CHAPTER I. 



HOOKS. 



General obser'vat'ions — Mechanical imperfections of hooks, bend, over- 

 fineness of wire and ' springing,' shank, point, and barb. Proper 

 theory of hooks — Points of a perfect hook, how to be attained : pene- 

 tration, holding-power, strength, lightness, and neatness. Existing 

 bends of hooks — Sneck, Sproat, Limerick, round, Kirby, and their 

 defects; 'hog-backed' hooks. Ne^ pattern described. Hooks for 

 trolling tackle — Triangles and double hooks, tail and reverse hooks. 

 Lip-hooks, with gimp loops, metal loops ; fault of existing patterns, 

 new patterns described. 



Too much importance cannot be attached by the fisher- 

 man to everything that concerns hooks. They are to 

 the angler what the main-spring is to the watch, or the 

 crank to the steam-engine — the very alpha of his craft. 

 The whole art and paraphernalia of angling have for their 

 objects first to hook fish, and secondly, to keep them 

 hooked. And yet, extraordinary as it may seem in such 

 a mechanical age as ours, we cannot go into a tackle 

 shop and buy a hook in which one or more glaring 

 defects — or offences against the first principles of me- 

 chanics — cannot be pointed out. The most common 

 fault of all perhaps lies in the shape of the bend. I 

 have shown, when alluding to this subject in the Book of 



