Fishing line

“ In fishing a stream there is much to be learned in the art of jerking the flies under the bushes, and tossing the back line directly upwards to avoid entanglements, instead of behind the angler; proficiency should be obtained with the left hand as well as with the right, and in right and left casts, that is to say, where the line is raised on either side and the flies brought over either shoulder. This last point is essential if two anglers are to fish from the same boat, for each should invariably keep the tip of his rod over the shoulder opposite to his neighbor. ”

“ Fishing down-stream is by far the best plan, for obvious reasons, if the angler wades slowly and cautiously, so as not to roil the water. The principal reason is that one's line is always straight and taut in swift water, and the flies can be more easily controlled and floated down over the fish, which always heads up-stream. ”

“ Surf-fishermen line up on the more accessible beaches to cast their lines into the Atlantic for striped bass, bluefish, and flounder, while others seek secluded spots to try their luck.
Charter fishing boats work out of Chatham, Orleans, Wellfleet, and Provincetown. Besides the fish cited above, you might catch halibut, haddock, and mackerel.
No license is required for saltwater sport fishing, but there are size and number limits and a state license is necessary for fishing in the many freshwater ponds. Commercial fishing is not permitted within the National Seashore. ”

“ Crockery and glassware are easily destroyed in a cruising craft, in spite of the ingenious racks and lockers invented to preserve them.
Don't omit to include fishing tackle among your stores. There is lots of sport in catching blue-fish or mackerel when under way, and many a weary hour when your craft is becalmed may be beguiled with hook and line. Besides, a fish fresh from the water forms an agreeable and appetizing change from the monotony of canned goods. There is no necessity to purchase expensive tackle for sea-fishing. All that is wanted is strong and serviceable gear. ”

“ The depth being taken, and the ground-bait thrown in, the angler, sitting with his face down stream,, drops his tackle in close to the boat, and allows it to float down stream unchecked as far as the line, which is generally a yard or two longer than the rod, will permit, when he strikes, pulls up the tackle, drops it again in close to the punt, and repeats the operation time after time. In the middle of these punts there is generally a well, so that the fish when caught are kept alive in the well until the day's fishing is over. ”

“ Trawlers, seine boats, and other small fishing craft line the long wharves and docks or sway at anchor a short distance offshore. Before the fishing season begins, the water front is intensely active; nets and boats are mended and the air is heavy with the smell of tar and oakum. Many of the boats fish for salmon in the Sound and Straits ”

“ When a boat arrives on the fishing-grounds, a net is shot and slowly towed by means of a short line attached to the cork line and fastened in the stem of the boat. In summer fishing, when sardines are abundant, the fishermen often let one net go adrift when it is full of fish, trusting to pick it up later, and put out another net. ”

“ I have seen one Indian canoe bring in over one hundred fish in a day's fishing—but is this sport? I think all true fishermen will say it is not.
After the hand-line comes the rod, and again, if the object be to catch as many fish as possible while the take is on, a small tarpon rod with a Vom Hofe multiplying reel and an 18-thread tarpon line, practically unbreakable, may be used. ”

“ The line is quite as invisible as the trace, and a few feet can be made into a trace by fixing two or three swivels—bronze, if possible, instead of bright brass—about two feet apart.
For fly fishing, good stout loch casting lines which will land a five or seven pound fish are sufficient. Very fine trout casts are unnecessary, except for trout in the river. ”

“ Depths are from 25 to 35 fathoms; the bottom is rocks, gravel, and mud. This is mainly a small-boat fishing ground, but there is some vessel fishing. Hake are taken here from June to September, inclusive; cod are present about the rocks the year around. Pollock are here in spring and fall, and haddock from December to February, inclusive. Fishing is by trawl and hand line. ”

“ Fishermen of character have been known to assert, that they could cast with the rod, the ordinary menhaden bait, one hundred and twenty yards; and although from a high stand, with the aid of a strong wind, this is possible, the ordinary cast is not over half that distance, and to exceed one hundred when{146} standing on a level with the water is rare indeed. In fact, seventy-five yards is a good cast, and no man need be ashamed who can put out his line fair and true that distance. ”

“ But the fishery interest pervades the whole town, dwarfing everything else. The main street winds about the head of the harbor, bending with the sinuosities of the shore, and from it other streets, without much regularity, go down to the wharves. Fishing-boats are everywhere, with new ones building, and on most of the open spaces are "cod-flakes," or drying-places, where the fish are piled when first landed, preparatory to being cut up and packed in the extensive packing-houses adjoining the wharves. Here many hundreds are employed in preparing the fish for market, both men and women working. ”

“ The majority of dwellers on the Border are born to be fishers, thanks to the endless number of rivers and burns in the region between the Tweed and the Coquet—a realm where almost all trout-fishing is open, and where, since population and love of the sport have increased, there is now but little water that merits the trouble of putting up a rod.
Like the rest of us in that country, I was born an angler, though under an evil star, for, indeed, my labours have not been blessed, and are devoted to fishing rather than to the catching of fish. ”

“ The wholesale fishery is carried on by small fishing smacks or “bangers,” as the fishermen popularly term them, each of which is constructed with a large deep well, into which the fresh sea-water is allowed to enter by means of a grating. This is for a double purpose, viz., to keep the fish alive after taken as long as possible, and also to enable the cod-smack to remain at sea as long as may suffice to catch a good supply of fish before proceeding to that part of the coast where there may be a market for them. ”

“ Some are cautiously spread by the men in one boat, according to directions signalled to them by a second, from the side of which a diver hangs by one arm, listening intently to the motion of the fish, and judging with marvellous accuracy the direction which they are taking. Lines of all sorts, hooks of every imaginable shape, all the tricks and devices, which have been learned by hundreds of years of experience on the fishing grounds, are employed by the people of the East Coast to swell their daily and nightly takes of fish. ”

“ The fish swim against the nets, push their heads through, and then, owing to their gill openings, find that they cannot withdraw their heads, and in this way are caught in enormous numbers. Generally, fishing goes on all night, and in the morning the nets are hauled in, and, together with the attached fish, are thrown into the hold situated amidships. The drifters then return with all possible speed to the fish wharf. While the boats are returning to port, the men draw the nets from the hold and shake them free from any entangled fish. ”

“ The whale-fishery has been fairly beaten out of the field by oil-spouting rocks. Why should we brave the perils of the Arctic circle when by sinking a tube in Pennsylvania we may strike a fellow of a thousand barrels, and wax rich while asleep? New London, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Edgartown have answered. The cod and mackerel fisheries have dwindled into like insignificance, say Marblehead, Gloucester, and all fishing ports along shore. ”

“ All these banks are breeding places of the most valued of our food fishes—the cod, haddock, cusk, hake, pollock, and halibut—and each in its proper season furnishes fishing ground where are taken many other important species of migratory and pelagic food fishes as well as those named here. It is probable that no other fishing area equaling this in size or in productivity exists anywhere else in the world, and the figures of the total catch taken from it must show an enormous poundage and a most imposing sum representing the value of its fishery. ”

“ Fearing and two or three friends who own the bass-fishing stands, at the end of one of which a gentleman was then busily 131 engaged in his pastime, for the sea comes rolling up upon the rocks within some forty or fifty yards of the sward of the green meadows on which the house is placed. From it projects into the breakers a platform supported on iron pillars, at the end of which there is an enlargement of the structure to enable the fisherman and his attendants to stand at their ease—the one in hurling the bait and the other in preparing it. ”

“ And there is every sort of fishing between that which engages a navy of sailing vessels and men, down through all the methods of fish-taking—by nets, by spearing, still fishing, and fly-fishing. A half a dozen sorts of finny game succumb to these methods, and though the region has been famous and therefore much visited for nearly a dozen years, the field is so extensive, so well stocked, and so difficult of access except to persons of means, that even to-day almost the very largest known specimens of each class of fish are to be had there. ”

“ The development of steam fishing—trawling and drifting—has resulted in the re-grouping of the fishing industry into two well-marked divisions. Fisheries, whether trawling, drifting or lining, that are carried on in deep water far from shore in large steamers,52 for the most part owned by limited liability companies, are known as offshore fisheries. ”

“ As the season advances, the native crawls upon some rock that reaches out into the stream, and with his coarse but elastic cedar pole, casts the roll of flannel, wrapped round a hook and misnamed a fly, into the seething current; and when the brave fish seizes the clumsy allurement the fisherman contends for the mastery as best he may, occasionally at the risk of a ducking in the stream consequent upon the sudden breaking of his tackle, and accompanied with considerable risk. ”

“ They embark on board flat-bottomed boats, each provided with a well, which they allow to drift along slowly, while one of them, stationed at the bow, throws into the water enormous balls of rice. The fish hasten in immense shoals to enjoy the banquet; and the fishing-birds, flocking round the boats in great numbers, dive and reappear immediately, each with a fish in its bill. As fast as they [130] fill their pouch, the boatmen empty it into the interior of the bark, leaving to each winged fisher just enough to satisfy its appetite and encourage its ardour. ”

“ Nature, interfered with, had retaliated. The upper reservoir is more strikingly situated. Great mountains leap upward from its shores, scores of brawling streamlets force their way down the sides into it. There are two favourite times for fishing this mere—when a gentle sou’wester ruffles the surface and you get out your fine river tackle, and when after rain the fish scent a feast. It is a case of knowing where the shoals lie thickest for making a pannier. ”

“ Lovers of deep sea fishing grow best from small beginnings. They yearn from tide flats to the spar buoy in the harbor channel, thence through Hull Gut to the rocky bottoms about the Brewsters. After that the sirens sing to them from every wash of white waves over ledges far out to sea, caution drowns in the temptation of blue water, and they fish no more except it is "down outside." ”

“ You are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way 'tis only in troublous times that you line your pockets. ”

“ At H.'s boundary there were rocks, breaking the stream into typical runs, and there was one channel or gut, about ten yards out from the island bank, which rarely failed in giving temporary lodgings to running fish. Properly speaking, an angler should, in fishing this down from shore, keep behind the low-growing alders; but it always seemed more advantageous to me, as a student of fish movement, to watch the progress of the fly. Never in the world could there be a better place to note the movements of a sea trout, and so you began the day with faculties all awake. ”

“ A late supper disposed of, and the Governor stowed away in the blankets, Ferguson and I fall talking at his broad fire-place about Horse Shoe Park and Fall River; of course trout are plenty there; he had been up the day before and knew whereof he spoke; yes, there were quite a number of tourists in the park, but the streams were not “fished out.” He rather thought that with “a pole” to every rod of the stream the fishing improved; at least for him. ”

“ An immense range of nets with very small meshes so small as to prevent the herrings from fastening in them, is extended round a shoal of fish, and gradually moved towards some creek or narrow inlet of the sea. The nets are drawn close and made fast across the entrance, and the enormous body of herrings thus crowded up into a narrow space is taken out and cured at leisure. This mode of fishing is called a “lock.” ”