136 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



and the implements used, were somewhat primitive. William 

 Wood published a tract in 1634, entitled "New England's 

 Prospect — A true, lively, and experimental description of 

 that part of America called New England," — in which the 

 manner of catching these fish by our ancestors is thus set 

 forth: "Of these fishes (the Basse) some be three and some 

 foure feet long, some bigger some lesser. At some tides a 

 man may catch a dozen or twenty of these in three houres; the 

 way to catch them is with hooke and line. The fisherman 

 taking a great Cod-line, to which he fasteneth a piece of 

 Lobster and throwes it into the Sea; the fish biting at it, he 

 pulls her to him and knocks her on the head with a sticke." 



A recent English novelist, noted for his powers of minute 

 description, gives the following account of Bass-fishing in the 

 last century. The fish spoken of is not our Striped Bass, but 

 his English patronymic, the Perca Labrax of Linnaeus, Labrax 

 lupus of Cuvier. Old Davy tells the story in "The Maid of 

 Sker:" "Up I roused and rigged my pole for a good bout at 

 the Bass. At the butt of the ash was a bar of square oak, 

 fitted in with a screw-bolt, and woven round this was my 

 line of good hemp, twisted evenly, so that if any fish came 

 who could master me, and pull me off the rocks almost, I 

 could indulge him with some slack b}' unreeving a fathom of 

 line. At the end of the pole was a strong loop-knot, 

 through which ran the line bearing two large hooks with the 

 eyes of their shanks lashed tightly with cobbler's ends upon 

 whip-cord. The points of the hooks were fetched up with 

 a file and the barbs well blackened, and the whole dressed 

 over with whale-oil. Then upon one hook I fixed a soft 

 crab, and on the other a cuttle-fish." 



Can any thing be more quaint than these accounts of 

 fishing in the olden time.' 



The late Mr. Conroy, an octogenarian whose name was 

 a tower of strength in the fishing-tackle trade for more than 

 half a century, gave me some interesting reminiscences of the 



