The second method of taking the bream is by long lining; fifty of the lines we have just described being bent together and duly anchored and buoyed. Spaniards do not much care for this way of fishing, as it is costly in bait and the gear is often lost in bad weather. Bream sells at about 3½d. a pound. Cod are taken during the first six months of the year, about 9 miles off shore, by hand lines. Sold fresh the price is about 6d. per lb. A small quantity is preserved in tins. Anchovy or cuttlefish is the bait used; sometimes the two are placed on one hook.
A smaller description of boat, called traineras, is built especially for taking sardine and anchovy, although in fine weather they often engage in the same fishery as the larger boats. The traineras are light and shapely vessels, with a graceful sheer and curved stem and stern posts. The keel is much cambered, and the bottom is flat and has considerable hollow. The usual dimensions vary between: Length, 38 feet to 42 feet; beam, 7 feet to 7 feet 6 inches; depth, 2 feet 6 inches to 2 feet 10 inches. The sails and gear are much the same as in the larger boats, excepting that there are only four shifts in place of six. The largest main lug has an area of about 90 square yards and the fore lug about 50 square yards. The other sails for heavier weather are naturally smaller. The largest masts for fine weather are respectively 36 feet and 22 feet, long. The average cost of one of these boats and gear is about £122, made up as follows: Hull, £32; sails, gear, and oars, £30; nets and gear attached, £60. The season for anchovy fishing commences on the 1st of March and ends 30th of June; it begins again on the 15th of September, and continues until the end of the year. Most fish are taken at a distance of about 9 miles from the land, although they often come in much closer. Anchovies are sold fresh, or are salted to be sent away, some are used for bait, and in times of great plenty quantities are put on the land for manure. The greater part are, however, preserved in barrels or tins, and are exported to France or England.
The net used in the capture of anchovies is called traina or copo. It is in principle like the celebrated purse seine of the United States, but in place of being 200 fathoms long, as are many of the nets, which, in American waters, will inclose a whole school of mackerel, it is but 32 to 40 fathoms long. The depth is 7 to 10 fathoms, and the mesh ¾ inch. Sardine fishing commences on the 1st of July and lasts until December. The principal ground is 2 to 10 miles off shore. The price of sardines on the coast is about 2½d. per pound. When the sardines appear in shoals they are taken with the traina in the same way as anchovies, a net of ½-inch mesh being used. Sardines are also taken by gill nets about 200 feet long and 18 feet wide. When used in the daytime the fish are tolled up by a bait consisting of the liver of cod. When the sardines have been attracted to the neighborhood of the net, bait is thrown on the other side of it. The fish in their rush for the bait become entangled in the mesh. These nets are sometimes anchored out all night, in which case no bait is used.
A third class of boats of much the same character are of about the following dimensions: Length, 28 feet to 35 feet; beam, 7 feet 6 inches to 8 feet; depth, 2 feet 6 inches to 2 feet 8 inches. The two lugs will contain 16 and 30 square yards of canvas respectively. They are used for sardine catching, when they will carry a crew of four men, or for taking conger and cod, in which case they will be manned by eight hands.
Their cost will average approximately as follows: Hull, £15; gear and sail, £10; nets and lines, £13; about £40. The conger season extends from March to June, and from October to November. The fish are taken by hook and line; sardine and fish known as berdel (which in turn is taken by a hook covered with a feather) are used as bait.
There are other smaller fishing boats, among which may be noticed the bateler, a powerful little vessel, 13 feet to 16 ft. long, about 5½ ft. wide, and 2 ft. deep. They are sailed by one man, set a good spread of canvas, and are fast and handy. They are used for taking a species of cuttlefish which supplies a bait, and is caught by hook and line, the fishes being attracted by colored threads, at which they rush, when the hook will catch in their tentacles. There is a small well in the middle of the boat for keeping the fish alive. None of the boats on the northern coast of Spain carry ballast. They have flat hollow floors, and set a large area of of canvas on a shallow draught. Lobster fishing is pursued in much the same manner as in England, but often four or five miles from land, and in very deep water.
One of the most noticeable objects in the Spanish court was a full-sized boat about 25 ft. long, which had a square hole cut in the bottom amidships. Through this hole was let down a glass frame in which was placed a powerful paraffine lamp. The object of this was to attract the fish. It is said that tunny will be drawn from a distance of over a hundred yards, and will follow the boat so that they may be enticed into the nets. Sardines and other fish will follow the light in shoals. It is claimed that the boat will be useful in diving operations, for pearl or coral fishing, or for ascertaining the direction of submarine currents, which can be seen at night by a lamp to a depth to 25 to 30 fathoms.—Engineering.
DUCK SHOOTING AT MONTAUK.
Montauk Point, Long Island, is the most isolated and desolate spot imaginable during this weather. The frigid monotony of winter has settled down upon that region, and now it is haunted only by sea fowl. The bleak, barren promontory whereon stands the light is swept clean of its summer dust by the violent raking of cold hurricanes across it, and coated with ice from the wind-dashed spume of the great breakers hurled against the narrow sand spit which makes the eastern terminus of the island. The tall, white towered light and its black lantern, now writhing in frosty northern blizzards, and again shivering in easterly gales, now glistening with ice from the tempest tossed seas all about it, and now varnished with wreaths of fog, is the only habitation worthy of the name for many miles around. Keeper Clark and his family and assistants are almost perpetually fenced in from the outside world by the cold weather, and have to hug closely the roaring fires that protect them in that desolation.