BASS AND MULLET 181 



I would always for preference use live bait for 

 game fish, like bass or mackerel, whenever it could 

 be obtained. The grey mullet, on the other hand, 

 though attractive by reason of its wary behaviour 

 and strength when hooked, is not, so far as we 

 know, a fish of predatory habits and must be 

 angled for with paste or rag-worms for bait. 



With almost consistent ill luck, fragments of 

 which have been referred to in the foregoing pages, 

 I had sought the bass for about fifteen years from 

 a dozen piers and foreshores and in more than one 

 estuary, when a whim took me to Teignmouth in 

 the summer of 1900. I had often looked out on 

 the tempting blue river with the background of red 

 cliff, when travelling to or from the West country, 

 and had been puzzled as to what they fished for 

 from the boats below the footbridge. Now, I 

 know, for in that hallowed quarter of a mile of 

 brackish water I have, during the last six summers, 

 caught practically all the bass I ever got in my 

 life, and nowhere else have I found the match of 

 this peaceful and delightful estuary fishing. It 

 is creek-angling, as in Australia, with a grander 

 fish for your object than the small black bream 

 or gross flat head. It is sea-fishing without the 

 tossing ; it is river-fishing without the stagnation. 

 Let me describe a typical morning's fishing in 

 this estuary, where sport with the bass has this 

 further advantage for a professional man that he 



