Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

•BAITS—GROUND FISHING—POISONS 239But successful cunning to avoid capture was no monopolyof the Amia. Ovid, Oppian, Pliny, Plutarch, iElian, recountnumerous devices which certain fish employ to nullify net orhook. I subjoin three of the chief tricks used to defeat thehanms.The Miigil, whose greed is only saved by its guile, despitehis fore-knowledge of danger has madly grabbed the bait,but keeps thrashing it with his tail, till at last he shakes itfree of the hook. " At mugil cauda pendentem everberatescam Excussamque legit." 1The Anthias on the first prick of the hook turns over on tohis back and quickly severs the line with his dorsal fin, or spike," of the shape and keenness of a knife." 2The Scolopendra, according to Aristotle," after swallowingthe hook, turns itself inside out until it ejects it, and then itagain turns itself outside in," and (in Pliny's words) vomits upeverything inside him till he has ejected the hook, and " deinderesorbet " ^!Lines with floating corks and lead attached close to thehooks, partly to facilitate the throwing of the line, and partly,combined with a sliding cork, to regulate the position of thebait, were in regular use. Ground fishing, when the lure isleaded and thrown with or without rod, was well known andwidely exercised.Pastes and scents were also employed, either like myrrhdissolved in wine to intoxicate (see the accompanying drawing,which is, I beheve, unique), * or, like the cyclamen, or sow-1 Ovid, Hal., 38 f. ; cf. Oppian, III. 482 ff.Pliny, N. H., XXXII. 5 ; Ovid. Hal., 44 ff. ; Plutarch, De Sol. Anim., 25.This trick is also characteristic of the Armado of the Parana river, but itsenormous strength enables it also either to jerk the paddle of the fisher away,or to capsize the boat. Cf. S. Wright, The Romance of the World's Fisheries(London, 1908), p. 208.^ Phny, IX. 67, taken totidem verbis from Aristotle, iV. H., II. 17, andIX. 51.* The fisherman on the Mosaic from the Hall of the Mystae in Melos(R. C. Bosanquet, in the Jour, of Hellenic Studies (1898), xviii. 60 ff., PI. i)appears to have been using a glass bottle half-filled with wine as a lure.The inscription MONON MH TAHP is generally taken to be late Greek for" Everything here except water " (whicii will be supphed by the next rainfall).But the words might be legitimately rendered ": Only let no water be used " —a natural exclamation from the devotees of the wine-god ! Prof. Bosanquet,despite his fine sense of humour, has missed the double entendre.