COD, HADDOCKS, WHITING, BREAM, ETC 435 



To be very successful with conger, it is usually necessary to 

 fish at night. Then do these great eels leave their fastnesses 

 among rocks and tangle, and roam about seeking what they can 

 devour. It is not necessary at night to be actually fishing over 

 rocks, but it is as well to be near them. The very large conger 

 are mostly caught in deep water, but fish up to 12 Ibs. or more 

 are often numerous close inshore a little below low-water mark, 

 in two or three fathoms of water at the lowest spring tides. 



There are few baits which conger will not take. Among 

 the best are fresh squid ; cuttle treated like a beefsteak that is, 

 well beaten to make it tender ; a piece of mackerel, pilchard, 

 herring, or sprat. Unlike the bass, the conger has a decided 

 preference for a soft fresh bait, a fact which should be remem- 

 bered. It is as well to take the bone out of the bait, for congers 

 are not partial to anything hard ; and if we could do without 

 the hook so much the better, but that seems out of the ques- 

 tion. But I would say as to the hook, for this same reason, that 

 it should be no larger than is required to hold a large conger. 

 When the fish are biting shyly it is a good plan to use a rather 

 smaller hook than ordinary, burying it well in the bait, and 

 giving the fish plenty of time. The hook shown in the illustra- 

 tion on p. 74 is the largest I have ever found necessary, and I 

 have caught many a conger on hooks much smaller than that 

 shown. I had, for instance, a very lively twenty minutes with 

 a conger of 7 Ibs. in a strong tideway when angling for flat fish 

 with a fine gut paternoster and the little hook illustrated on 

 p. 406. A friend of mine was still more fortunate, killing a 

 i4|-lb. conger on a single lake-trout gut. But, all the same, gut 

 is not the right material to use when making up tackle for 

 conger. 



There are two, and very opposite, ways of defeating the 

 attempts of the conger to bite through the line. The snood 

 may be made so hard that it cannot be bitten through, or it 



