Fishing in Tangier Sound

DEAR FOREST AND STREAM:

"DAD, let's go fishing. The wind is going down, and I think it will be moderate by the time we get out there."

"All right, son. Get the rods and reels. I will take the crab-net and paddle. Let's go."

There is no long automobile journey to take, no expensive hiring of boats and guides. Our eighteen foot sailboat is tied to her stake, sixty feet from the front gate, in the landlocked harbor. In a few minutes the sail is hoisted and we are on our way. We stop at one or two of the crab houses where the kindhearted crab shedders give us all the dead soft crabs and peelers we need for bait, free, gratis, and for nothing. They know well that, if we have good luck, they are sure of fish for dinner, for one good turn deserves another.

So on we are out of the harbor, and
can lay our course for the fishing ground.

"This surely is a sailing little boat, dad," says son, "she lays right up to the wind, when the centerboard is down."

"Yes, son, she is a Raym-Tom bateau. He worked the model out himself, has built hundreds of them, and they are the smartest and ablest V-bottom boats I ever sailed. You had better rig up the rods now, we shall soon be there."

Three miles or so out in the sound, the landmarks are in line, and the captain's orders are" "Let go the anchor. Give her about fifteen fathoms of line. It is only six or seven fathoms deep here, but the tide is running like a mill-race. You will need a five-ounce sinker to keep our No. 9 line on the bottom."

Somehow dad nearly always gets his line over first, and therefore usually draws first blood. The hardheads, or croakers, are biting like hungry wolves, and conversation languishes, except for such exclamations as, "Ah, boy, got you that time!" "Watch him pull my tip under." "Dad, I believe I've got a trout on, a big fellow, see how he is taking my line. Stand by with the crab net. He is too big to lift in with the leader. Mind he doesn't foul your line. See him scoot. Steady now with the net while I lead him in. Whooee! That's some trout, five pounds if he's an ounce. I thought one time I had lost him."

There is quite a variety of fish, so that you never know until he is on the hook, and coming up, just what kind he is. Long before he is sighted, however, a practiced fisherman can tell you the variety and somewhere near the size, unless he is hooked foul. There are croakers, trout, large spot, kingfish or mullet, pigfish, perch, Black Wills or small seabass, occasionally a flounder, or bluefish, not to mention oyster toads, puff toads or sea robins, dogfish, skate and stingrays, so that there is enough change to keep one interested. While the tide runs strong, the catch is mostly croakers; when it slacks somewhat, the trout bite more freely; at dead slack water, the spot and pigfish are in evidence, unless you cast out from the boat and reel in slowly, when you can still catch trout and croakers with a moving bait. With the coming of the flood tide, in the early part of the season, they usually do not bite so freely, so, "Up with the anchor, and let's go home."

The wind has fallen with the tide, and we must take the motor from the locker, screw it on to the stern, and away we go.

At the crab house, we count up, and give the boys bout half a bushel of fish for the bait they gave us. We have twenty-nine trout, and enough other fish of various edible kinds to make a tale of one hundred and three, weighing, we estimate, about one hundred and thirty pounds.

REV. C. W. STRICKLAND,

Tangier, Virginia.