Personally I have a great respect for the tope and for the topiary art, but
I cannot help regretting that Mr. MITCHELL-HEDGES has omitted all mention
of another splendid fish, the stoot, which visits our shores every year in
the late summer and may be caught at places as widely distant as Barmouth
and Great Yarmouth, Porthcawl and Kylescue.
The stoot, be it noted, is a cross between the porpoise and the cuttle-
fish; hence its local name of the porputtle. It is a clean feeder, a great
fighter and a great delicacy, tasting rather like a mixture of the
pilchard, the anchovy and the Bombay duck.
For tackle I recommend a strong greenheart bamboo pole, like those used in
pole-jumping, about eighteen feet in length, and about three hundred yards
of wire hawser, with a Strathspey foursome reel sufficiently large to hold
it. Do not be afraid of the size of the hook. The stoot-fisher cannot
afford to take any risks. I do not wish to dogmatise, but it must be big
enough to cover the bait. And the stoot is extremely voracious. Almost
anything will do for bait, if one remembers, as I have said above, that the
stoot is a clean feeder. At different times I have tried a large square of
corridor soap, a simulation pancake, three pounds of tough beefsteak or
American bacon, or a volume of Sir HENRY HOWORTH'S _History of the
Mongols_, and never without satisfactory results.
On arriving at the feeding ground of the stoot, cast your line well out
from the boat with a small howitzer.
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