The Economic Fishes of Hudson's Bay and Straits. 211 



number of short lines, and the other is the ordinary "jigger." I 

 have not seen the combination arrangement in operation, but a 

 description of it is at hand : — " The long lines sometimes run to an 

 extraordinary length, and shorter lines, technically called snoods, 

 are affixed to them at definite distances. To the end of each snood 

 is attached a baited hook, and, as the sharp teeth of the fish might 

 sever a single line, the portion of the snood which is near the hook 

 is composed of a number of separate threads fastened loosely together, 

 so as to permit the teeth to pass between the strands. At each end 

 of the long line is fastened a float or buoy, and when the hooks have 

 been baited with sand lance, limpets, whelks, and similar substances, 

 the line is ready for action. The boat, in which the line is ready 

 coiled, makes for the fishing place, lowers a grapnel or small anchor, 

 to which is attached the buoy at one end of the line, and the vessel 

 then sails off, paying out the line as it proceeds, and always "shooting" 

 the line across the tide, so as to prevent the hooks from being 

 washed against each other or twisted round the line, which is usually 

 shot in the interval between the ebb and flow of the tide, and hauled 

 in at the end of about six hours. As soon as the long line has been 

 fairly shot, and both ends firmly affixed to the grapnels, the fishermen 

 improve the next six hours by angling with short lines, one of which 

 is held in each hand. They thus capture not only codfish, but 

 haddock, whiting, hake, pollock, and various kinds of flat fishes. 

 On favourable occasions the quantity of fish captured by a single 

 boat is very great, one man having taken more than four hundred 

 cod alone in ten hours." * 



But the fisherman of to-day on the Labrador coast generally takes 

 the cod with the "jigger." Over thirty thousand souls, men and 

 women, put out from their scanty homes in Newfoundland every 

 spring for the Labrador. Anchoring in some one of the innumerable 

 small harbours of that rugged coast the men go out in their boats and 

 " jigg " at certain stages of the tide, returning to the vessel at evening, 

 or perhaps twice a day, heavily laden with these fish. They are 

 thrown on deck with a sort of fork, and cleaned by the women, and, 



* Woods' Natural History. 



