EXPERIENCES & REMINISCENCES. 105 



the Trent from the sea with the swallows (Mr. Hopper thinks 

 it right to explain that of course these old anglers don't mean 

 that the swallows come from the bottom of the sea and travel 

 alongside with the eels, but that they both arrive about the 

 same time) and that they disappear from the river when the 

 swallows go away. 



There is a very common notion prevalent amongst 

 fishermen that eels are nocturnal fish, and that at night 

 they will travel over land from one sheet of water to 

 another. Some years ago a correspondent of the Fishing 

 Gazette asserted that an old fisherman told him the eels came 

 out of the river during the night and fed on the worms on the 

 grass, and that the old fisherman said he had seen them 

 scuttling back into the river on his approach. Query, was the 

 old fisherman having the correspondent " on " a bit ? Mr. 

 Hopper has been out in the vicinity of rivers and ponds under 

 all conditions of weather, and he can aver with truth that he has 

 never met an eel taking a cross-country journey, nor has he 

 ever met with eels having their supper on the grass and seen 

 them " scuttle," as the old fisherman averred he had done. 

 Perhaps other Grimsby anglers have been more fortunate in 

 this respect or more observant than Mr. Hopper has been. 



Anglers are often reproached by persons who do not follow 

 " the gentle art " that they are cruel beings by causing pain to 

 the fish when hooking them, or to the worm when threading it 

 on the hook ; but it is a fact pretty well known that cold- 

 blooded animals do not feel pain in the same manner that 

 warm-blooded ones do, and the lower the animal organization 

 the less sensibility to pain it has. A fair test is whether a fish 

 which has been hooked and has got rid of the hook will come 

 again for the bait. Some years ago Mr. Hopper was spinning 

 for trout with a minnow set up on a treble hook, and he hooked 

 a trout of about i Ib. weight and played it for about 10 seconds, 

 when it got free from the hook and bolted under a tree stump 

 from which it had come to rush at the minnow. The line was 

 at once thrown into the stream, which was clear and low, and 

 the trout again made for the minnow, and was again hooked, 

 and once more he disengaged himself and retired in haste to 



