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NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 39 
and hooks, bait-seines, several puncheons for oil, and from four 
to eight boats. The crew is either hired or they go on shares, 
the fare of fish in the latter case being divided among them, 
after deducting a one-twelfth for curing. Your experienced and 
initiated fisherman almost invariably goes on “sheers ;” for if 
fish are to be caught, he can catch as fair a “jog” as any man. 
He is one of those knowing chaps who predict the weather by 
the moaning of the sea, or by the “loam” or “glim”’ in the air. 
He never mistakes a catspaw fora “skull” of fish “ briching.” 
His labor always gives zest to his toil, and when his hard day’s 
task is done, he can punish his “ whiggin” of grog anda full 
allowance of “jo-floggers,” “lobscouse,” and “ doughboys,” to 
say nothing of “duff” on Sundays. 
It is customary for the seine-boats to go in quest of bait in 
the early evening ; these carefully search the little coves and in- 
lets, and creep along the shores, and when the ripple of a pass- 
ing school is detected, the lookout ahead or astern gives due 
waiming. Overboard goes the seine smoothly and noiselessly, 
and with a rapid circuit the bait is imprisoned and quickly 
secured. One cast is generally sufficient, for the caplin swarm 
in millions, swimming so densely that often a dip-net can be 
filled from a passing school. They keep near the shore to avoid 
their finny pursuers, and are left floundering on the rocks by 
every reflex wave. The cod often leap clear of the water in their 
pursuit, and at suchtimes may be taken bythe hook with scarcely 
three feet of line almost the instant it touches the water. The 
caplin has very much the appearance and size of a smelt. 
Hand-fishing for cod is not the high art of angling. Rapidly, 
one after another, the fish come floundering over the sides of the 
boat, and are dexterously slatted off the hooks upon the crotch- 
irons provided for the purpose, when the hooks, as quickly 
__ baited, are tossed overboard again, to be seized the instant they 
sink below the surface. In time the hands not toughened to 
the business become sore and water-soaked and skin off, and 
_. the arms and shoulders grow painfully lame. The thick lines 
"SF 
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‘draw up buckets of water, which run down the sleeves despite 
the protection of an “ile sute.”’ Most fishermen handle two 
