en they come in upon the
shallows. The fish hook themselves, and are generally hauled neck and
crop into the boat; but the careful boatman will have a gaff on board
for the emergency of a ten-pounder or over. Many, however, do not
affect this luxury, but treat great and small alike on the
pulley-hauley principle. They say, nevertheless, that few fish are
lost. The hooks are so big and strong that there is no reason why they
should be lost when once they are securely hooked, as they will almost
invariably be by this easy style. The boatman is always maintaining
his steady two mile an hour pace, just sufficient in fact to keep the
spoon on the spin, and the lightly hooked fish of course quickly find
freedom by honest and abrupt tearage. The coarse triangle fairly
within the bony jaws would be instantly struck into solid holding
ground, and with tackle fit for sharks, there would be no more to be
said. Something, however, there would be to be done, and the same
simplicity which characterises the style of angling is carried on to
the process of dealing with a hooked fish.

"Yank him in," is the order for medium sizes, and I had the opportunity
very early of seeing how it was done. We were nearing a canoe in which
a gentleman was seated, holding his hand-line over the gunwale, and
slightly jerking it to and fro; suddenly he struck with might and main.
The effort should, as one would suppose, have wrenched the head off an
ordinary fish, and I should say this event often happens with 2-lb. or
3-lb. victims. In this instance there was no harm done. Out of the
water, like a trout, ten yards or so astern of the canoe, came a
yellow-hued, long, narrow-bodied fish, and presently, hand over hand,
it was dragged up to the side and lifted in by sheer might. It was a
'lunge of apparently 7 lb., and the only one taken by the fisher,
though he had been out three or four hours.

We had not been long afloat before I began to see that Ben was not far
wrong in preferring his rude tackle to mine, though he was all abroad
in his reasons for ruling me out of court. His belief, expressed in
the vigorous language of the born colonial, was that it was darn'd
nonsense to suppose that my line would hold a fish, or that my rod was
other than a toy. The difficulty, of course, was with the boat. For
the sort of spinning to which we are accustomed in England the thing
was useless. The discomfort was vast and continuous, and as the hooks