SEA FISHING 

 when used properly, is the most sensitive taclcle of all, enabling the fisher- 

 man to feel the slightest pull on the hooks, while it also keeps these some 

 distance from the lead, an advantage in clear or shallow water. 



The baits available for this " coarse fishing " in the sea are as varied 

 as the tackle. It is no longer a question of one bait or none. Here are no 

 bass that will look at nothing but the living sand-eel, or grey mullet 

 that must have bread paste, or conger that demand their food fresh and 

 soft. On the contrary, the angler has to deal with a much less fastidious 

 miscellany of fishes with large appetites and ready to snap at any trifle 

 such as lugworm, mussel, cockle, scallop, shore-crab, hermit-crab, 

 prawn, shrimp, mackerel, herring, pilchard, sprat, or, in fact, almost 

 anything eatable from their point of view. 



On the whole, the whiting is, perhaps, for its size, the most sport - 

 giving of them all, and where whiting are large and plentiful, as I once 

 remember finding them a couple of miles off Biarritz, the fun is fast 

 and furious. I have had merry times with these fish nearer home also, 

 as one morning at daybreak, within a few cables' length of the Eddystone 

 Lighthouse, but the tide runs with such terrific force in that locality that, 

 for those who use a light rod, with necessarily little lead to keep the hooks 

 down, no more than half an hour at slack water is left for fishing, and as it 

 is necessary, in order to get the fishing at dawn, to leave Plymouth over- 

 night, not many will go to the trouble and fatigue for so brief a chance 

 of sport. Those who do, however, may find themselves repaid with a 

 wonderful catch of whiting (and may catch nothing at all), and, sport 

 apart, the effect, on a fine morning in August, as the sun comes up out 

 of the East and reddens the Sound, is unforgettable among the com- 

 paratively few notable scenic memories treasured by those who fish 

 away from lakes and rivers. 



The majority of the fishes referred to in this short chapter, and certainly 

 the cod and whiting above the rest, are, in a sense, wanderers. Their 

 migrations may not be so closely associated with certain months of arrival 

 and departure as those of the mackerel, herring, or pilchard; and their 

 travels may be less along the coast than merely to and from the deeper 

 water out of reach of the fishermen, amateur or professional. Yet they 

 undoubtedly come and go, being more in evidence at one season than 

 another. Of the manner of their movements, however, and the duration 

 of their stay, wise men know less than they claim to, and even the fisher- 

 men who live by such knowledge are often at a loss. 



DDD 385 



