FISHING FROM PIERS AND HARBOURS. 127 
even on the spot is scarcely ever less than four- 
pence a score, and the normal supply is as a rule 
disposed of by previous arrangement to regular 
customers. The best way for the stranger will be 
to seek out a loafer in the narrow old streets near 
the Lord Warden, where loafers are as thick as 
thieves, and offer sixpence a score, making it quite 
plain at the outset (and whcther it be strictly truce 
or not) that he knows the smaller rag-worm per- 
fectly well (N.B., it is called mudworim at Dover) 
and will have none of it. The real rock-worm is a 
splendid pink animal, very muscular looking for all 
its want of backbone, and provided with retractile 
nippers, with which, more especially if applied to 
the tender flesh between your fingers, it can give a 
very good account of itself. The hermit-crab 
worm, alluded to in the next chapter, is also 
admirable. One large worm (or two or three small) 
should be hooked through the head, just above the 
said nippers, and the hook—a single hook is suffi- 
cient—should be either kept about three feet from 
the bottom, somewhat higher towards evening, 
when the pollack feed nearer the top of the water, 
with the pike-float and bristle as described for 
mackerel, or, better still, allowed to drift out with 
the tide, a lead of not more than two or three 
ounces being attached to the line a foot above it. 
A third method is to use a paternoster with two 
hooks and a heavy pear-shaped lead to keep it in 
position. But on whatever tackle your pollack is 
hooked, the method of bringing him safely to bag 
is always the same. This will not come in- 
stinctively, but only with a knowledge, often gained 
by rough experiences and loss of valuable gear, of 
the pollack’s strange tactics when trying his best 
