FISHING FROM PIERS AND HARBOURS. to9 
there were few days in August when I could not 
secure a hundred pout from Hastings pier, averaging 
six to the pound, with a few consolation half- 
pounders thrown in. 
But in serious picr-fishing, the importance of 
tides must always be the paramount consideration, 
especially where the water is too shallow at low 
tide to admit of any fishing at all, which by no 
means indicates that the sport at high water may 
not be excellent. The one pier on which, I think, 
the state of the tide means little or nothing gouth- 
is that interminable structure at Southend, ¢"4 pier 
where autumn anglers make large bags of whiting 
and flounders and dabs the whole day through. 
The worst of it is that the October day is so 
short, that, as the tram is no longer working, the 
double walk of a mile and a quarter cach way 
makes a good deal of work for the short time 
available. Near town, however, and reached by 
two lines that believe in cheap fares, Southend is 
sure to enjoy a long reign with a certain number 
of sea-anglers residing in the metropolis. Other- 
wise, the further you get from “the great smoke” 
the better the sport. Cornwall, Scotland, and 
Ireland, the Channel Islands, the fjords of Norway, 
—these are some of the localities in which sea-fishing 
meets with wonderful success. For all that, if, 
as the gentleman who is reintroducing the long 
bow for sporting purposes thinks, difficulty is the 
cream of true sport, there should be some conso- 
lation in the reflection that it wants more skill to 
deceive a single bass or grey mullet in the dis- 
turbed, over-fished waters in the home countics 
than to bag a hundred lythe further north. I 
have caught in little over an hour forty large perch 
