SEA FISHING 

 such help, sailing or rowing over a considerable area of water and fishing 

 it as thoroughly as one would fish a pool for trout or salmon. In the case, 

 however, of fishes that, like cod, whiting and conger, keep to a particular 

 ground, it is essential to know exactly where to anchor the boat. Gener- 

 ally speaking, it must be anchored over rocky ground for pollack, pout, 

 bream, or conger, and on a sandy bottom for whiting, gurnard and flat- 

 fish. Much more, however, goes to the proper anchoring of the boat than 

 such merely empirical knowledge as this, and experienced fishermen 

 of the locality know, from certain " marks " ashore, how to anchor the 

 boat exactly, so that, with the tide running a known strength, the lines 

 shall so cant away from the boat's side as to put the baits on one particular 

 spot. There is no fish in our seas in the capture of which this precision 

 is of greater importance than in that of the whiting pout, which congregate 

 in deep clefts in the sunken rocks, down which the baited hook must be 

 dropped if the pout are to have any chance of taking it. This is why it often 

 happens, when fishing for large pout on the outer grounds down in Corn- 

 wall, that one rod in the boat may be reeling in pout, two at a time, while 

 the rest do not get a single bite. As a matter of fact, when these pout are 

 feeding furiously, handlines are to be preferred, as the constant reeling 

 of twenty fathoms of line is exhausting work. 



Of the management of boats, sailing or otherwise, I have said, and 

 will say, nothing. It is a separate art from that of angling, and lies outside 

 the scope of this book. Launching small boats through surf from a flat 

 beach, beaching them on sloping shingle, sailing them in all manner 

 of weather, and on every type of coast, are matters of first importance in sea 

 fishing, but proficiency is not to be learnt from print. The intelligent 

 angler will acquire these accomplishments for himself; the wise one will 

 take an experienced boatman with him and leave all responsibility in safe 

 hands. 



It is particularly in fishing out of a boat that ground-bait may be 

 used with advantage. This invitation to the fish of the neighbourhood 

 to come and feed can, it is true, be sent out from piers or rocks, but, with 

 strangers fishing on all sides, it is as likely to benefit them as him who 

 goes to the trouble of preparing it and, since anglers are not more un- 

 selfish than their neighbours who play bridge or golf, it is usually dis- 

 pensed with for that reason. Scattered round a boat, on the other hand, 

 it not only attracts outlying fish, but keeps those already on the ground 

 together in the hope of further favours to come. The kind of ground- 



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