BASS AND MULLET 179 



Carefully, as only an experienced fisherman could 

 from such a height, he played his fish and presently 

 he had the satisfaction of landing a fine grey 

 mullet weighing four or five pounds. And this 

 is the fish that I have before now trained fifty 

 miles for in vain ! In ordinary circumstances, 

 of course, he would be a very foolish person who 

 brought out pollack tackle in the expectation of 

 catching grey mullet with it, but the pangs of 

 hunger may once in a way lend deadly attraction 

 to a hook and bait that would on other occasions 

 be rejected with scorn. I was also told of a parallel 

 case at Margate, where an obvious novice one day 

 captured two fine mullet on leger-tackle, baiting 

 with herring, while an expert, fishing close by with 

 everything appropriate, entirely failed. Much 

 also depends on the surroundings, in which the 

 angler seeks his fish. There is, for instance, all 

 the difference imaginable between the conditions 

 under which one bass may prowl along the beach 

 for such offal as accumulates near low water mark, 

 its sight impeded by the thickness of broken water, 

 its hearing confused by the roar of the surf, all 

 its senses, in fact, deadened to the presence of 

 danger and intent only on satisfying its hunger, 

 and another bass, which chases the sand-eels in 

 the clear still water of a tidal estuary. The latter 

 fish is conscious of every sound and every shadow, 

 of which fishes have cognisance at all, and will be 



