Gone fishin again - Sepia Saturday

Back in November 2011 I went fishing on Sepia Saturday here.

Alan's prompt this week shows three miners on a fishing trip, but by the look of them they are relaxing, telling fisherman's tales.

I first when fishing when I was a young boy, a minor in fact. However it wasn't as long ago as this.

Children fishing for minnows with net
1882 - Van Ingen and Snyder

Our technique was to use a jam jar on a length of string; the bait was small pieces of bread inside the jar. The skill was to cast the jar into the river without losing the bread. It wasn't very long before fish would enter the jar after a feast but then you had to pull the jar out of the water quickly with the fish inside.

The most common fish we caught this way were small minnows and sticklebacks like these - 

Minnow
(3 March 2008 - Freddy Kreugar)

Stickleback
(Ellen Edmondson & Hugh Chrisp)

If we were lucky we would lift a stone and find a Miller's Thumb.

Bullhead of Miller's Thumb
(June 2009 - Hans Hillewaert - CC BY-SA 4.0)

These were good at camouflaging themselves in their surroundings. One would fit easily it the palm of your hand.

The river did not have to be very deep for these activities, although we rarely waded like this.

Children search for minnows
(Ronald Laubertson - US Fish and Wildlife Service)

We never used a net and girls were not allowed.

In previous posts I have mentioned that I was born in the village of Ketton, in Rutland - England's smallest county. 

River Chater at Ketton, where I used to fish
(June 1959 - By Humphrey Bolton - CC BY-SA 2.0)

River Chater Bridge, Ketton
(April 2007 - By Graham Horn - CC BY-SA 2.0)

The stone bridge was built in the 17th century and restored in 1849. The footbridge did not exist when I live there back in the 1940s. The Chater here was too fast flowing for fishing with jam jars to be successful.

Later I took to fishing with rod and line in the River Welland which was on the outskirts of the village. The Chater joins the Welland at Stamford c. four miles down stream. However my interest in fishing faded as I became too involved with sport - and discovered girls!

The last two weeks we have been staying with our daughter in Michigan and it was in lake in her property that, as I'm sure I have told you before that I caught my largest fish.

Bob's catfish in 2006

No, I'm not pulling its tail to make it longer.

I have not been able to get away from fish this week. This one was the most colourful I've seen.

Aquarium in a Chrysler service centre, Lake Orion

And just to prevent me bragging about the size of my catfish I was taken to Oxford Township's Library to see this monster.

I think he was looking for the exit!

His companions in the tank were more like the roach I used to catch in the River Welland.

My fisherman's tale is almost done so I'll leave you to search out others at Sepia-Saturday-253.

Me? I'm hooked by Louis and Bing.

String of Pearls - Sepia Saturday

The first thing that caught my eye was the string of pearls worn by the lady being served tea from a silver pot. Pearl fishing has been going on for centuries and in place like India it was a big undertaking.

Pearl fishery at Tuticorin, India
Artwork by Johann Nieuhof, c 1663

But the string of pearls that I remember best is that of the late Glen Miller

Glen Miller - 1942 recording

This modern day string of pearls  is a marvel to behold.

Cosmic dust clouds in Messier 78

This image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The  observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope and shown here in orange, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed. They are overlaid on a view of the region in visible light. 

I must include a lady wearing a sting of pearls; the one I've chosen is  Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of US President Theodore Roosevelt after launching the USS Theodore Roosevelt in October 1959.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth - 1959

Can you see the broken champagne bottle in her hand. She was supposed to break the bottle on the bow of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the first Polaris submarine built on the West Coast. She had declined a dress rehearsal for the launching ceremony. She missed the ship when she swung the bottle and in desperation threw the bottle at the ship - and missed again. Fortunately a crew member on the ship pulled the bottle up by the attached cable and smashed the bottle on the bow before the ship hit the water.

The string of pearls that Alice was wearing was a wedding present given her by the Cuban government.

Somehow I don't think she would have been relaxed enough to listen to:

Aria from The Pearl Fishers - Bizet

Lorna Pollock - piano.

For more pearls of wisdom you should visit Sepia Saturday-129

Hooked

A-Z Challenge – ‘H’

To succeed as a writer I’ve been told that I need to ‘hook’ my readers in the first paragraph. That may be true but in my life I have been hooked on other things.

As a young boy I went fishing using a bent pin as a hook and never caught a thing. It was only when someone gave me a proper one that I realised the hook was barbed.

Fishing Hooks - by Retama  (CS A-S A licence)

I then found out Hook could be a pirate when I read Peter Pan. His hand was quite scary but nowhere near as frightening as the hook that Abu Hamza has as a hand.

Hooks are all around us in every day life and many we take for granted like the simple hook and eye. I have vague recollections of being given advice by older boys on how to undo them with one hand; the usefulness of this I’d better leave unsaid.

Hooks and Eyes for Fur Clothing - by Kuerschner

There are hooks on coat hangers, and coat hooks of a variety of shapes. In the north England they refer to chapel hat pegs but these are not always the place to hang you hat.

In industry I came across hooks of different shapes and sizes on cranes although the crane fly and sand cranes don’t have hooks at all.

 Hooks of Polish biggest floating crane 'Maja' - by Brosen, Gdansk, Poland 

(CC A-S A 2.5 generic licence)

On the sports field I found it was foul to hook someone’s stick at hockey. Playing cricket a hook was a risky shoot unless you controlled the shot and kept the ball on the ground. As all golfers know a hook appears from nowhere and your ball deviates wildly from your club. I refused to play in the middle of the front row at rugby; there was no way I wanted to be a hooker. If you believe what you read in the press you may hear of sportsmen and celebrities who get involved with hookers of a different type and I don’t mean a one-masted sailing boat.

With this Challenge you could say we are getting hooked-up with one another. By hook or by crook I aim to get to ‘Z.’ I could tell you a joke in the hope that you would fall for it hook, line and sinker. If you have had enough by now there are two solutions open to you:

1. Play hookey.
2. Tell me to sling my hook.