300 ON SOME ODD WAYS OF FISHING 



rougher looking men. He will notice that they 

 have short, stout rods and poles in the boats, and 

 if he watches them, he will presently see them 

 take up their stations by the margin. Driving 

 poles in the mud at the stems and sterns of their 

 boats, the men make them fast ; and, taking their 

 seats, proceed to " bob " for eels. A quantity of 

 earthworms are strung on worsted, and, after being 

 weighted, are suspended by a stout line from a 

 short thick rod. The solitary fisherman holds one 

 of these rods in each hand on each side of the 

 boat, just feeling the bottom with the bait, and 

 now and then pulling it up and shaking the eels, 

 whose teeth get entangled in the worsted, into the 

 boat. There he sits silent and uncommunicative, 

 the greater part of the night and in all weathers, 

 for the sake, perhaps, of, on the average, a shilling's 

 worth of eels each night. Altogether his berth 

 must be a lonely one. His companions take their 

 positions too far off to hold conversation with him, 

 and the splash of a water-rat or the flaps of the 

 canvas of a belated wdierry and the cheery good- 

 night of its steersman are the only sounds to be- 

 guile the tedium of his midnight watching. 



Another mode of capturing eels is by " eel pick- 

 ing " in the lower waters of the Yare near Cantley. 

 Tlie man, armed with his eel spear, takes his stand 



