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What adds much to the interest of fishing in strange waters is the uncertainty of the sport and the variety of species; and in this lake we could not tell whether the next offer would be from a peaceful perch, a bounding bass, a piratical pike, or a gigantic gar. I put a chub, or a fish resembling it, eight or nine inches long upon a gang of large hooks, and cast it astern with a hand-line.
The tiny royal coachman falls like a snowflake on the water, and the hare's ear settles like a bit of thistledown two feet beyond it. Nearer and nearer the flies come to the rock, until at last they cover the place where the last cast of the hand-line fell.
The trawl, which is really only an extension of hand-lines, is a French device adopted by American fishermen early in the last century. One long hand-line, supported by floats, is set at some distance from the schooner. From it depend a number of short lines with baited hooks, set at brief intervals.
Mostly a cod ground. Pollock Hub. This ground lies SE. from the lightship 6 to 8 miles and 13½ miles S. from Cushings Island bell buoy. It is a rocky piece of bottom, having about 29 fathoms over it. It is about ½ mile across and is fished by hand line, trawl, and gill net, but is mostly a summer hand-line spot. It is a good cod ground in the spring and good for pollock in their season.
Hand-weapons flashed viciously, tearing at steel armor and at bulging space-suits. Space-hooks bit and tore. Pikes and lances were driven with the full power of brawny arms. Here and there could be seen trooper and hexan, locked together in fierce embrace far from any hand-line six limbs against four, all ten plied with abandon in mortal, hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot combat.
The drag of the line and the constant joggling of the sinker on rocks and snags, make it difficult to tell when one has a strike and it is always too long between bites. Sitting for hours at a baited buoy with a hand-line and without taking a fish, is still worse, as more than once I have been compelled to acknowledge in very weariness of soul.
Nothing could be seen in any direction, and the commander decided that it was not prudent to proceed any farther. The leadsman was ordered to sound, as the screw was stopped, and he reported sixteen fathoms with the deep-sea lead. Christy ordered the quartermaster to go ahead again, and keep the hand-line going all the time. Mr.
At the door hung the hand-line, the hooks, and the creel; and in a corner of Harry's sleeping-room a "keg" was occasionally visible; while over the chimneypiece hung a cutlass and four horse-pistols; and in a cupboard there were more packages of powder and pistol-bullets than it became a man of peace to have in his possession.
Ay, there must be something strangely entrancing in dragging the shoal waters with a hand-line, for unsuspicious, easily duped members of the acanthopterygian tribe of fishes, under which alarming denomination come, I believe, nearly all the finny fellows to be met with on these sand-banks, from the bluefish to the burgall.
The other method of securing a continuance of sport, the adoption of sea-angling as a substitute for fresh-water fishing, is quite a modern thing. Within the memory of men still young the old tactics of hand-line and force were considered good enough for sea fish.
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