United States or Nicaragua ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In this method of capturing the sturgeon, the one using the spear takes his position in the front of the canoe, while the other men noiselessly paddle the boat against the current to the spot where sturgeon are seen to be quietly resting or rooting in the gravelly bottom of the shallow places in the current. Alec was the first to make the attempt at this new and rather uncertain sport.
The bight we knew to be good ground for sturgeon, and there we felt sure the King of the Greeks intended to begin operations. The tide circled like a mill-race in and out of this bight, and made it possible to raise, lower, or set a Chinese line only at slack water. So between the tides Charley and I made it a point for one or the other of us to keep a lookout from the Solano Wharf.
While the usual method of capturing the sturgeon is with large gill nets, a more exciting way is by spearing them at the foot of the rapids, where at times they gather in large numbers, or by shooting them as they spring into the air. To spear a large sturgeon from a birch canoe, and not get an upset, is a difficult matter.
This day coming from Westminster with W. Batten, we saw at White Hall stairs a fisher-boat, with a sturgeon that he had newly catched in the River; which I saw, but it was but a little one; but big enough to prevent my mistake of that for a colt, if ever I become Mayor of Huntingdon!
Martin, who was seated in the bow, exclaimed, "I saw a sturgeon pass us just now; if I catch sight of any more, I must have one of them." Presently, before Alick could warn him of the danger he was running, he stood up and darted his spear. The next instant what was our horror to see him fall over headlong into the water, the line attached to the spear catching as he did so round his leg!
It was a large fish, a sturgeon, floating dead, with a bird beside it, also dead! On turning both over, what was their astonishment to see that the talons of the bird were firmly fixed in the back of the fish! It was the female osprey! This explained all.
So it shall be enough if he will go down to the Hudson and seize a drop from the bow of mist that a sturgeon leaves when he makes his leap; and after, to kindle his darkened flame-wood lamp at a meteor spark.
And this: So it happened that neither we nor they had anything to eat but what the country afforded naturally. Yet of eighty who lived upon oysters in June or July, with a pint of corn a week for a man lying under trees, and one hundred twenty for the most part living upon sturgeon, which are dried till we pounded it to powder for meal, yet in ten weeks but seven died.
Jerry Sturgeon, captain at the age of twenty-one, and so damned pretty in those fancy uniforms he wears. How many times have you ever heard of him really being in the dill? He knows better! Captain Sturgeon spends his time prancing around on that famous palomino of his in front of the Telly lenses, not dodging bullets. Or Ted Sohl. Colonel Ted Sohl.
"Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow; The water-sprites will wield their arms, And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirit's charms, They are the imps that rule the wave.
Word Of The Day