LEAVES FROM A GAME BOOK. SS 



of the sportsman ; and on this beautiful coast a small 

 cottage with a boat and man will provide daily excite- 

 ment at a very small cost. The most plentiful fishes 

 are the codling, whiting, and coal fish or saithe, whose 

 young are called cuddies. The coal fish I soon found to 

 be very partial to a fly dressed on an inch and a half 

 iron covered with a silver body, beginning and ending in 

 a head and tail of red worsted, while two long strips of 

 white swan feather made wings, which concoction, when 

 attached to a couple of lengths of old salmon gut, will 

 beat all the shop flies ; and with three of these I hooked 

 simultaneously, and later on landed, helped by a small 

 sharp gaff" wielded by a clever boatman, a treble event 

 in the shape of three coal fish of five pounds each. 



The sport with whiting as long as it lasts is usually 

 fast and furious, for, during the first two or three days 

 after the arrival of a shoal on the feeding bank, fi:om 

 ten to fifteen dozen may be pulled into the boat in a 

 few hours ; then on the third or fourth day the fishing 

 on that particular ground will be almost surely spoilt 

 by the quantities of dog-fish that have gathered together 



