206 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



firm bed of the river. There was no wind, and the sun was 

 cloudless, so that I could see all they did ; and as such a sight 

 never chanced to me before, and, perhaps, very seldom to any 

 one, instead of trying to catch the fish, for a time I observed 

 their motions. One fixed its mouth to the clay, and having 

 twisted round and round gimlet fashion, till it had got its 

 mouth filled with a great pellet, then fell back for about a yard 

 down stream and deposited its load, returning to do the same 

 thing again, the other fish taking turn and turn about and 

 conveying the clay to the same spot. Having watched the 

 operation, and made up my mind that they were boring a hole 

 either to live in or to deposit their spawn, I took off my perch 

 hook and put on a set of snap hooks for pike, attaching a bullet 

 to the line about a foot or more from the hooks to sink them. 

 Casting the hooks up stream, to allow for the strength of the 

 current, and far enough to pitch the bullet well beyond the 

 spot where the fish were at work, the instant the bullet, which 

 was visible, was in a line with the fish, I struck with a down- 

 ward twist of the wrist; the second throw hooked the larger 

 lamprey of the two, and I landed it ; the other, not appearing 

 to miss its consort, returned to work as busily as ever, and in 

 three throws more I had the brace. The two weighed some- 

 thing under four pounds. There is very good sport to be had 

 also in Christchurch harbour at low tides, on a still and sunny 

 day, with the flounder spear. I have often leaned idly over the 

 side of my little flat-bottomed boat, a man with the oars simply 

 to stop or steady her, and let her float with the almost slack 

 tide over the mud, while I kept a look-out for the face or else 

 for the slight delineation beneath the surface of the mud of a 

 flounder's form. A steady, quick stab pierces the back of the 

 fish, and a peculiar turn of the wrist to bring the fish up edge- 

 ways, and prevent the broad surface he would otherways offer to 

 the water forcing him off the barb, and he is safe in the bottom 

 of the boat. Many a dish of fish I have caught this way, in as 

 idle a manner as the most lazy pleasure-seeker could desire. A 

 good deal of occupation that harbour has afforded me in com- 



