SEA FISHING 

 tides; but a lighter outfit could be used with success, for a tope of thirty 

 pounds has been landed (at Heme Bay) on single gut and dab tackle. 

 It is useful to know that a good blow on the lower side of the snout disables 

 most sharks, and Mr Daunou adopts the time-saving principle of nipping 

 through the trace and leaving the hook in each fish for subsequent re- 

 covery. There seems to be some doubt whether these fish come inshore 

 to give birth to their young (they do not spawn like the majority of fishes), 

 but, judging from the large number of females caught, with the young 

 ready for extrusion, this is probably their object. One writer on the subject 

 suggests (in the " Quarterly" of the British Sea Anglers' Society), an in- 

 genious method of groundbaiting for tope, which consists in tying the 

 entrails of a skate to a good-sized stone. This, as he points out, will keep 

 them on the ground far more effectually than loose heads or other morsels 

 which they can easily pick up and swim away with, and the principle 

 is worth applying in other cases where groundbaiting is involved. 



That angling for these big dogfish has of late years become a recog- 

 nized sport is in great measure due to the efforts of amateurs to find some 

 substitute for the big game of American seas. They cannot, of course, 

 compare for size and strength with the tuna, or for activity with the tarpon, 

 yet, insomuch as they are among the very few fishes of our seas that 

 actually jump out of water when hooked (I have seen large garfish behave 

 in the same fashion), they have some claim to popularity. Otherwise 

 catching these shore sharks, whether blue, porbeagle, spotted nurse, 

 or spur-dog, is usually accidental, furnishing occasional diversion from 

 the tamer amusement of reeling up bream or whiting, and the only pretext 

 for their intentional capture was formerly when, as already described, 

 their presence was found to scare more valuable fishes away. 



For the really gigantic sharks that infest the ocean, a menace to sea- 

 men, yet doubtless performing their allotted task in the general economy 

 of Nature, it is necessary to visit the tropics and neighbouring regions, 

 where these ferocious creatures often exceed a thousand pounds in weight 

 and twenty feet in length. I recollect one morning in May, some years ago, 

 while fishing for tarpon, as described in an earlier chapter, in Boca 

 Grande, being towed by a shark for a couple of hours and more. One of 

 the party had actually beached a comparatively trifiing specimen of three 

 or four hundred pounds or so, and seven or eight feet long, only the day 

 before, but the fish that seized my bait measured exactly fourteen feet, 

 and its weight was estimated at about twelve hundred pounds. There 



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