Fisk and Fisliins: in Auicrica. 



157 



Very rare and very tenacious of life. 

 A good bait, but too rare to be in much 

 use. 



Most of these minnows are well 

 known to the angler, and enter largely 

 into his programme for inveigling the 

 wary big trout, ravenous bass and vor- 

 acious pike, to bite, and then by " ap- 

 plied science " reducing them to pos- 

 session. 



Various modes, by various anglers, 

 are adopted in hooking on the live min- 

 now. The kind and manner of fishing 

 should be taken into account in hooking 

 them on. If you are old and lazy 

 enough to fish with a float (never fish 

 with one — it robs you of that indescrib- 

 able electric thrill with which the bite 

 strikes you), then it is a good way to 

 run your hook just under the skin be- 

 neath the dorsal fin. [See plate No. i i.J 

 In this way the minnow will move 

 about lively, be very attractive, and live 

 a long time, unless, happily, " chawed 

 up" by the three-pound bass you are 

 fishing for. 



It is claiined that the best way to 

 hook a minnow for trolling and casting 

 is to pass the hook up through both 

 lips, as shown in plate No. 8. This is 

 endorsed by a long line of expert bass 

 fishers who practice casting for that 

 noble and game fish in the Detroit 

 River, and on the St. Clair Flats espe- 

 cially. Other ways of hooking, as ex- 

 hibited in the several plates, have long 

 been practiced, and have met with great 

 favor and success in still-fishing and 

 casting with rod and line, where the 

 water is only moderately swift, and 

 small minnows are used. 



The mode practiced by Dame Juliana 

 Berners, as far back as A. D. 1496, no 

 doubt would work well now, especially 

 if the manner of inserting the snood 

 and pulling it through were reversed, 

 so that the minnow, when drawn 



through the water, would move head 

 first, instead of tail first, as shown in 

 plate No. 16. 



The trout, bass and other fish that 

 feed on the minnow will almost inva- 

 riably seize hold of the head, particu- 

 larly if the minnow should be a large 

 one. This fact, no doubt well known 

 to the good Dame, may have determined 

 her adopting the " tail first " process of 

 trolling the minnow. This is what she 

 says : 



"And for to take hym (a 'pyke') ye 

 shall do thus : Take a codlynge hoke, 

 and take a roche or a fresh heeryng and 

 a wyre wyth a hole in the ende, and put 

 it in at the mouthe and out at the tayle 

 down by the ridge of the fresh heeryng; 

 and then put the lyne (snood) of your 

 hoke in after and drawe the hoke into 

 the cheke of ye fresh heeryng." 



There are some, no doubt, who have 

 started out at mature age full fledged 

 anglers ; but most of us have the thrill- 

 ing pleasure of recalling the excitement 

 of jerking out our first minnow with a 

 pin-hook. The minnow pool is in fact 

 the nursery of anglers. There is just 

 enough of the savage imbred in us all 

 to glory and revel in the capture and 

 death struggles of our enemies. All 

 boys who have pointed an arrow at a 

 bird, or dropped their pin-hook into a 

 stream, look upon the bird and minnow 

 as an enemy to be captured. Herein 

 the angler's starting point. But in riper 

 years, when education and refinement, 

 the love of nature and all her sublime 

 teachings, have eliminated the savage 

 from their hearts, the}' grow stronger 

 in their devotion to the sports of the 

 rod and the field, while they become in 

 their deportment as tender and plastic 

 as a woman. They study nature for 

 the love of it. They see the wise hand 

 of Providence in the gorgeous forests 

 and the living streams, in the prolific 



