The Jew Fish, common in all the colonies, is the Sciœna atitarctica of Castelnau, and is allied to the maigre of the Mediterranean. The fish is better for appearance and sport than for edible qualities ; is a rough outline of the salmon in shape, almost as silvery as that royal fish, but with opaline tints over the head and sides when the sun catches it. On its first appearance out of the water it reflects the most beautiful colours, but they soon fade, and the silvery sides rapidly become tarnished. With appearance, however, any resemblance to the salmon ends, for the flesh is white and soft, except in large specimens, when a block cut out of the middle serves as a far-away reminder of boiled cod and oyster sauce. As objects of the angler's desire jew-fish are very capricious in their movements, appearing sometimes in shoals, and at other times playing the truant for weeks or months together. These fish run up to sixty pounds in weight.

The quiet bays of the Pacific, on the whole, furnish the best sport with rod and line. We used to get capital angling by wading in to meet the tide flowing shorewards over the clean sandy flats, and the fish we used principally to basket was the sand-whiting, in shape and colour not unlike our own grayling, and for which we could fish with fine tackle, rod, and creel regularly slung. New Zealand and Tasmania are equally good for the sea angler.

In the old days in New Zealand, before there were any trout, the military officers varied their routine duty among the warlike Maori with such sports as they could obtain, and those who were near the coast soon learned the game qualities of the kawai, locally termed New Zealand salmon, at the mouth of the Waikato, which is now one of the best of New Zealand trout streams, tenanted by huge Salmonidæ introduced from Tasmania, and descendants of some of our British strains. An officer of the 68th Light Infantry as far back as the fifties gained quite a reputation by his prowess in fishing for the kawai with large salmon flies. Even up the river itself he took the smaller fish, which are locally called ' shoal kawai,' and which seem to be the grilse of the larger fish. Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty, is probably the best place on the coast for kawai. They come in from the sea in numbers, and run to large size. They may be taken best with spinning bait, natural or artificial, and are a stock means of sport to white and brown man alike.