you will find they will take the one persistently when they will not look at the other. By a white bait I mean a piece of sprat or herring. The white bait takes best when the sea is thick and disturbed, as its glitter is seen by the whiting far off. In clear, bright water the worm must most decidedly be allowed the preference. The soft end of the soldier-crab—or “farmer,” as the boatmen term it—is also a good bait, and so killing for codlings that I have often given a good price for a score of “farmers,” and taken a codling with every bait. The codling, too, which take this bait are thick, plump four or five pounders, and worth the catching. I feel strongly inclined to affirm that, next after a herring or sprat bait, a “farmer” is more taking for cod than any bait whatsoever.
Whitings lie usually from half a mile to a mile from the shore, and generally in very deep water. It is as well not to fish for them in less than six fathoms of water, unless there has been a “dead calm” for many days, and then they will come closer in shore. When fishing for the whiting you will also take codling, whiting-pouts, dabs, plaice, gurnets, mullets, and other fish. I have caught large cod with a hand-line; and it wants a practised fisherman, I can assure my readers, to land safely a great tugging cod at the end of a hand-line, and with a whiting-hook. In the autumn of 1856 I took two cod thus, one weighing twenty-six and the other seventeen pounds; and two years previously I had seen a fisherman’s boy, then a little fellow, land a fine fish of twenty-four pounds in the same manner. A large skate, too, thus hooked will give plenty of “fun,” and a conger will make your line resemble a tangled skein of silk. Congers are great nuisances, as they bite very greedily at a white bait and keep other fish away. Most fish have a mortal dread of the conger, who devours all and each with most obliging impartiality and in wholesale fashion. The luckless herring, however, is a victim to all other fish—a wise dispensation, no doubt, of Providence to keep down its incredible numbers; for when we reflect that a single shoal contains millions, and that a single fish contains sometimes 300,000 eggs, the mind absolutely refuses to comprehend the vast number of herrings that there would be were this prodigious fecundity not checked.
Whitings follow the herring-shoal, literally in such “armies” that the herring-men sometimes take as many as sixty score in a night with the hand-line. The sparkle of the herrings as they are hauled in over the boat’s side causes cod, dogfish, and whitings to assemble in such numbers as to be astonishing. The codfish, dogfish, and congers leap out of the water at the net, and tear fish and meshes away piecemeal, always to the sorrow, and sometimes to the complete ruin, of the fishermen; hence, with a fierce retaliation, they treat any conger or dogfish they may capture with savage and brutal cruelty. It is almost useless to reason with them; but I have saved many a poor fish from a lingering and torturing death by ransoming it, and then stipulating it should be killed outright. As some little extenuation for this barbarity on the part of the fishermen, it is only fair to state that the dogfish are really a fearful pest and scourge to those who gain their livelihood by their nets.
The Kentish coast is famous for its fine whiting, as, indeed, is the whole of the south-eastern coast; but, notwithstanding great numbers are taken, the metropolitan supply is rarely equal to the demand, and consequently the whiting is never to be had very cheap in London. It is, moreover, a delicate fish, and does not well bear packing; hence a great portion of those fish taken are sold at the places to which the fishing-boats belong, at a low price, sooner than risk should be incurred of their spoiling in their transit to town. Whitings that would fetch two or three shillings a dozen in London,—that is to say, twopence or threepence each fish,—often fetch as little as threepence a score, or, at any rate, sixpence, which is at the rate of six (or three fish, if you take the higher price) for one penny. Sometimes a boatman with a fine lot will let you have a dozen for a pint of beer and a little tobacco. I once saw a man belonging to a herring lugger sell fifty magnificent whiting for half-a-crown, and a codfish of twenty pounds weight for ninepence. Of course he could not take them to sea when the boat went out again, and he was glad to take any price he could get. Further, he said he was pleased, and thought three shillings and threepence a good night’s work, or, in his own words, “good grog-money.” The profits made by London fishmongers are very large; for instance, they retail fresh herrings at a penny apiece which cost them no more than eighteenpence the hundred (there are 132 to the hundred of herrings). Still, we must make allowance for fish being a highly “perishable” article. Some of the great salesmen make enormous profits on fresh herrings. Sometimes, however, the speculator encounters great losses, but then his profits are usually large in proportion. I remember an instance of several lasts of herrings being bought by a dealer one autumn, in Ramsgate, for seven guineas a last (a last is 10,000 fish). These fish, in Billingsgate, fetched eighteen pounds ten shillings per last, which—carriage deducted—gave a handsome profit. Certainly the captain of the herring-lugger would not have sold his fish at so low a price had he not been in a hurry to catch the tide and get to sea again, it being late in the day. The boat in question was the Elizabeth of Lydd, belonging to one of the Blacklocks—a civil and respectable family of men, and known amongst their comrades for their good fortune in the fishery.
I may add, in conclusion, that whiting make their annual peregrinations round the coast, as do herrings,—appearing and disappearing at certain periods of the year. They are to be caught in abundance on the south-eastern coast throughout the months of September, October, and November, after which they get scarce and disappear until the ensuing August, except in the very deep water on the “trawling”-grounds, and even there they are not plentiful. The shoals, in fact, pass on after Christmas, but we may rest confident of receiving their periodical visit when the corn again begins to grow ripe and heavy in the ear.
