At one place on the Hastings River, called Blackman’s Point, a party of four of us took thirteen fish, the heaviest of which was 42 lbs. and the lightest 9 lbs.  Next morning, however, the Blackman’s Point ferryman, who always set a line from his punt when he turned in, showed us one of over 70 lbs.  When they grow to such a size as this they are not eaten locally, as the flesh is very often full of thin, thread-like worms.  The young fish, however, are very palatable.

The saw-fish, to which I have before alluded as harrying the 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 bone bill, 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 the creature on the shore.  Even then the task of despatching one of these fish 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 saw-fish 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 English visitors to describe in detail.  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 in a few hours after being caught.  The majority of the coast settlers will not eat them,