THE SEA FISHER IN FOREIGN PARTS 475 



seer-fish, afford real sport from March to June, trolling with a 

 salmon rod. 



The Antipodes provide much amusement for the sea-angling 

 colonists, and, save in New Zealand, Tasmania, and, to a limited 

 degree, Victoria, it is to the salt rather than to the fresh water 

 that they must look for sport. So far as Australia proper is 

 concerned, there is nothing more thoroughly enjoyed, and more 

 enjoyable, than that to which the schnapper party addresses itself. 

 It comes in the cool months, when the days and nights are 

 cloudless, and there are no mosquitos. Under these circum- 

 stances, and with sport to be reckoned in gross weight, if the 

 fates are propitious, by the ton, your schnapper party is generally 

 hopeful certainly hopeful at the start. These excursions have 

 a family likeness in all the colonies, for the schnapper will not 

 come up the river to be taken by a mere picnic gathering of 

 ladies and gentlemen, but has to be sought on his rocky sea 

 haunts. In the case of Queensland, where I had my best ex- 

 perience, it meant a voyage to the Flat Rock in Moreton Bay, 

 and many a delightful expedition did we make in the govern- 

 ment steamer Kate. 



A sketch of a schnapper excursion, as we made them in 

 those parts, may be given as in general features typical of those 

 in other colonies. You start early on the afternoon of a kind 

 of day when a man must indeed be bad in mind and body not 

 to feel that, spite of hard times, it is something after all to be 

 alive ; something to possess lungs that will drink deep draughts 

 of an exhilarating atmosphere. The true type of a Queensland 

 winter day is a keen morning, that smells of frost but bites not, 

 cloudless hours of warm sunshine, a radiant and rapid sunset 

 over purple-tinted mountains and woods, and, with eventide, a 

 return of the scent and feeling of incipient frost. Every object 

 of the river trip is a greeting ; the white paint of the houses is 

 bright as the light, and the dingiest gum tree, bathed in the 



