258 Fishing in Estuaries. CHAP. xvm. 



but say that, in my estimation, estuary fishing is highly unsatisfactory, 

 for the simple reason that the fish, whose habits are governed by the 

 tides, will not take except at the right time of the tide. If the tide 

 would always turn conveniently, just half an hour after one got out of 

 Cutchery, I would not complain. But as it is, the chances are just 

 about twenty-three to one against your hitting off the right time. If 

 your time is your own like a native fisherman's, and you do not mind 

 a little sun, and can study the tides, and be on the spot at the right 

 time, then you may have excellent sport. But how few Europeans 

 there are in India who have the necessary leisure. If you have the 

 leisure, and have come to know their times, this very periodicity of 

 their taking is in your favour. The fish are all on the feed at the 

 same time, and to be able to predict this beforehand, and to arrange 

 to meet them at dinner, is a very great point indeed. What lucky 

 and uncertain hours are those when the trout are fairly on the feed, 

 in a taking humour at home. How one fishes on, hour after hour, in 

 England, in spite of indifferent sport, in the expectancy that at any 

 time in the day there may be a change, with the air full of flies, and 

 the water covered with circles. But there is not such an amount of 

 uncertainty about the estuary fish. He takes his meals at regular 

 intervals, and you can tell his dinner hour as well as he can himself, 

 for his clock is in the heavens, to wit the moon ; only it is a little 

 like Captain Cuttle's famous watch, about which he gave the advice 

 and testimony " Put it back half an hour every morning, and about 

 another quarter towards the afternoon, and it's a watch that'll do you 

 credit." Similarly your fishing clock, the moon, is irregular, and 

 you must remember that it is not exactly 12 hours between high tide 

 and high tide, but nearer 12 hours and 20 minutes; though even this 

 odd 20 minutes is sometimes nearer 15, sometimes nearly 25. But you 

 will not be far wrong if you bear in mind that each high tide, after an 

 interval of 12 hours, is about 20 minutes later than its predecessor, 

 and as there is one in the night as well as in the day, the day high tide 

 recurs, more or less, about 40 minutes later than it did the day before. 



On the whole, therefore, the estuary fish is no lunatic for not 

 sitting down to table till the cloth is laid, and his dinner ready in 

 the shape of passing shoals of little fish j and, though his punctilious 

 punctuality, and his lunar time, may be inconvenient to me, there 

 may be others to whom it may be no bar to the closer cultivation 



