The Fisherman.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 998, 17 April 1891, Page 13

The Fisherman.

AN HOUR’S PISHING. (written for the mail.) In the north-east corner of the South Island is a strangely configured region, comprising almost equal proportions of land and water, rejoicing in the not very euphonious appellation of the County of Sounds. It is the classic ground of New Zealand, for into one of its hundred deep water harbours, four generations ago, was steered Britain’s oak by the great circumnavigator whose name is, jesting apart, the most familiar of household words. It was not, however, in any of the caves or reaches of the Sound which bears the name of the benefactress of Fanny Burney that I had my hour’s good fishing. Westward of the historic inlet and separated from it by necks of land, in some places only a few hundred yards wide, lies another quiet, more picturesque and extensive, which being out of the track of the coastal steamers, is comparatively little known. Called after the ship in which it was surveyed, the name of the Pelorus Sound carries us back to days when men fought sea battles in triemes, now scarcely more obsolete than the threedeckers which ruled the waves in our youth. Thirty-one years ago when I first looked on this glorious inland sea, when not one rood of the evergreen forests which clothed the hills and dales to the edges of the blue water lapping its 300 miles of coast, was scarred by axe or brand it was a spot worth rounding the globe to see, then to borrow the language of poetry, unfettered by science, it seemed as if some of its leafy valleys must have been as those of the, young world when it came fresh and lovely from the hands of the Creator, and He saw that it was very good. 'Even now, when the exigencies of settlement have done much to deface its beauty, there are many bays into which you may glide and think with the ancient mariner— We were the first That ever burst Into that silent sea.

But to drop out of poetry and get to my fishing story. I have lately been engaged, as Mr Micawber would say, in an occupation which brought down the wrath of Jehovah on the Israelites, in short, as that gentleman would observe in confidence, I have been taking the census, and at the close of a good day’s pulling and sailing I dropped in towards evening at the homestead of my most hospitable friend the patriarch of Mount Stokes. After tea, as I was close to my favourite rock-eod ground, I went out to try mv luck, the tide being favourable. The bay was as calm as a mill pond. We (there were two of us) rowed out about 400 yards to the nearest point, and dropped the killoch just as the sun vanished over the ridges between Tau Putinui and Croixelles Harbour. The lines are ready in the locker—no time to lose—a scrap of meat to catch a bait fish. Down runs the line—one—two —three—four—five fathoms, bottom, bite, up he comes. Twelve seconds from dropping the line there is a two-pound cod clattering in the boat. Off with him quick, and down again; up comes another. Then my chum begins to score. My third fish comes up hard, as he stirs from the bottom. Then there is the unmistakable rush of a snapper, but he is a small fish, about three pounds, and as the tackle is strong he comes in hand over hand. Then the fun becomes fast to us, if rather furious to our scaly friends. Fish after fish comes tumbling in, some hooked so firmly as to try our patience in getting them off. Some strike the gunwale and drop outside, some drop just inside. One large schnapper—-too heavy to pull straight up—l have to play j after two or three dives, I catch a glimpse of a broad gleaming side in tbe darkening water, and then dart and he is gone. It is getting dusk now. The rock-cod begin to slacken, but the schnapper still come. We must have one more schnapper to make up the dozen. TJp he comes, and a second after my mate has another. One more try. A shark this turn—time to be off when they begin. Why in these seas can we catch only sharks at night 2 Is it that the food fishes are occupied in keeping out of the way of the squalida. The rock-cod, a comparatively defenceless fish, seeks shelter first. The schnapper feeds farther into the night. In the Old World much if not most of the sea.-fishing is done after dark. We count our fish— l 3 scknappers, small, from 3 to 71b ; 34? rock-cod, 3 used for

bait; total 50 fish; weight about 1201 b.

It is so dark as we paddle back that the schnappers look merely like plates of silver in the bottom of the boat* If it were daylight we should see a blaze of everchanging colours that would shame the peacock tin-one of the Mogul. The dying swan has been famed throughout the ages, but the dying schnapper still fails of the vates sacer. Ah, me ! Immortality through the vates sacer. How few there be that find it. If there were brave fellows before Agamemnon, there must have been pretty girls before Helen—in fact Quintus 'Horatius hints as much, I think, in a verse which I will not venture to quote. There have been certainly some since, and if I had been provoked like the Talking Oak by some of the fair faces under the shadow of Mount Stoke and Skiddaw—hard wood and wrinkled rind—though I am getting on to three score, my sap might have been stirred to the perpetration of verses in their honor in spite of two safeguards—first, the doubt whether the editor would acknowledge my possession of the divine afflatus, and second the dead certainty of a bad quarter of an hour with Mrs Halieus if she detected my effusion in the ladies’ page, not to mention that my fishing exclusions might be tapered for evermore. Halieus.