Its eye is round. The ling, on 

 the other hand, lacks these prickly points to its back fins ; its 

 teeth, while very formidable, are not so conspicuous ; its eye 



