80 SEA-FISH. 
A very pleasant day or night may, however, be 
spent on the outer grounds, ten or more miles 
from the coast, where, as a change from the more 
delicate fishing inshore, the angler—the word is 
used in its broadest sense—may pit his strength 
against heavy skate and conger, fish reckoned in 
stone, not pounds. For work of this description, 
the rod is quite out of place. I do not assert that 
it would, with a few hours to spare, be impossible 
to kill a skate of 100 lbs. on a short stiff rod of 
the kind used for tarpon. It is injudicious in these 
days to pronounce any feat of skill an impossibility. 
But I may say, at any rate, that, so far as my own 
taste goes, it would be an intensely wearisome pro- 
ceeding—a nuisance to every one in the boat and 
a strain of the severest kind on the tackle. With 
the hand-line, on the other hand, such prizes are 
brought to book in a few moments ; and, apart from 
the novelty of tackling very powerful fish, they 
give, whether on rod or hand-line, the poorest of 
sport in the ordinary acceptation of the term, so 
that he who soonest gets his skate or conger into 
the boat may fairly be reckoned best man. 
There are occasions, indecd, on which, out of 
regard for the probable arrival of sharks and their 
kind, it is not advisable to leave shore without 
at least one stout line aboard. A case in point 
occurred on the occasion of my first outing this 
spring, the 27th of April, and, so far as fishing 
went, the first fine day at Bournemouth since the 
previous September. We immediately struck a patch 
of small spring silver whiting, which bit greedily 
at mackerel-bait. Of a sudden, and after each of 
us had caught a number, there came a lull in the 
proceedings, and the fish had evidently gone off. 
