e swarms of
sea-salmon, also make havoc with the Jew-fish, and very often are caught
on Jew-fish lines. They are terrible customers to get foul of (I do not
confound them with the sword-fish) when fishing from a small boat. Their
huge broad bill of hard bone, set on both sides with its terrible sharp
spikes, their great length and enormous strength, render it impossible
to even get them alongside, and there is no help for it but either to
cut the line or pull up anchor and land him on the shore. Even then the
task of despatching one of these creatures is no child's play on a dark
night, for they lash their long tails about with such fury that a broken
leg might be the result of coming too close. In the rivers of Northern
Queensland the saw-fish attain an enormous size, and the Chinese
fishermen about Cooktown and Townsville often have their nets destroyed
by a sawfish enfolding himself in them. Alligators, by the way, do the
same thing there, and are sometimes captured, perfectly helpless, in the
folds of the nets, in which they have rolled themselves over and over
again, tearing it beyond repair with their feet, but eventually yielding
to their fate.

The schnapper, the best of all Australian fish, is too well known to
here enter into a detailed description. Most town-bred Australians
generally regard it as a purely ocean-loving fish, or at least only
frequenting very deep waters in deep harbours, such as Sydney, Jervis
Bay and Twofold Bay. This is quite a mistake, for in many of the rivers,
twenty or more miles up from the sea, the writer and many other people
have not only caught these beautiful fish, but seen fishermen haul in
their nets filled with them. But they seldom remain long, preferring the
blue depths of ocean to the muddy bottoms of tidal rivers, for they are
rock-haunting and surf-loving.

Of late years the northern bar harbours and rivers of New South Wales
have been visited by a fish that in my boyhood's days was unknown even
to the oldest fisherman--the bonito. Although in shape and size they
exactly resemble the ocean bonito of tropic seas, these new arrivals are
lighter in colour, with bands of marbled grey along the sides and
belly. They bite freely at a running bait--i.e., when a line is towed
astern--and are very good when eaten quite fresh, but, like all of the
mackerel tribe, rapidly deteriorate soon after they are caught. The
majority of the coast settlers will not eat them, being under the id