318 APPENDIX. 



Good leaders are a very important portion for an 

 angler's outfit, and more fish are lost through the use of 

 poor gut and improper snelling than from any other cause. 

 The best silk-worm gut from which leaders are made, 

 comes from Spain, and should be carefully selected, only 

 perfectly round and even strands being used. Anglers 

 should discard any leader or snell that is at all rough or 

 flat, or that has been dyed. Dyeing can be easily detected 

 by its decided color, generally either a blue or greenish 

 tinge, and the process injures the gut. A true mist-col- 

 ored leader should be without any tinge other than a faint 

 mist or water-color, which is obtained by staining, and 

 not by dyeing. 



The hooks now generally preferred by anglers are the 

 highest quality sproat and the forged O'Shaughnessy, the 

 latter being used principally for striped-bass, blue-fish, and 

 channel-bass. For the heavy fishing at Cuttyhunk, West- 

 Island, Newport, and Narragansett Pier, the knobbed and 

 needle-eyed O'Shaughnessy is the favorite. The highest 

 quality sproat is used for black-bass, salmon and trout 

 flies, and is rapidly becoming the favorite hook among 

 expert anglers. The advantage of the highest-quality 

 forged O'Shaughnessy hooks consists in the fact that not 

 only are they made of the choicest steel, but that the forg- 

 ing breaks every hook in which there is the slightest flaw, 

 while the difference in price between them and inferior 

 grades amounts to only one-third or one-half of a cent on 

 a hook, an amount not worth considering under the cir- 

 cumstances. The old-fashioned kirbed hooks are rapidly 

 going out of favor. The sproat has been greatly im- 

 proved lately, the line of draft is in direct line with the 

 point, which is small and keen, and penetrates a fish's 



