326 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



which simultaneously seized the hooks and rushed off in different 

 directions, convinced me that the safer and speedier way of 

 carrying on would be with the single fly. This casualty oc- 

 curred after the capture of exactly a score of fish. My line being 

 repaired, however, I soon began to lose all idea of committing to 

 figures the exact amount of the afternoon's slaughter. For the 

 space of nearly four hours, it was a continuous and uncere- 

 monious dragging in of pollacks, large and middle-sized. Among 

 the large ones, several exceeded in weight seven or eight pounds. 

 A much greater number ranked betwixt five and two pounds ; 

 whereas the smallest astir on that memorable occasion exceeded 

 in size the usual run of the podley tribe in that neighbourhood, 

 one which much exceeds that of the podlies in the Firth of Forth. 

 Some estimate of the quantity caught on that afternoon's fishing 

 may be formed from the circumstance that, on entering Eye- 

 mouth harbour, at dusk, nine hampers or creels of fish, each 

 creel requiring two persons to carry it, were conveyed ashore. 

 Of these a proportion, numbering nearly a hundred, was taken, 

 by means of a short hand-line, by my eldest son, then a boy of 

 ten years old. 



In the same year, about the end of July, I caught, with the 

 herring-jiggers, as they are called, two large specimens of the 

 coal-fish, weighing severally upwards of twenty pounds. Her- 

 ring jigging, or jiggering, is a method of catching that invaluable 

 fish not generally known. It is carried on off the Berwickshire 

 coast, at the commencement of the season, before the fish incline 

 to come near the surface, and within scope of the nets. The 

 herrings taken by this expedient are among the best, in point of 

 condition, caught off the east coast of Scotland. 



The jigger may be described as a ladder, supported, in the 

 shape of strong cord -line, by a central stay, the cross-bars or 

 steps of which are formed of pieces of whalebone twenty inches 

 in length, and in thickness corresponding to the ribs of an 



