SPROAT HOOK.
O’SHAUGHNESSY FORGED HOOK.
may be used, and the following are particularly good: turkey, scarlet-ibis, Page, Brandreth, Fergusson, grizzly-king, Montreal, silver-doctor, Rube Wood, Lord Baltimore, Whitney, Elliot, Rangely, Holberton, humble-bee, Gov. Alvord, and white-miller. The hooks for these should be from numbers 1 to 4. For trolling, the same tied with double snells may be used on hooks from 2/0 to 1.
For salmon-fishing, the following are recommended: Fairy, Dovey-queen, black-dose, Imbrie’s-witch, gipsy, butcher, fiery-brown, bonne-bouche, silver-gray, silver-doctor, orange-doctor, black-doctor, lion, Dunkeld, blue-tansy, gold-finch, dusty-miller, Wilmot, thunder-and-lightning, blue-Highlander, parson, Wingfield-red, Popham, Jock-Scott, and Durham-ranger.
Lines are now made in an endless variety and of a vastly improved quality. For salt-water fishing, linen lines are generally used, as they stand the action of the chloride of sodium better than silk. For heavy work, such as cod-fishing, trolling for blue-fish, and deep sea-fishing, braided and hawser-laid cotton lines are the best. The lines used by the anglers at West-Island, Pasque, Cuttyhunk, and other localities where large striped-bass are taken, are made of the choicest flax, hand-laid of from nine to eighteen threads, and notwithstanding their fineness, are marvels of strength.
For fly-fishing for salmon, trout, and black-bass, the polished enamelled waterproof, tapered, silk lines have entirely superseded the old hair, and hair-and-silk lines. For fresh-water trolling and bait-fishing, there are the hard-braid linen lines and the oiled silk braided lines, and pure boiled or raw-silk for minnow-casting for black-bass, and so forth.
Good leaders are a very important portion for an angler’s outfit, and more fish are lost through the use of poor gut and improper snelling than from any other cause. The best silk-worm gut from which leaders are made, comes from Spain, and should be carefully selected, only perfectly round and even strands being used. Anglers should discard any leader or snell that is at all rough or flat, or that has been dyed. Dyeing can be easily detected by its decided color, generally either a blue or greenish tinge, and the process injures the gut. A true mist-colored leader should be without any tinge other than a faint mist or water-color, which is obtained by staining, and not by dyeing.
The hooks now generally preferred by anglers are the highest quality sproat and the forged O’Shaughnessy, the latter being used principally for striped-bass, blue-fish, and channel-bass. For the heavy fishing at Cuttyhunk, West-Island, Newport, and Narragansett Pier, the knobbed and needle-eyed O’Shaughnessy is the favorite. The highest quality sproat is used for black-bass, salmon and trout flies, and is rapidly becoming the favorite hook among expert anglers. The advantage of the highest-quality forged O’Shaughnessy hooks consists in the fact that not only are they made of the choicest steel, but that the forging breaks every hook in which there is the slightest flaw, while the difference in price between them and inferior grades amounts to only one-third or one-half of a cent on a hook, an amount not worth considering under the circumstances. The old-fashioned kirbed hooks are rapidly going out of favor. The sproat has been greatly improved lately, the line of draft is in direct line with the point, which is small and keen, and penetrates a fish’s mouth more easily than a clumsier hook. The barb, too, is small and gives less room for play and does not tear so large a hole as a coarser hook. When fishing with a light rod, this is a great advantage both in striking and playing a fish. In fact it is almost impossible to drive a coarse large barbed hook through the tough mouth of a black-bass with the light rods that are now coming into favor.[19]