482 MODERN SEA FISHING 



The everyday sea angling is of a more simple kind, and can 

 be indulged in without a chart and the victualling of a ship. 

 Round the Australian coasts there are always sea breams, and 

 on sandy beaches three or four kinds of whiting. Jew-fish and 

 many other species come into the rivers at given seasons, and 

 among them sea mullet in prodigious numbers. These, as 

 under the Great Bear, are not free biting, but the smaller sizes 

 are often taken when angling for other species with rod and 

 line, either from the moored boat, or from rocks and banks. 



At Brisbane our little property, with its buffalo grass sward, 

 was protected from the tide by a ridge of rocks and mangroves, 

 and all we had to do when fancy prompted us was to walk 

 down past the orange trees, seat ourselves on the bank or in 

 the punt, and let the float make its allotted swims. Some- 

 times there were only obnoxious catfish ; sometimes small 

 mullet appeared ; but our common stock were bream, which, 

 when they were foraging near, loved to grope about the roots 

 of the mangroves, and we could catch them either with prawns 

 (of which we took quantities off the garden by sinking a minnow 

 net made of muslin) or by lumps of paste covering the hook. 

 It would be a very good specimen which ran to i^ Ib. ; and the 

 fish was worthy of respect, being game to the death, and out of 

 the water no disgrace to the best frying-pan ever imported. 



In these waters you never quite know what you are going 

 to hook. Sometimes the tidal rivers appear to be in undis- 

 turbed possession of a queer little fellow that is called a perch 

 because, I suppose, it has little of the perch about it except its 

 bars, and its boldness in the matter of biting. It has a blunt 

 head, and square mouth overhung by a thick bony snout ; and 

 there are at least two kinds, the gold and the silver. A sea fish 

 that comes into notice when the water is thoroughly salt, and 

 sharks are reported amongst the shipping, is the flathead. 

 He is a peculiarly artful or lazy fish, that seems to do business at 



