FISHERMEN'S LORE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 45, 15 October 1931, Page 6

FISHERMEN'S LORE

a Coresrpondent.)

STRANGE NAUTICAL TERMS | WHICH BAFFLE LAND I FISHERMEN.

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| WASHINGTON, Sept. 20. Dealerg in fishing tackle and supplies usually agree that the queer nomenclature of their wares is a handicap in saies to laymen, but, they ask, what can one do about it? Names of fishing gear and apparatus originated, nobody knows how, and it's part of the tradition for deepwater fishermen to keep odd, difficult names foy their categories, just as doctor3 pfefer to call blood poisoning septicemia and rattle off polysyllabic words (like this one) for simple ailments. Find a bronzed, bearded old seahog smoking a vile black pipe and perched on a scarred gunwale down near the local wharves. If he is a veteran, a real deep-water fisherman who has sailed seven rivers if not seven seas, and if you don't pester him with inane 'questions, he may translate some of the terms one hears him use glibly. He may mention Sticking Tommie, and when you start imagining poor Tommie being struck, he'll grunt that he's talking about a candlestick that sticks in the boat cabinet wall. You idly kick a short sticklike thing as useless, but it's a thole pin — and that, he'll snort, goes on the gunwale of a boat to hold the oar fast. A halibut fletcher is a fierce-looking knife; a trawl roller is not a wave, but a little wooden wheel for the dragged line to pass over; and then one loses courage and quit3 interrupting. Strange terms continue to be heard; sodfish jigger, Georges spreader, blood knife, mackerel plow, George's hawse, squird jig, and sueh things. A simple hook and a squirming worm in still water satisfy most of us