472 MODERN SEA FISHING 



the small fry of any silvery sea fish. The bonito is an old 

 friend, of course, of the sea angler, and his sporting qualities 

 are well known. Indeed, a fish of about 10 Ibs. is as lively 

 as a salmon. A basket of dead fry to use for casting out in 

 handfuls as a surface rather than a ground bait is one of 

 the tricks of this excitement, and a hook baited with a live 

 fish is thrown out into the boil created by the attracted fish. 

 The bonito is one of the few sea fishes that leap continually 

 out of the water. I have heard of a bonito of 40 \ Ibs. killed 

 in this way at St. Helena. 



The flamingo-haunted lakes, and the Suez Canal which skirts 

 or is part of them, abound with fish, and the sphinx-like Egyptian 

 is a most patient rod-angler along that famous waterway. A 

 beautiful bass is found at Ismai'lia, but it is fished for with the 

 clumsiest appliances, though the ' Bitter lake Trout,' as it is 

 designated, is a highly marketable commodity. The local fisher- 

 men lay night lines and are well content with the eight- or nine- 

 pounders which the morning brings them ignominiously hooked. 

 With a light bamboo rod, and shellfish bait which the donkey 

 boys of Lake Timsah readily procure for you, a basket of what 

 the Americans term ' pan fish ' can easily be caught, and it is 

 these young mullet and bream which haunt the woodwork of 

 the jetties that are used as bait for the bigger bass. The sailors 

 of ships lying at anchor get fish as long as their arm on the 

 most primitive of night lines. 



South of the tropics there is also sea angling of various sorts 

 for the resourceful sportsman. The colony to which men of 

 enterprise are now turning is in that direction, and at the Cape 

 there is rare sport in Simon's Bay. A fish represented as a 

 'Cape salmon 'of 26!* Ibs. was killed in November 1894 by 

 a learned professor (James Cameron, registrar of the University 

 of the Cape of Good Hope, and formerly classical professor in 

 the South African College). As such local names are often 



