SEA FISHING 

 of that coast come inshore after sardines and anchovies, they are caught 

 by day also, and with either of these little fish for bait. In bright and 

 breezy weather, particularly off headlands, there fish feed close to the 

 surf, and will take either flies or spinners, but in perfectly calm weather 

 they must, as a rule, be looked for lower down. 



Although, like its freshwater relative the perch, the bass is essentially 

 a predatory fish, its eyesight is at times curiously defective. I remember 

 being on one occasion much impressed by this weakness when standing 

 on the viaduct at Barmouth, on a summer afternoon in 1903, and watching 

 hundreds of big bass ascending the River Mawddach, obviously in order 

 to find food, and apparently unable to see myriads of sand-eels, which 

 were playing a very short distance from the course they took in hurrying 

 through the arches. 



Large bass do not jump out of water when hooked, like salmon or tarpon, 

 but the shoal fish sometimes leap when playing at the surface, and the 

 big bass often roll lazily at the surface on hot days. Large, as well as 

 small, they are capricious feeders, though it is perhaps the exception 

 for them to ignore a lively prawn or sand-eel put within their reach. In 

 heavy weather, when a thunderstorm is threatening, they commonly 

 decline any bait whatever, and it is to this condition that I attributed their 

 reluctance to feed (in the Teign) during the eclipse of August 30, 1905, 

 rather than to the influence of that phenomenon. The river was full of 

 them, but I only succeeded in accidentally foul-hooking one while the 

 eclipse was at its height. 



As has already been suggested, the bass, which is alternately eagle 

 and vulture in its appetites, now dashing among the sand-eels as fiercely 

 as a pike among the gudgeon, now routing for rubbish under the barges, 

 like an eel, favours a greater variety of baits than most fish. The curious 

 and interesting fact about most of these is that each, though killing in its 

 own particular neighbourhood, may be quite useless at a neighbouring 

 resort. I am not prepared to say that a living sand-eel would not tempt 

 a bass in most places, but it must be remembered that living sand-eels 

 are not everywhere to be had. They can only, in fact, be relied on where, 

 as at Teignmouth, a shore-seine is shot regularly throughout the summer, 

 or where, as in parts of the Channel Islands, sufficient sand-eels can be 

 raked any moonlight night. The process of raking them, however, is very 

 liable to injure these delicate little fish, and those caught in the seine 

 are always preferable for bait. 



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