SEA FISHING 

 an old trout -rod, with three yards of single gut, a two -ounce lead, and a 

 single hook baited as above. The boat should be rowed, not sailed. If the 

 mackerel are feeding lower down, as they commonly do after the middle 

 of August, the boat may be anchored, for the shoals are no longer moving 

 up and down the coast as they did earlier in the summer, but the fish are 

 more generally distributed and less restless. A little ground -bait may 

 be used with advantage in keeping them round the boat. The most effective 

 ground -baiting for mackerel in all my experience is that practised by 

 the Portuguese and half-caste fishermen at Madeira. All through the 

 summer a little fleet of open boats gathers just before sunset off the head- 

 land crowned by the hotel, and no sooner are the anchors down than a 

 great din of hammering comes over the water, caused by many choppers 

 falling on slabs of tunny and cutting them to mincemeat for bait. This is 

 next thrown into the water by the handful, and the fishermen declare 

 that the noise made by the chopping is part of the attraction, calling the 

 mackerel to table, in fact, like the *' hash-hammer " of the American 

 maiden in ** Punch." Whether or not this is the case, I am unable to say, 

 but, if negative evidence goes for anything, I am. bound to admit that very 

 few mackerel came round my boat when I left the shore with the bait 

 ready cut up. Habit may become second nature, even in the sea, and the 

 Madeira mackerel may have learnt to gather to the feast at the bidding 

 of that sunset tocsin. In much the same manner, the Arabs, fishing for 

 cavalli off Zanzibar, first attract the attention of the fish by splashing 

 their hands in the water, and then throw several live fish overboard, 

 one of them with a hook through its lips. The cavalli, which are distantly 

 related to the mackerel, run up to a weight of ten pounds, and are deter- 

 mined fighters. 



The tackle used by these mackerel -fishermen at Madeira is peculiar. 

 It consists of a light cane rod, having neither reel nor rings, and carrying 

 a short, fine line with a single hook. In the twilight that comes after the 

 sun is behind the hills, the mackerel do not feed right at the top of the 

 water, but keep a fathom or two below, and the natives actually hold their 

 rods under water, pointing them vertically downward to reach the re- 

 quired depth. This manner of fishing, with the entire rod immersed, is by 

 no means easy at first, but the fish cannot be caught, at any rate on the 

 native rods, in the ordinary way until darkness falls on the sea, when the 

 mackerel take the bait at the surface, and the rod may be held in the 

 ordinary position. 



375 



