Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/748

FISHING. and lancewood, hickory, or ash for any other kind. Double-handed rods for salmon-fishing are sometimes over 20 feet in length, and weigh nearly three pounds. Most rods are made in sections or joints, so that they can be taken apart and the more easily carried. Fish-lines may be of hair, silk, linen, hemp, or cotton, according to the purpose for which they are required. There is a wide variety of hooks, not only for the different fish, but variations in design for the same fish, the choice depending on the skill and preference of the fisherman. The straight hook, or one in which the point is in line with the shaft and not bent to one side, is generally regarded as the most profitable to use, although the great majority of hooks are made with flatted, ringed, knobbed, or plain ends. A particularly effective hook is the barbless hook, which has a sharp piece of wire fixed across the opening of the hook, making it almost impossible for the victim to get away after it has once impaled itself; such hooks, however, are little used. The spoon hook is a piece of polished metal shaped somewhat similar to the domestic tablespoon, which when drawn through the water twirls and glitters in a manner designed to attract the fish, which, if it snaps at it, is inevitably caught by the hook. This tackle is used in trolling for bluefish, pickerel, and lake trout, although in pickerel-fishing artificial flies, together with a number of hooks, are usually attached to the spoon. The snell is a piece of silkworm-gut connecting the hook and the line. Sinkers are generally small pieces

of lead, or bullets cut in half, and fastened to the line; floats, which are made as a rule of cork and fastened to the line at both ends, serving to indicate to the fisherman the location of his hook. There are many kinds of reels, including the automatic, which winds the line when a spring is pressed. The best tackle in the market and the most experienced fishermen are practically powerless without an attractive and consequently effective bait, which ought to consist of some item from the known diet of the fish sought for; or, where that is not obtainable, of something closely resembling it. Beginning with the angleworm, or common earthworm—the larvæ of insects, grubs, artificial flies, grasshoppers, etc., the list of available bait may be extended to various kinds of animal and fish flesh, as well as the numerous pastes common with the fishermen of Europe. To be effective, the hook must be concealed by the bait as far as possible. The only net used by the genuine sportsman is the landing net, by which the fish is taken out of the water after it has been brought to shore or boat by the hook and line.

. The fish most common to amateur fishermen are the various minnows, in many places spoken of as shiners or chubs, of which the most generally known, the dace or roach, is found in New England and the Middle States, and demands but an ordinary light rod, with worm or artificial fly for bait. The sunfish or pumpkinseed, pond-perch, bream, or roach, may be found in running brooks throughout the United States, and sometimes in tidal rivers, and are caught with small hooks, with worms as bait, although they frequently take the artificial fly. In the Southern States good sport may be obtained with artificial flies in the catching of bluefish, blue bream, and copper-nosed bream. A peculiar, though uncertain, method of fishing for the common bream in these waters is to use bait made of brown bread and honey. For all-around sport through most of the year, the yellow perch is most popular in the Eastern States. In summer it may be caught with a worm or minnow bait; and in winter holes are cut in the ice, and the white grub, usually found in decayed wood, is used as bait. In springtime the fly is most attractive. The wall-eyed pike, as the pike-perch is sometimes called, is found usually in the Southern States, western New York, the Great Lakes, and Canada, in which latter country it is known as the doree, another fish of the small species being known as the sandre. It is an exceptionally gluttonous fish, easily caught with a hook, and in Lake Champlain is occasionally caught by trolling. The pickerel, or common pickerel, which may be found in all the ponds and streams of the North, East, and Central States, together with the white pickerel of the Ohio and the black pickerel of Pennsylvania, are all distinguished by length of body. The pike seldom grows to be over three feet in length, although the maskinonge (like the pike, a member of the pickerel family) has been known in the Michigan lakes and the upper waters of the Mississippi River to be at least seven feet. The fisherman usually trolls for them with a spoon. The common pickerel weighs on an average about five pounds. Closely related are the catfish, bullhead, bull-pout, and horned pout, which are all found in North