Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

240 TACKLE-CURIOUS METHODS—S/Lf/i? [75—EELSbread, to poison the fish.^ From Oppian's description of theworkings of the poison, IV. 658 ff., we take the hnes :" Soon as the deadly Cyclamen invadesThe ill-starred fishes in their deep-sunk glades,. . . the slowly working baneCreeps o'er each sense and poisons every vein.Then pours concentred mischief on the brain.Some drugged, like men o'ercome with recent wine.Reel to and fro, and stagger thro' the brine ;Some in quick circlets whirl : some 'gainst the rocksDash, and are stunned by repercussive shocks ;Some with quenched orbs, or filmy eyeballs thick.Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick,In coma steeped their fins more feebly ply,Some in titanic spasms gasp and die.Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns,The jocund crew collect, and count their gains."In the simile—inevitable in Oppian—which ends thepassage our author may indicate, though he does not name,the Germanic tribes (for over Rome in his day as over Europeinours hung the barbarian menace) when he condemned theabhorred habit practised by the enemy of poisoning the springsand wells :..." the brave defendants sinkIn thirsty pangs, or perish if they drink."In the number of methods, in the variety of devices, thefishermen of Oppian and ^Elian are not behind their modernsuccessors ; it is indeed the reverse of" John P. Robinson heGuessed they did not know everything down in Judee." 2We moderns are, in fact, merely the heirs to a piscatorialestate, which by scientific improvement or intensive culture^ For the poisoning of the Tunny, cf. Aristot., N. H., VIII. Cakes made ofcyclamen and clay were let down near the lurking places of the fish, accordingto Oppian.2 With one method of fishing the ancients (in common with nearly all themoderns) were unfamihar. The locus is off Catalina Island, etc. : the modusis by kites with line and bait attached, to which last, moving over and on thesurface of the water, the Tuna seems irresistibly attracted. See antea, p. 41,note 3.