238 Fishing in Estuaries. CHAP. xvm. 



advancing tide the swirls passed upwards, and I could plainly watch 

 their course into the far distance. It was clear that the text at the 

 head of the chapter was closely applicable, and it came into one's mind 

 at once 



"There is a tide in the affairs of fish, 

 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." 



It was not the same at the ebb tide. It was only at the commence- 

 ment of the flood tide that the fish were moving. These fish were, I 

 am inclined to think, the rock-fish mentioned above, and sometimes 

 Lates calcarifer. 



But why is it, you will want to know, that the big fish in estuaries 

 cannot be content to feed in one place, like the big fish in the rivers 

 above tidal influence ? Why is it that they must be for ever advancing 

 with the advancing tide ? You want a reason, and I will give you one. 

 If you place yourself on a projecting rock, or stone jetty, and watch the 

 first flow of the incoming tide, you will see innumerable shoals of 

 minute fish, from an inch long and upwards, coasting busily up the 

 river.* They are near the surface, and you can see them well. Keep 

 motionless, and as much out of sight as you can, that you may not 

 frighten them or anything else, but may see them pursuing their natural 

 course. How pretty and sociable they look ! Dash into them goes a 

 huge open-mouthed ruthless-looking monster, and makes a cruel gap 

 in their closely-packed column. It is pitiful to behold. Poor little 

 things, how like they are to soldiers when a great round shot has torn 

 through their ranks. They close up again and press on. 



"They fill 

 The ranks unthinned though slaughtered still." 



Dash goes another monster, or, perhaps, the same one, and again 

 there is an obvious gap. " Close up, close up," is the word, and so 



* They coast, because there is always a back-draught, or back-flow of water, at 

 the edge of every stream, in the opposite direction to the main current of the stream, 

 and caused by the stream carrying down, by friction, water that must return to fill up 

 the vacuum it left as soon as it is released from the power of the friction that removed 

 it. This back-flow is constant in all rivers throughout their length, and the tide on 

 entering a river, and while still contending with the current of the stream, takes first 

 advantage of this back-flow, and accelerates it, till merged in the general inflow of the 

 tide. Small fish wishing to ascend a river take advantage of this back-flow, which is 

 always running up each shore, and thus by coasting they get up a river, without 

 having to swim against the stream. 



