FISHING FROM PIERS AND HARBOURS. 103 
yards off filling their crops with sand-eels and 
smelts. The early bathers, arriving on the scene 
at half-past six, would put an end to the sport, but 
by that time I had generally caught sufficient. It 
was often tantalising, it is true, to leave just as the 
fish were fecding mightily. The pier-fishing at 
Leghorn was never disturbed in this way ! 
In the course of the following pages, allusion will 
be made to a number of our piers; but, although it 
would be easy to name a dozen better and half-a- 
dozen worse, it will be as well, as an example of 
the average, to say something in detail of that at 
Bournemouth. Having visited it on many ,o ne. 
occasions during the past seventeen years, mouth 
I know something of the fishing to be P'* 
obtained there. Ten years ago, it was still remark- 
ably good, and we used to get turbot of several 
pounds in weight during the months of July and 
August, fishing up to nine o’clock in the evening. 
Now, things are sadly changed indeed ; and, as the 
town has increased, so, as is usually the case, the 
fishing has gone from bad to worse. I have seen 
no turbot there this summer of a pound in weight ; 
the only bass would have gone six or eight to the 
pound, and, beside these, the flat fish were dwarfs. 
Yet the variety remains considerable, and among 
the score or more of fish that I have seen taken 
from that pier are bass, pollack, whiting, codling, 
pout, grey and red mullet (very rare), conger, 
mackerel, scad, dory, plaice, sand-dab, “lemon- 
sole,” sole, turbot, brill, gurnard, sand-eel, athcrine, 
wrasse, and skate—no bad choice! There are 
reasons why, if it were not for the steam traffic in 
the summer months, the fishing. from this pier 
should be excellent. It lies in a kind of back- 
