CHAPTER XIV 



CONCLUSION 

 On Hooks The Bait Table Recipes and Notabilia 



PERHAPS there is no point of greater importance, or 

 to which the great majority of anglers pay less 

 attention, than that of hooks. Yet everything 

 depends upon having a hook that will take a good 

 hold and keep it. No matter if you possess the most perfect 

 skill, if your tackle be as fine and as sound as can be manu- 

 factured, yet if your hook be not thoroughly trustworthy all 

 the rest is set at nought, There is no economy so miserable, so 

 shortsighted, and so expensive in the long run, as that indulged 

 in by buying cheap hooks. A hook may be bad from various 

 causes. It may be badly tempered, being hardened either too 

 much or too little. In the first case, the point will certainly 

 break in the strike when it touches a bone, and you will lose 

 your fish ; and lucky are you if that be the only fish you lose. 

 Usually the angler from carelessness loses, misses, or scratches 

 two or three other fish before the fact dawns upon him that 

 there may be something amiss with the hook ; and, when he 

 examines it, he finds that the fine delicate extreme point is 

 gone, and a rough, scratching, blunt point, that cannot be 

 made to take a hold anyhow, remains. Even with the best of 

 hooks this accident will sometimes happen, should the point 

 strike on a hard solid bone. In these instances a touch of a fine 

 needle-file (the finest kind of file in use) will put all to rights 

 again ; but so biting and effective are these files that they 

 ct very keenly, and, therefore, a slight touch or two is all that 

 is necessary. But, of course, with over-tempered hooks this 

 accident is infinitely more probable. An over-tempered hook, 

 however, a fresh point being given to it, will often take a 

 number of fish without going again, the extra fine hair-like 

 point having been got rid of, and all that will be required will 

 be a rather sharper strike. Still, with a heavy fish you are 

 never safe ; a jump or a jerk may leave you without a fish and 



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