THE FISH OF DORSET. 3 



Puddle. In Studland Bay, near the chalk cliffs, there are beds of 

 sea-grass (Zostera marina) beloved of red mullet, and at Standfast 

 Point, or Old Harry, begins the succession of rocks and rocky 

 ground that extends as far as White-nose and Ringstead. With the 

 exception of one or two such open beaches as Warbarrow Bay, where 

 seines can be used, the only other nets in use are trammels or set 

 nets, and the fish taken are pollock, pout, wrass, bream, and other 

 rock-loving fish, and these are mostly used as bait for crab-pots, the 

 crab and lobster fishing forming the staple industry of this part of the 

 coast. We now come to Weymouth Bay, where the sandy, oozy 

 bottom enables trawling to be carried on, and the shallow water 

 near the shore the use of team or tuck seines. 



At times large numbers of mackerel are taken in the largo 

 seines used from a boat in the Bay and not brought to shore, and 

 when, in August and September, the schools break up, are also 

 taken with hook and lines between the end of the Breakwater at 

 Portland and White-nose. Then in Weymouth Harbour and 

 Backwater there are bass, grey mullet, eels, flounders, and any 

 number of atherine or sand smelts, and the same in the Fleet. 

 At Portland, with its Breakwaters, we come again to rough and 

 rocky ground covered more or less with seaweed, where great 

 numbers of small pout and pollock, with an occasional conger, are 

 to be got, and afford good sport to some of the summer visitors to 

 Wcymouth. We then come to the Chesil Beach, along the 

 whole length of which the large seines are worked, and 

 where at times enormous quantities of mackerel are taken 

 besides all sorts of other fish, and so on to our western boundary. 

 Most of the larger and rarer fish are caught in these nets, for 

 Portland seems rather to act as a stop to fish going further cast. And 

 now I may say that we have no large fishery on our coast with its 

 attendant fleet of large boats, such as you find at Brixham to the 

 west, and on the coast of Sussex on the east. All our fishing takes 

 place within the three-mile limit, and, according to the Board of 

 Trade returns, there is only one first-class fishing boat (i.e., over 15 

 tons) on the whole coast, and that is at Lyme Regis. 



