HOW I MADE. TROUBLE WITH A FISHING PARTY. 
CHAS E. HICKOK. 
At some time almost every one of us 
has done something which, on reflection, 
we would have left undone. 
It was many years ago, during my annual 
vacation, which I utilized on that occasion 
by doing the East, my previous outings 
having been fishing and hunting trips, 
South to Arkansas and North to the Wis- 
consin lakes in the pineries. 
I am an inlander, a Missourian, and never 
saw salt water until the time I now de. 
scribe, and firstly I want to offer my apol- 
ogies to all who were on the trip, and to 
say I am sorry for all the trouble I made. 
It isn’t my nature to ask many questions, 
but by keeping an eye on what others do, 
I manage to get along fairly well when 
among strangers with customs and ways 
of doing things different from ours. 
On this trip, after doing Niagara, going 
down the St. Lawrence and Hudson, I 
found myself early one morning at the old 
Astor House, where I stored my grip, and 
Bohemian-like, went wandering out to see 
the town. Down Broadway I went, to 
the Battery and Castle Garden, then up 
North river, watching the ships and the 
endless procession of all kinds of craft, un- 
til I came to a large sign, “‘Daily trips to 
the fishing banks; fare 75c.” I had not 
the remotest idea where or what the banks 
were. Still, as daily trips were made, I 
would have time to go. There was a con- 
stant stream of men, boys and a few 
women going on the pier, some with rods 
in cases, lunch baskets and other fishing 
gear, so I joined in the procession. Getting 
out to the end of the pier, I bought a 
ticket as I saw others doing. A small boy 
was calling ‘““Here’s your fishin’ lines, only 
20 cents, so I bought one, and from another 
boy a string of bait, which he called “moss 
bunkers,” for 5 cents. At home we call 
them mussels. This brought my invest- 
ment up to one dollar. 
Shortly a steamer came gliding up to the 
dock, the “Angler,” I believe was the name 
and as near as I remember, about 175 feet 
long and having boiler deck, cabin deck 
and hurricane. 
A number of people were already on 
board, having got on at other landings. 
Our contingent scrambled in with a wild 
rush, which I later found was to pre-empt 
locations. Tieing a line across a space of 
railing seemed to be accepted as owning 
that room for the day. There were some 
hogs among the lot, of course, who lined 
up for 8 feet when 3 was all they were 
fairly entitled to, and in consequence the 
slow ones and green ones, like me, were 
entirely left out. However, after going all 
over the boat, I came to a place just in 
front of the port wheel, which no one 
wanted, the reason of which I later found 
was that the line was quite liable to become 
entangled in the wheel when the boat was 
moved, as it often was. I tied my line 
across this space just as if I knew how 
and having secured a stool, as others did 
sat down to wait for what should come 
next, meantime holding in my hand the 
cigar box of moss-bunker bait, which I 
didn’t yet know what to do with. Watch- 
ing my neighbor and doing as I saw him 
do, as near as I could, I trimmed off the 
scraps and tied the strands after which I 
went down to the lower deck and got a 
handful of salt from a tub which seemed 
to be free property, and having covered 
my bait with it, I was ready for business. 
All this had not prevented me from feast- 
ing my eyes with the new and varied sights 
as we passed down the bay and out through | 
the Narrows, where we first began to feel 
the long roll of the Atlantic. I thought 
then it was awful rough, but experi- 
ence has shown me that the sea was then 
about as smooth as it ever is. It was 
rougher later in the day. 
We went on and on until the big hotels 
of Manhattan seemed but tiny dots on 
the horizon, and the hills of Naversink 
were but a dim blue line. I was enjoying 
the view and the fresh salt water air, when 
I noticed that the wheels of the boat had 
ceased revolving, and at the same time 
all hands above and below had cast out 
their lines, the heavy sinkers going plunk, 
plunk, like stones thrown in a pond. 
hooked on some bait and did likewise. 
These lines were 125 or 150 feet long, 
trimmed with a half pound lead sinker, 
and a gang of 3 or 4 hooks, 2 feet apart, 
each hook being baited with a chunk of 
moss-bunker. The line runs down to the 
bottom here over 100 feet, the sinker rest- 
ing on the bottom and the line is-held taut 
in the hand, and raised and lowered with 
the roll of the boat as she swung to the 
anchor. 
Some had short rods about 8 feet long 
with a wheel above the hand of 5 inches 
diameter, on which the line was wound. | 
These were on the upper deck. 
I suppose there were 300 of us fishing 
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