Unless the fish are prepared to shift their liquid quarters at a moment's notice they will find themselves often left high and dry on the deserted shingle-bed.

But eels are proverbially accustomed to adapt themselves to circumstances, and a fisherman may always count on getting some if he be patient.
About a mile down the flat, between very high banks, our principal creek ran, and to a quiet spot among the flax-bushes we directed our steps.
By the fast-fading light the gentlemen set their lines in very primitive fashion.

On the crumbling, rotten earth the New Zealand flax, the _Phormium tenax_, loves to grow, and to its long, ribbon-like leaves the eel-fishers fastened their lines securely, baiting each alternate hook with mutton and worms.

I declared this was too cockney a method of fishing, and selected a tall slender flax-stick, the stalk of last year's spike of red honey-filled blossoms, and to this extempore rod I fastened my line and bait.

When one considers that the old whalers were accustomed to use ropes made in the rudest fashion, from the fibre of this very plant, in their deep-sea fishing for very big prey, it is not surprising that we found it sufficiently strong for our purpose.