THE SEA FISHER IN FOREIGN PARTS 483 





leisure, for instead of seizing the bait with appetite and rushing 

 off with it, as any healthy-minded fish should do, it quietly 

 sucks in the morsel as it lies, so that you have no suspicion of 

 being engaged with a customer until you haul upon your line, 

 and find the creature well hooked. Some of these fish require 

 very cautious treatment, and it is always wise to conclude that 

 the stranger has knives and daggers concealed about his per- 

 son. The flathead has an unconscionable quantity of spines, 

 and demands very careful handling. I have known them 

 caught from fourteen pounds downwards, and their value at 

 dinner-time makes us anxious to basket them, although it is 

 always best to pin the victim to the ground with your foot 

 before removing the hook. 



The jew-fish, common in all the colonies, is the Sciana 

 antarctica of Castelnau, and is allied to the maigre of the 

 Mediterranean. The fish is better for appearance and sport than 

 for edible qualities ; is a rough outline of the salmon in shape, 

 almost as silvery as that royal fish, but with opaline tints over 

 the head and sides when the sun catches it. On its first appear- 

 ance out of the water it reflects the most beautiful colours, but 

 they soon fade, and the silvery sides rapidly become tarnished. 

 With appearance, however, any resemblance to the salmon ends, 

 for the flesh is white and soft, except in large specimens, when 

 a block cut out of the middle serves as a far-away reminder of 

 boiled cod and oyster sauce. As objects of the angler's desire 

 jew-fish are very capricious in their movements, appearing 

 sometimes in shoals, and at other times playing the truant for 

 weeks or months together. These fish run up to sixty pounds 

 in weight. 



The quiet bays of the Pacific, on the whole, furnish the best 

 sport with rod and line. We used to get capital angling by 

 wading in to meet the tide flowing shorewards over the clean 

 sandy flats, and the fish we used principally to basket was the 



