“Make good ballast,” said Bigley, laughing good-humouredly. “Boats are always safer when they are well ballasted.”
“I daresay they are, but I like ’em best without Big lumps in ’em. I say, how far out shall we go?”
“Oh, about a quarter of a mile, straight out, over the Ringlet rocks. You pull, I’ll watch the bearings, and drop out the grapnel. Pull hard!”
We rowed away steadily, while, to save time, Bigley took out his pocket-knife and, taking a board from the bait-basket, laid it upon the seat, and began to open the mussels and scrape out the contents of the shells ready for placing them upon the hooks when we reached the fishing ground.
For I may tell you that knowing the bottom well has a great deal to do with success in sea-fishing. A stranger to our parts might think that all he had to do was to row out in a little boat a few hundred yards, and begin to fish.
If he did that, the chances are that he would not catch anything, while a boat three or four lengths away might be hauling in fish quite fast.
The reason is simple. Sea fish frequent certain places after the fashion of fresh-water fish, which are found, according to their sorts, on muddy bottoms; half-way down in clear deeps; among piles; in gravelly swims; at the tails of weeds; or under the boughs of trees close in to the side of river or lake.
So with the sea fish. If we wanted to catch bass, we threw out in places where the tide ran fast; if we were trying for pollack, it was along close by the stones of the rocky shore; if for conger, in deep dark holes; and if for flat-fish, right out in deep water, where the bottom was all soft oozy sand.
Upon this occasion we had decided for the latter, and with Bigley giving a word now and then to direct us, as he watched certain points on the shore, we rowed away for quite half a mile, but keeping straight out from the Gap.
“Now we’re just over the Ringlets,” cried Bigley suddenly.