468 



MODERN SEA FISHING 



or three feet under water, with large hooks fastened about a 

 foot apart. This, however, is not sport, but deliberate stroke- 

 hauling ; the hooks are never baited, and the sturgeon in 

 swimming along are hooked foul. There are four kinds of 

 sturgeon in the Sea of Azoff, and residents in the country 

 swear to having seen a specimen of the largest variety 

 weighing 2,700 Ibs. This was, of course, a very exceptional 

 event, for fish of a thousand pounds and upwards are not 

 of common occurrence. The other fish in the Sea of Azoff 

 include carp, bream, perch, roach (Cyprinus vimbd), razor-fish, 

 and other smaller varieties. With regard to the commercially 

 important sturgeon, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to remind 

 the reader that they are never brisk bait-feeders, and the above 

 method of capture in southern Russia is successful only 

 because the sturgeon there swim in shoals near the surface. 



What is possible in distant and unknown waters in the matter 

 of sport has been admirably shown by 'Sarcelle,' to whom 

 reference has already been made. When he was appointed 

 to the consulship on the out-of-the-way bulge of North-West 

 Africa at Mogador no one had thought of mentioning it as 

 offering any sort of piscatorial attractions. Mr. Payton, how- 

 ever, by persevering trials found it all that he could desire 

 in that respect, and his contributions to current journalism, 

 based on those Moorish experiences, have proved an invaluable 

 exposition of sea angling at large. The strange fish which 

 periodically appeared on that open coast may be found, how- 

 ever, in many other countries, and the methods he proved 

 best for dealing with the powerful and formidable sea fish he 

 encountered might be adopted whenever similar conditions 

 occur. But for the capricious behaviour of the fish on their 

 annual visits, and the uncertainty as to their appearance, 

 Mogador might have been a sea angler's Paradise. 



The native Moors, whose characteristics are so pleasantly 



