Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/751

 Popular Science Monthly 73.5

Here, Now, Is the "Tappoon"— Fish at Night with an F<:icctric

Liftht on Your Line

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��This is the tappoon. It is the invention of a CaH- fomian rancher and is designed to simplify irrigation

��a Portable Flood -Cate

UNTIL very recently it has been the practice amonjj ranchmen when ir- rigating a field to dam up the ditch with mud in order to make the water flow into the lateral ditches. How- ard R. Wallace, "a ranchman who lives near Long Beach, California, changed all this by devis- ing a portable irrigation flood-gate.

The gate is simply a sheet of heavy-gage wrought-iron - — the lower corners are rounded off and a handle is bolted to its upper edge.

When the gate is pressed down into the mud of a main ditch it holds the water back and diverts it into the lateral ditch immediately behind the dam. When that ditch has sufficient water the gate is pulled up and moved to the next lateral. All the work of making scores of small dams with mud is avoided.

The tappoon, as Mr. Wallace terms his device, is an inexpensive thing to make, and in the course of a California summer it saves many hours of hard labor. It is very light and can be easily carried about, and obviously has nothing to get out of order. To shift it one merely lays hold of the handles on each end and pulls it up, carrying it to the next location and pressing it in with the foot. This is one of the little things that count. It saves both time and trouble, and lightens the tedium of a thankless job.

���The illuminated fishing line by means of which one can catch fish at night

��WHF:N the fishing fever has fastened upon him and is at its height, the enthusiastic angler would lengthen his day, if he could, to fully forty-eight hours.

One ingeni- ous American, probably spending an all- too-short vaca- tion in the woods, devised a plan for il- luminating the end of his line and thus tempting the fish to rise even on the darkest night. In the hollow interior of his bamboo rod he placed a small electric battery of suf- ficient power to operate two small lamps, one attached to the rod and one to a buoy just above the baited hook. The purpose of the buoy is to prevent the lamp from being submerged. The electric wires between the end of the rod and the buoy take the place of the fishing line. The light on the buoy not only serves to attract the fish but also by its bobbing informs the angler when a fish takes the hook and is due to be hauled in.

This is an application of the old method of fishing at night with a light. The usual method, of course, is to go out on the lake in a boat, car- rying with you one or two hurricane lamps. One of these you keep in the boat to see by, and the other you fasten to the gunwale so that the light will attract the fish. In this case one uses an ordi- nary line, of course, and trusts to pure blind luck for results.

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