SPEAKING GENERALLY 5 



a wasp alive, tastes differ. There are not in 

 British seas three fishes that give the fisherman 

 better sport than the bass, pollack and grey mullet, 

 yet not one of them, save perhaps when quite 

 small, is to my mind pleasant eating, though 

 some folks appreciate them, and I never find any 

 difficulty in giving them to grateful friends. Food, 

 however reasonable a motive of sport, has long 

 ceased to count for much, and there are few anglers 

 so successful that they could not buy at market- 

 price as much as they catch for a fraction of what 

 it cost when caught for sport. 



In the matter of the expense entailed, sea-fish- 

 ing probably ranks midway between the two kinds 

 of sport previously named. On the one hand, 

 it is free from the heavy rentals charged for 

 stretches of salmon-water ; on the other, it can 

 rarely be regarded as quite rent-free, like, for 

 instance, roach-fishing from the banks of Thames 

 or Lea, because, unless pursued from a crowded 

 beach or an overfished and disturbed harbour, there 

 is usually something to pay for admission to a 

 pier or hire of a boat. The sport is a develop- 

 ment of comparatively recent date. Twenty years 

 ago, anyone who unpacked a rod on a pier was 

 almost as certain of drawing a crowd as if he had 

 produced a performing bear. To-day, a score of 

 rods wave unnoticed from the piers at Deal, 

 Brighton, Plymouth and a hundred other resorts 



