The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1899-12-14
SOMETHING ABOUT EELS.
The Incidental Eel Caught "hiie
Anglirg-One Way of Fish
ING for Eels.

The year round, trying at the various
seasons for one kind Of fish and another.
there may be found along the North
river, sitting on the retaining wall out
side the tracks Of the New York Cen
trail & Hudson River railroad, skirung
Riverside park, more or less men tsh-
ing. If man fishing here should catch
an eel, as sometimes he does, he would
probably turn with it to the nearest
rail OF the track behind him and Kill II
by breaking its head on the rail, saying
perhaps meanwhile to it and TO HIM
self: $50 you're the chap that's been
stealing my bait, eh?" for the eel is
great bait stealer.
Sitting on wharf, a man catching an
eel in like circumstances would Kill 1t
on the stringpiece; and, in boat, on the
boats gurwale; but these would be cells
caught incidentally to other fishing;
fishermen catching cells for market
would not kill an eel in that manner for
the reason that the bruises would show
on the eel when it was skinned and so
make it unmarketable.
A man catching cells for market from
boat would have box to put the cells
in. If he had lapstreak boat cells
thrown on the bottom could climb up
to the gunwale on the protecting edges
of the planking, but they can't climb up
the straight sides of box. If he were
fishing with hooks and lines, one of
the various ways in which cells are
caught, he would very likely have what
is called a trot line, this being long
line, perhaps 500 OF 600 feet in length,
moored al each end and having alongit
at intervals of three feet as many as $50
or 200 hooks, each hook on a short line.
When the fisherman overhauling the
trot line comes to hook with an eel on
it he simply pulls united the knot in
the short line, so removing it from the
trot line, and drops that short line,
hook, reel and all into the box, and goes
on overhauling the trot line and taking
off the cells in the same manner until he
has got them all. As he goes along, in
place of the hooks and short lines, he
takes off, he ties on the trot line other
short lines with baited hooks attached.
His trot line all overhauled and reset,
he goes at the cells in the box. taking
the hooks out of their mouths, and then
rebaiting these hooks and getting them
ready TO put on the trot line again.
The fisherman taking cells in this man
ner, when he had got a box full would
go ashore and dig a shallow hole in
the sand and empty in the cells and then
fill up the hole with the sand. This
would keep the cells from getting away,
and also make them so that they could
be handled. From this mass of cells and
sand the fisherman would take the cells
one at time and skin them. When he
had finished this work he would gather
up the eel skins, excepting possibly
some of the larger ones, and throw them
in bunch into the water. There crabs
and shrimps would feed on what there
was about them that could be eaten,
and the residue would in time disap-
pear.
Eelskins are put to some uses, and &C.
caSionally a man wears one around his
wrist as a cure for rheumatism. Once,
by farmers near the seashore, they were
commonly used in fails, for tying the
club to the handle; there was nothing
that served the purpose so well. Not
so many fails are used nowadays, but
where one is used it is likely to be found
with its swinging arm attached to the
handle with an eelskin, as of old.-N. y.
SIM