FRESH-WATER MUSSELS AND MUSSEL INDUSTRIES. 53 
to fall off with the subsequent dragging on the bottom. These hooks are also slightly 
weighted by a wire wrapping at the lower end of the shank, and a dip in melted solder 
makes the entire hook less liable to untwist. Another hook, lately brought to the at- 
tention of the public and known as the “‘sanco-point”’ hook, has five prongs made in 
one piece and attached by means of a swivel to a center shaft. The tips are also glob- 
ular to make a so-called locking device intended to prevent the escape of the captured 
mussels. For both of these designs, it is claimed that the small mussels are not captured on 
account of the enlarged tips, and that when the ordinary-sized mussels are once caught 
they do not fall off the hooks, so that no injured mussels are left in the beds.* These 
claims remain to be effectively demonstrated; but such improvements are eminently 
desirable and worthy of careful test, for there is no question but that the ordinary 
crowfoot hook is distinctly injurious and that its use should be permitted only for a 
brief time, allowing opportunity for effectively improving it or displacing it altogether 
with other equally efficient apparatus. 
Meantime, mussel fishermen everywhere are urged to learn the use of other methods, 
for it is evident that an injurious mode of fishing will not be tolerated indefinitely. The 
shellers themselves will recognize the propriety of excluding from use, wherever it can be 
replaced, an appliance which is actually destructive of shells that are not taken or that 
can not be marketed when captured. Various other methods now in practical use will 
be described in the following pages. 
DIP-NET DRAG. 
ORIGIN OF THE METHOD.—The dip net, as used in shelling was invented and intro- 
duced during the spring of 1911 at Peoria, Ill. It had long been known that Peoria Lake— 
that part of the Illinois River which broadens into a lakelike expanse above the dam at 
Peoria—contained large beds of commercial mussel shells of good quality, but previous to 
I9II no suitable method of taking them had been devised. The various tools and ap- 
pliances, as the bar and crowfoot hooks, tongs, scissor forks, ete., which had been 
operated so successfully in other mussel rivers of the Mississippi Basin and in the major 
portion of this river, proved unsatisfactory in Peoria Lake. There was urgent need for 
some contrivance that would collect the shells in deeper water, where practically no cur- 
rent prevailed, and the dip net came to fill this want. 
It is not known who invented this appliance, but probably the idea developed by a 
combination of the principles of the ordinary dip net as used in fishing and the clam rake. 
At the present time this apparatus is used in Peoria Lake almost exclusively, none other 
being employed, except in places where the bottom conditions are unfavorable for the 
operation of the dip net. Within very recent years its use has extended to other parts 
of the Illinois River and to Lake Pepin. One dip net was seen on the White River of 
Arkansas in 1913, but it had not been put into use. 
The dip net is simple in construction, and in operation; it is also inexpensive and 
especially suited to those rivers and lakes which have soft mud bottoms free from 
obstructions, such as logs and hang-ups, and where there is but little or no current. 
DESCRIPTION OF APPARATUS.—There appears to be no definite standard or general 
specifications for this mechanism, and consequently there are no two alike; the black- 
@ Several tests made by J. B. Southall, shell expert of the Fairport station, indicate that about 30 per cent of the mussels 
catching on ordinary hooks are lost, while only about 15 per cent of the mussels catching on the Boepple hooks drop off. 
