I 4 8 DRIFT-LINE FISHING FOR BASS 



feet in diameter, for by this means you will enclose an area of 

 undisturbed sand. Work towards the centre round the inner 

 edge of the trench ; the Sand-Eels will retire before you, and 

 in the last twenty or thirty strokes you may get a number of 

 them. I have struck out of the sand as many as half a dozen 

 at a stroke when they are plentiful. To all these details, 

 whether it be regarding the actual fishing or in the procuring of 

 bait, due attention must be paid, or sport cannot be expected. 

 The following description of a few hours' fishing on September 

 2, 1872, at Teignmouth harbour, as it gives the whole modus 

 operandi, will doubtless be welcome to our readers. We 

 anchored in Shaldon Pool, just inside the harbour's mouth, at 

 10.30 A.M., wishing to commence fishing at three-quarters ebb 

 tide. At and near the spring tides quantities of weed are in 

 motion, and fishing is therefore impracticable until nearly low 

 water ; that is to say, until three-quarters of the ebb tide 

 has run out, at which time the current has considerably 

 slackened, and the drifting weed for the most part been 

 carried out to sea. As the bottom of this pool is much 

 of it very rocky, or, as sailors term it, foul, it is necessary to 

 scow or bark the anchor, by which method you are generally 

 enabled to lift it if it should drag into a rock. For this method, 

 see p. 202. A stone is not, in a locality of this sort, so well 

 adapted as a scowed anchor, as the anchor will hold in a gravel 

 bottom, clear of the rocks, which a stone will not. Having 

 moored the boat, we prepare for fishing in the following 

 manner. In the first place we remove the basket from its 

 position at the stern, and make fast its cord to the middle 

 thwart of the boat, in order that it may be both readily acces- 

 sible and also out of the way when playing fish, which some- 

 times sheer across the stern from side to side in their efforts to 

 escape, and might probably get free if any obstacle were offered 

 to the adroit handling of the line. We are provided with a 

 bucket of a coarse open canvas known as cheesecloth, depth 

 one foot, diameter 9 inches. It is kept open by two cane hoops 

 at top and bottom, and a lead of couple of pounds weight, 

 attached by a sling to the lower hoop, keeps it sufficiently sub- 

 merged, that is to say, about a third of its depth. We sling 



