GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1249, 6 February 1896, Page 27

GOSSIP.

By "Blue Dun." Saturday was a fine day, but the recent general holidays have made it difficult for anglers who are business men to get away on the sixth day of the week, and, bad luck for the intending Sabbath breakers, Sunday was a perfect terror. Thus It is that I have not heard of such good sport as I had expected. Our country friends, who can often get off for a day's sport when a " towny" has to stick to his business perch, ought to have been enjoying themselves lately, but they're lazy beggars most of them, and don't half roll up with news as they ought to. A few recent catches I have to chronicle include a good catch by Mr Rutherford and bis nephew, Mr Alister Grant. These two brethren of the angle got fifteen fish a-piece up at the Wainui the other day. Some of the fish were up to three pounds. Mr W. Eglen has reported some good sport he had in the Mungaroa, where he got 33 fish, some of a very decent size.

A well-known Hutt angler, whose modesty however is so great that he objects to his name being published, has already made an excellent record this season, having caught 77 fish in the Hutt over 41bs.

I shall be glad of some items from the Forty-mile Bush and Masterton districts. Too many of our anglers are given to hiding their light under a bushel, or can it be that they do not like the idea of " laying others on ' to the good spots of which they know ?

Angling in England in the winter time doesn't altogether stop, but the weather, especially when foggy, is enough to disconcert the most ardent votary of,the sport beloved, of Walton. That funny dog, the angling c editor of the Yorkshire Weekly Post, says, writing in a December it-sue of his paper :«v You could put all the past week's practical ■ angling in Yorkshire into a pint pot, and not squeeze it too much when you clapped the lid on. The nasty, wild, and foggy weather has been responsible for it. You • can seldom do much good fishing in a fog. Nothing rises but mist, and in your angling diary you want to keep a record of what you have caught—not mist. To winter grayling fishing especially fogs are inimical. We could very well do without 'em. Like the other nuisances enumerated in the song in '* The Mikado," fogs never would be mist that is, of course, if they were not mist, which the3 T are, and there's an end of it. Fogs are likewise detrimental to other kinds of fishing. I know a man over in Airedale who went a-fishing in the Aire for roach in a thick fog one day last week. He could hardly see a yard in front of his nose, and even less behind it. He certainly could not see half-way across the river, and the river is very narrow where he was fishing. But he is an enthusiastic angler, and was bound to fish, so he baited his heok and chucked it right across the riv?r on to the opposite bank i and he thought it was floating seductively in the middle of the pool. Then he sat down ! and waited sixteen hours for a bite, and didn't get one, of course, after which he reeled up and went home, and swore there wasn't a single fish in the whole river. This i reminds me of another angler I knew. He was one of the unemployed by profession, but trade being rather slack in his line owing to the market being overstocked and wages low in consequence, he thought it just possible that he might be able to make more by working, and seeing in the newspaper that a restaurant proprietor was in want of a man he applied for the job. " Can you wait V inquired the restaurateur, " because I want a man who can fill in his spare time with waiting." " Well," remarked the applicant confidentially, "I've been a bottomfisher for over twenty years, and if I can't wait a bit longer after all that there experience I just want to see you trot out the man that can. That's all 1"