POLLACK AND PILCHARDS 99 



breaks away with it, for, with so much way on 

 the boat, this fine gear has no chance of holding 

 the heavier fish. Some of the mackerel are fine 

 fish, though the majority are small, as the best 

 mackerel are taken at anchor on the drift-lines. 

 A few of them wi]l later make useful bait for the 

 big pollack, towards whose haunts we are steering 

 our course ; the rest will swell George's sales this 

 evening. It is a blazing hot August morning 

 with a little offshore breeze, which, as the weather 

 is set fair, we will use to help us out to Tom 

 Ash, a distant rock, so called for a reason that has 

 not survived in local tradition, where lie the big- 

 gest pollack caught in the neighbourhood. We 

 shall have a long sail of it, two hours or more, for 

 the ground lies ten miles away and is indeed 

 nearer to Fowey than to the little port we have 

 just left. Still, it is superb weather, and the mac- 

 kerel are coming in thick enough on the plummet- 

 lines to make the time pass merrily. We shall 

 not, it is true, get more than half an hour, or at 

 most forty minutes of fishing, for the spring tides 

 are very strong so far from land, and on Tom Ash 

 it is a question of a short time and a merry, since 

 it would require very heavy leads to keep the 

 baits down except at slack water. Yet better 

 forty minutes of Tom Ash than a cycle of the 

 grounds nearer land, where the pollack run 

 scarcely heavier than mackerel and are, weight 



