The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-19

so that it makes in effect @ double thread the uncovered thread is wound around the fingers of the open hand. Removed from the hand it hangs together in a bunch, or bob, The bob itself is then tied around with six or eight turns of thread, not very tightly, but securely enough so that they will stay about where they are put. The eels' teeth catch on this thread when they bite at the bob, and 1t helps to hold them long enough to land them, and, tied up in this manner the bob keeps better. The bob is used with a rod and with 0 drop line; with a rod fishing from the banks of creeks and from bridges, and with drop line from boats. In rod fishing two men generally work together, one man handling the rod and the other the cells. 1 The rod man, when he feels a bite, raises the bob carefully and then flirts it suddenly around over the meadow. | He may have caught and landed one eel, or four or five, or perhaps half a dozen at once. The eels are likely to be | twelve or fifteen inches in length, al- though they are caught from twenty inches to two feet in length. The big cells the fishermen call adders. When the cells have dropped off the bob they l squirm about in the grass on the mead | ow, and the man who Is looking after that end Of the work hands them up and puts them in a bag. In fishing with drop lines the fisherman has two or three bobs in use at the same time. He raises g. bob carefully, but quickly, | ot ha md oF +1a nd iy,e it in over the boat, and the eels drop off in tn boat. In bobbing for eels from a boat with drop lines a single fisherman will sometimes catch a. bushel in day. There are many anglers who find great | sport in bobbing for eels, as there are, also, anglers who delight in catching cells with a hook and line.
 A great many cells are caught in l traps. There are various sorts of eel traps. A very common kind is one made of twine netting in the form of a cylinder flattened on one side, on which | it is weighted to hold it to the bottom This trap is made four or five feet in length, and fifteen or sixteen inches in diameter. It has four hoops placed at equal distances apart upon which the netting is stretched. At the open end Of the trap there is a funnel of netting, the outer edge being attached all around to the first hoop of the trap. | The small end of the funnel inside the l trap is an inch or an inch and a half in diameter, and is held in the center of the cylinder, and the whole tunnels are held in place by four lines running from the small end of the funnel to the | neyt hnnr ho plr Rack nf fhp first flJn- mel there is a second, with it's mouth secured in the second hoop and its small end to the third hoop. The other end Of the trap is closed with netting, so arranged that it can easily be opened to admit of placing bait in the trap and of removing the captured cells. IsSeeking the bait, the eels go through the two tunnels into the inner part of the trap. It would be possible for them to get out by the same way, but the chances are immensely against their l doing so. There are traps similar to this made of wire netting instead of l twine, though the tunnels may be made of twine netting; and there are traps {, on the same principle made, tunnels and all, of basket work, and called basket traps. The splints forming the tunnels are interwoven with basket work from the mouth pretty we'll down to the small end where they are left free This funnel is something like the funnel in a wire rat trap.
 Where and how the eel traps shall be set depends somewhat on the season and on circumstances. If they were set in a creek in a region where they would not be in danger of being lifted by anybody but the owner they would be tied to a stake driven in the bank, the most convenient way of reaching and handling them; otherwise they would be sunk clear of the bank and their location marked by buoy. l Away from the shore line, that Is, out side the creeks, eel traps are always buoyed Often half dozen or more traps are strung along on a line, sim gle buoy sufficing to mark the whole lot
 Eels are very fond of the eggs of horseshoe crabs. When the big crabs go into the creeks In the spring to de- posit their eggs in the mud and sand along the shores. the cells follow in great numbers. Choppedup horseshoe crabs with the eggs mixed in make the best bait for cells. Fishermen build horseshoe crab pens in shallow water by the shore, in which they keep horse shoe crabs to be chopped up for eel bait. It would not be unusual for a fisherman to start in the spring with a thousand horseshoes on hand, enough perhaps, to last through the entire sea- son.
 A great many cells are caught on hooks The eel fisherman who fishes for eels in this way uses a line perhaps an eighth of mile long, which he stretches on the bottom, anchored at the ends, the location of the ends being marked by buoys Along this line hooks baited with herring are attached at intervals of five or sig feet; the hooks are on lines eighteen inches oi two feet in length. It is difficult tc take an eel off a hook. So, in overhaul ing the line, when the fisherman comes to a hook with an eel on it he does not unhook the eel; he simply pulls the short line loose and drops line, hook eel and ali into his boat. In place oi the hook he has thus taken off he ties on another already baited. When the fisherman has got to the end of the line and finished overhaullng it he disen- gages the hooks from the eels and baits the hooks anew and holds them ir readiness to tie on the line again at the