118 SEA-FISH. 
or squid would often account for something, even 
if it were only a five or six pound conger. Another 
class of sportsmen used to fish at the bottom with 
many small hooks baited with lobworms and catch 
good baskets of fresh-water eels that come working 
west along the coast from Rye Harbour, visiting 
the salt water to spawn and then die, after which 
their offspring make their way up the nearest river. 
Drift-line fishing with either live or dead bait is 
fully discussed in the next chapter. As it is far 
more often practised for pollack from a boat, I have 
not thought fit to anticipate the subject in the pre- 
sent chapter. The difficulties, so far as pier- or 
harbour-fishing is concerned, are getting the current 
to take the hook and line clear of the ironwork or 
masonry, and striking quickly enough with some 
fifty yards of line out, for somehow or other this 
method rarely meets with any response until the 
bait has travelled some distance. No float is used, 
the single hook, at the end of a three-yard trace of 
salmon-gut, being allowed to drift with the current, 
unchecked but for a half-ounce pipe lead. Bass 
may be taken in this manner with the green crab 
uscd as above; but the bait of baits, if only pro- 
Sand- curable, is the living sand-eel. I was al- 
eel bait ways at a loss for this wonderful bait until 
the present year, which was the more annoying 
since millions of these fish are, as I have had occa: 
sion to mention on a previous page, to be seen and 
caught throughout the summer from Bournemouth 
pier, close to which I have spent the last two 
summers. Last year I tried a number of devices, 
not for hooking the slippery little launce, for that 
was always casy, but for kecping them among the 
living until such time, later in the day, as they 
