154 Mind the dinner hour. Chapt. xii. 



ing is in your favor. The fish are all on the feed at the 

 same time, and to be able to predict this beforehand, 

 and to arrange to meet them at dinner, is a very great 

 point indeed. What lucky and uncertain hours are those 

 when the trout are fairly on the feed, in a taking humour, 

 at home. How one fishes on, hour after hour, in Eng- 

 land, in spite of indifferent sport, in the expectancy that 

 at any time in the day there may be a change, with 

 the air full of flies, and the water covered with circles. 

 But there is no such uncertainty about the estuary fish. 

 He takes his meals at regular intervals, and you can tell 

 his dinner hour as well as he can himself, for his clock 

 is in the heavens, to wit the moon ; only it is a little like 

 Captain Cuttle's famous watch, about which he gave the 

 advice and testimony — "Put it back half an hour every 

 "morning, and about another quarter towards the after- 

 "noon, and it's a watch that '11 do you credit." Similarly 

 the moon too will do you credit, if you remember that it 

 is not exactly 12 hours between high tide and high tide, 

 but nearer 12 hours and 20 minutes; though even this 

 odd 20 minutes is sometimes nearer 15, sometimes nearly 

 25. But you will not be far wrong if you bear in mind 

 that each high tide,- after an interval of 12 hours, is about 

 20 minutes later than its predecessor, and as there is 

 one in the night as well as in the day, the day high tide 

 recurs, more or less, about 40 minutes later than it did 

 the day before. 



On the whole therefore the estuary fish is no lunatic 

 for not sitting down to table till the cloth is laid, and 



