70 ON SEA-FISHING. [PART I. 
People really seem generally to regard sea-fish 
as a low order of brutes, almost destitute of com- 
mon instinct, and upon which any care or atten- 
tion would be quite thrown away. A fisherman, 
who piques himself on the fineness of his river- 
tackle, and would sedulously clip off the sixteenth 
of an inch of gut which might project beyond a 
knot, or discard a whole length, if it happened to 
be at all flat or opaque, will yet be content to have 
next his hooks, when Sea-fishing, snooding as thick 
as an ordinary salmon-line, and often untwisted 
so as rather to resemble mop-yarn than what it 
pretends to be,—this roughly tied on coarse rusty 
hooks, and the rest of his apparatus clumsy to 
match. Now such a person need scarcely be re- 
minded that all animals, sea-fish included, have an 
instinctive sense of danger, and that it would be 
difficult to convey to any one the knowledge that 
a trap is laid for him, more effectually than 
by exhibiting next the hook such very obvious 
machinery for his destruction. Why, it’s a positive 
insult to the intelligence of the fish! “If a thing 
is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well,” says 
the old proverb; and yet many a man at the sea- 
side, when inclined to “have a turn at the Whit- 
ing,” without taking the slightest trouble about 
