FISHERMEN'S OWN BOOK. 



247 



When it reaches the coast it finds the herring there before it, and has a 

 feast for its late fast. It is with the herring that the fisherman now catchfes 

 the cod, for the caplin has not come, and it is too early for seines or nets, 

 and fish being hungry, the hook and line and "bull-tow" train are in de- 

 mand. The boat is a quarter of a mile out from the rocks, and on the 

 Atlantic waters. There are two men in the boat, and having reached the 

 spot where they intend to "try," they take down their sails and both stand 

 up, one in the fore part of the boat, the other aft. Each has a pair of lines, 

 and to each line a hook is set in a piece of lead, made in the shape of a fish, 

 to make it sink. Each line is fastened to the boat. A sheath-knife is in 

 the fisherman's belt, and with this he cuts his herring into bait sizes, puts a 

 piece on the hook, which he throws to his right a distance of about twenty 

 feet. He does the same with the line on his left, and his companion in the 

 other end of the boat does the same thing. Thus each man has two lines 

 out; he stands erect and "saws" his lines till he gets a bite — the sawing 

 being a sudden long jerk, now to the right line, and now to the left, in reg- 

 ular time. He starts. There is a sudden tug, and a thrill of life comes up 

 the line to his hand. He lets go the other and hauls away, and the greater 



the weight the more gleefully does he haul, till the cod "breaks water," 

 when, seizing a gaff — a contrivance with a wooden handle two feet long, to 

 which is affixed a large iron hook — he sticks it into the body of the fish and 

 jerks it in over the gunwale. While the hook seized by the fish serves to 

 draw the fish to the surface, it would not be sufficient to lift it from the sur- 

 face to the boat. The process of unhooking the fish to the novice is not 

 an easy one, but to the expert it is not a matter of two seconds. Some- 

 times a "spurt" comes on, which means that a school of hungry fish is pass- 

 ing under the boat, and then the rapidity with which two practiced fishermen 

 can haul in, unhook, bait, throw out and haul in again is certainly marvelous. 



An Important Discovery. — Mr. Robert E. Earle, who for some months 

 was connected with the artificial propagation of deep sea fish experiments 

 in this city, is credited with the discovery of the important fact that Spanish 

 mackerel are vastly more productive than cod or shad, and that they can be 

 artificially hatched in much less time. Mr. Earle learned from the Chesa- 

 peake fishermen that large numbers of these fish annually frequented the 



