The Republican journal., 1909-08-12
Fishing Down Outside"
How the Harbor Fisherman Adventures
and Some of the Prizes he Gets.

How tne f1dfDOr FlSneImdn AuVeHtuIeS
and Some of the Prizes he Gets.
Winthrop Packard in the Boston Transcript
In the beginning Of things were the
cunners, known along Massachusetts
Bay mainly as perch. Names are good
only in certain localities. If you ask a,
bingham boy how the cunners are biting
he will be likely to throw rounded beach
stones at you, thinking he is being made
game of. Down at Newport, R. l., they
catch cunners and if you talk saltwater
perch to them it is at your peril Else
where they are chogsett, or peradventure
burgall, but everywhere they are nippers
and bait-stealers, and. the trait which
makes these names universal is the rea-
son why in the beginning of things were
the cunners. For the first bait of the
first fisherman that ever threw hook
into the North Atlantic was taken by
Gunner. There are today forty million,
more or less, North Atlantic fishermen
who will corroborate this testimony with
personal experience, 1t may be that the
first hook was taken by some other fish,
but the Gunner got in ahead on the bait.
The Gunner is not very large. He rarely
tips the scales at a pound, but he will eat
his own weight in bait in a day and he is
numerous and pretty nearly omnipresent.
Wherever the salt tides flow, whether
it be up the sandy stretches OF clean
bottomed cove, along the mud bottom OF
the creek, or amid the red-brown tangle
of kelp on some ledge awash mile OIL
shore, there comes the Gunner, suitlng
his color chameleon-like to that OF the
bottom.
On the mud he is brown, on the sand
gray, but if you wish to see handsome
Creatures YOU must pull them from some
bottom where the red kelp grows. Then
their rich bronzy reds will make you for
get their bait thievery and love them for
their beauty.
If you will go back to Dombey and
Son and read the description of Mr.. Car
ker YOU will realize that Dickens must
have been fishing off the Lodges Of some
English headland when he planned that
gentleman and his characteristics. In
whatever mood or from whatever side
Mr.. Carker approaches you it is his teeth
which dominate the situation. ! am con-
WINGED that every time Dickens tried to
make him otherwise he found another
Gunner Juggling and drew him up. Judg-
ing by Carker it must have been good
fishing for cunners. Like Carker this
fish comes to you teeth first. His mouth
is so full of them that they stick out like
quilts on the fretful porcupine. Nature.
which gives each tools for the trade
which he most loves, made him bait
stealer extraordinary with these.
The beginner who fishes in the salt sea
does it almost invariably with a pole,
whether from cliff or dock or from
boat Experience brings the desire for
the hand line. The farmers boy who
comes down for the salt hay tucks his
long birch pole into the bottom of the
wagon and the trolley tripper comes to
the beach with his split bamboo. Down
in Maine years ago the pinkles used to
sail equipped with numerous short poles
whereby to trail for mackerel. In the
day of your grandfather and mine it
must have been a sight to see the crew
of a pink-sterned chebacco boat dancing
from pole to pole Tipping the number
ones aboard when good school struck
in. Of course, all that is waste of
energy and of wood. A hand line is the
more intimate and serves the purpose
better. A man is not really salt water
fisherman till he has learned the use OF
one. Then let him go forth. Through
that line shall flow to his nerve gan
glia deep sea knowledge galore. BY
it shall come to him in time all creatures
OF the vast deep.
Lovers of deep sea fishing grow best
from small beginnings. They yearn
from tide flats to the spar buoy In the
harbor channel. thence through Hull Gut
to the rocky bottoms about the Brew
sters. After that the sirens sing to
them from every wash of white waves
over lodges far out to sea, caution browns
in the temptation Of blue water, and
they fish no more except it is down out
side They who dwell on the very rim
of this deep sea, at Marblehead or Ma
hant, at Cohasset or at DuXbury, never
know the full depth Of its lure as do
those who must win to it from the Dor
chester flats or the winding reaches of
the Fore River. To these latter only is
the perfection Of desire and the full joy
of fultilment. You can leave the shall
low bays inland only when the tide
serves, hence groupings for tender on
the beach Of starlit mornings, the
chuckle of ballard blocks in the rose of
dawn and a long drift in the pink glow of
morning fog while the boom swings idly
and the turn of the flood drifts you east
WARD. LlLUle WdyWafu WINGS, 100 lazy
to make a ripple on the CLASSY surface of
the water or stir the sail, play strange
tricks with this morning fog. They
carve chasms in it and open tunnels down
which you see far for moment, then
they wind it like wet sheet about you
and you may not see the bobstay from
your post at the tiller.
They bring you sounds and scents from
afar. You know you are abreast Grape
Island now for you scent the wild roses
on the point. Another breeze brings
faint odors of the charnel house from
Bradley's. A stronger chases it away
and you have Whit of an early break
fast, brown toast, fried fish and coffee,
at Rose Cliff. The chuckle of oars in
rowlocks tells you that the old fisherman
is astir at Fort Point and the man with
the new motor boat over at Hough's
Neck is giving it little run before
breakfast, with the muffler off, as usual.
A gull goes over, flying low. You do not
see but you hear the soft swish Of the
wings. By and by the sun shows through
a rift in the fog and you begin to move
before faint air from the southwest.
A half hour more and the shreds of fog
are melting upward into the blue of a
clear day, the wind fills your sail and you
are sweeping eastward with wind and
tide round the Sheep Island bar.