In South American waters there is an electric eel which can give a stout shock to such as touch him; but I think all eels must be electric, else why the shock that one in the deep water off the pond bank can send through a dozen feet of line and as much more of birch pole to your hand the moment he pokes his nose against a bob? It tingles in your palms, and is as good as prescribed electric treatment from a battery, for it thrills you with a quickening of life and nerve and a magical alertness.
The eel is not nearly so cautious with a bob as with a hook. He nibbles, which is the first shock; he bites, which is the second and stronger; then he takes hold. I can see the stout fisherman now with the fire gleam on his rugged face, his feet planted wide apart and his weight well on the hinder one, his hands wide apart on the pole and his whole attitude that of a lion couchant for a back somersault.
At the nibble his face twitches, at the bite his knee bends, and then the end of the pole sags quickly downward with the line as taut as a violin string. The eel has taken hold, his throat-pointing teeth are tangled in the thread of the bob, and the stout fisherman’s weight has gone far back of his point of support. If the line should break so would the fisherman’s neck.
They prate much to me about the stance and the swing, the addressing and the following through in driving a ball at golf. The words are used glibly, but I doubt if many know their real significance. Whatever that is it all applies, and more, to the proper bobbing of an eel. It is the summoning of all the forces of a man’s vigor and personality in one supreme stroke. Holding on, quite literally by the skin of his teeth, the eel circles a section of the pond with his tail and seems to lift it with him. The line sings and the birch pole bends nearly double. It is for a second a question which will win, but the shoemaker’s thread is very strong, and so is the stout fisherman.
Suddenly the eel gives up. Still hung to the bob he shoots into the air the full length of the line, describes a circle in high heaven, of which the fisherman’s feet are the center, and drops in the grass, while the fisherman, in marvelous defiance of all laws of gravity, brings his two hundred and fifty pounds back to an upright position without losing his footing. Golf may be all very well, but it does not equal this. Small blame to the fisherman if he poises a moment like Ajax defying the lightning.
Now, the boys have their innings. Somewhere in classic literature the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold. So the boys upon the eel that flops mightily and wriggles in vain in the tall grass. He is dumped in the deep basket; and hardly is he there before the fisherman has swung another in that mighty circle. An eel is very canny, and often escapes a hook even when well on. I never knew one to get away from a bob. Sometimes the half-bushel basket would go back home nearly full of them. And as for their size, I do not wish to say, except that no small ones seem to bite at a bob. In that I will quote from Izaak Walton, who, after giving excellent directions for dressing and cooking an eel, says:
“When I go to dress an Eel thus I wish he were as long and as big as that which was caught in Peterborough River in the year 1667, which was a yard and three-quarters long.” To which I can but add that I defy old England to produce any bigger eels than we have in New England.