3. The Feeding and  Fooling of Fish

There is one great big fundamental in catching a fish— get him to bite at a tasty-looking tidbit wrapped around a hook that won't let him go. Master that fundamental and you can give lessons not only to Andy but to every fisherman in town.

This we can tell you for a start: that tidbit should be some­thing which, to a fish, is good enough to eat. Fishermen call that bait. Or, if it isn't something good enough to eat, it should look like something good enough to eat. Fishermen call that a lure.

The dictionary says chum, a plural word, are pieces of oily fish. Fishermen say chum is a decoy to get sports fish up close to your tidbit-encased hook. It works like this: the chum the fisherman tosses into the water creates an oil slick that drifts off with the current. The fish he's after swims into the slick, smacks his lips and backtracks the slick to its source where the fisherman is waiting with baited hook.

Since fish are cannibalistic, bait can be any fish or pieces of fish smaller than the one you're after. The most common baits in America's saltwater states are mullet, sardines, menhaden or mossbunker, anchovies, clams, crabs, sand lice, mussels, eels, sea worms, spearing or silversides, shrimp, smelt, herring, squid, and killifish—or mummichugs, as they call them in New England.

Bait is most commonly used for fishing the bottom and in the surf. You attach the bait to your hook, cast it out or drop it over the bank or over the side, and let it sink to the bottom where you flick it or move it by jerking your rod or retriev­ing a few feet of line occasionally.

But you use bait for top feeding fish and for trolling, too. The farther out to sea you go the bigger the bait.

Chum

No matter what kind of fishing you do, and this will sur­prise a lot of surf fishermen around the country, you'll have more action by chumming the waters you fish. That includes the surf.

Any bait fish makes good chum, but the more oily the bet­ter. That makes the mossbunker just about the best. It's an important commercial catch because of its industrial oils. Cut your bunker into chunks, stuff it into a meat grinder, and you have chum.

Stuff in any other fish heads and scraps that happen to be handy and that is chum, too. Some boat fishermen fasten a grinder onto the gunwale and let the ground-up chum fall right into the water; in goes every trash fish and bait-stealer they catch ... crabs, sea robins, begal. Others cart it along in buckets and ladle it out steadily, never allowing a break in their slick line. Fish following a chum slick won't explore beyond that break.

Easiest way to get your chum is to buy it already ground at a bait station. If it has started to crystallize in the refrigerator, warm it up in the sun before using it. Otherwise you'll just have globs floating in the water around you.

Chum from an anchored boat or a fishing pier and the surface fish will come running. Have your hook drifting back into the slick, baited up with worm, clam, shrimp, crab, mussel, live killie or even a chunk of chum. You'll match your share of keepers.

Depending on where you live and what month it is, you’ll go home with croaker, corbina, yellowtail, mackerel, bluefish, striped bass, sea bass, tautog—and you're in for an unusual thrill if you see a big fluke come charging up from the bottom because he can't withstand the temptation of chum slick and live killie.

But the best place to hook fluke—he's known by different names around the country: summer flounder, northern floun­der, summer fluke—and any other fish that feed on the bottorn is, naturally, the bottom. For that you need a chum pot or a weighted burlap bag or gunny sack.

The chum pot is made of wire mesh and has a weighted bottom. The gunny sack can be the mesh bag that this week's oranges or onions came in. Put enough weight in it, maybe a brick, to take it to the bottom.

When pot or bag is bumping bottom, tie it to oarlock or pier or causeway rail and let it stay. Tug on the line and jounce it once in awhile to stir up the juices.

Weakfish, being strong-willed critters, prefer a chum all their own—live grass shrimp. The shrimp are expensive to buy and you need several quarts to keep the weakfish coming all day long. So, if you live anywhere near a tidal marsh, it's best to seine your own in the flats or in the estuaries. Other­wise, ground up porgies or trash fish will have to do.

Weakfish, by the way, are known around saltwater fisheries by a dozen or more different names. In Florida he is a spotted sea trout. In Rhode Island he is a squeteague. In Texas he is a trout or southern weakfish. He's also known as gray trout, tide runner, salt water trout, shad trout, sun trout, gator trout, drummer and squit, not to be confused with squid. And there probably are many more names than these. That's why, when we talk about each fish specifically in Chapter 13, we'll also identify them by their Latin names. The same fish is known by many names around the country, but its Latin name never changes.

Of all these names, the most widely used—weakfish—prob­ably is the most misleading of all. His mouth is soft and the only thing about him that's weak. The rest of him is strong enough and tough enough to give you a fight that you'll wish you'd made a movie of. He'll make you prove your deftness, too, because if you pull just a hair too hard you'll tear the hook out of his mouth and he's gone to fight another day.

Trickle your weakfish chum over the side steadily but sparingly. Bait up with a blood worm and let your line drift. When that weak comes charging you've got a fight on your hands.

The weakfish is a bay fish but he's a surf fish, too, and that brings us back to the business of chumming the surf.

Most surf men will tell you it can't be done. They'll tell you the waves will wash your chum up on the beach just as fast as you can get it into the water. They have a point. But only the chunks of chum will wash in, and even then not all of them. The oil in the chum will wash out to sea, and it's the oil that creates the slick which is all you are interested in.

Natural Bait

If you're fishing with killies or some other small bait fish in bay, estuary or inlet, put them into a killie boat to keep them alive. A killie boat—or killie cart, as they are called in the East—can be bought for a dollar or two, but Andy will get a kick out of making one. Here's how to do it.

Get some scrap wood—any fruit or vegetable crate will do —a piece of wire with about one-quarter inch mesh, a four-foot length of rope and some small finishing nails. The killie boat can be any size you want it, but it shouldn't be less than ten inches long on the top, eight inches long on the bottom, seven inches wide and four inches deep.

Cut side pieces out of the one-inch wood. Cut the top and end strips out of tough, quarter-inch wood. Drill a hole large enough for the rope to slip through in the center of the middle piece.

Nail them all together, leaving a section of the top open as shown for a trapdoor-like cover. Make sure it's large enough for a man's fist to get in and out.

Cut the cover out of the same tough but thin top wood to fit the opening. Nail two one-inch strips of the same wood to the cover, so that they hang over an inch and a half at one end. Drill the same sized hole in the center of the cover that you did in the end piece.

Screw a short strip of wood on top of the killie boat, posi­tioning it to act as a turn-buckle lock for the cover.

Trim the wire mesh to fit the bottom and nail it securely in place. Nail one-inch wide reinforcing strips of wood across each end after the wire is nailed down.

Thread one end of rope through the hole in the cover, in­side the killie boat and out through the hole in the end. Tie a tight overhand knot in the end of line so it can't work back into the killie boat. Tie a loop on the end that still extends out of the cover.

Killie Boat Figure 11

And there you have a killie boat.

Put your live killies inside the cart. Put the cover on and lock it. Drop the loop over an oarlock or tie it to the railing and let the cart float in the water. Andy used a four-foot piece of line for easier handling and because, in most circumstances, it's all you'll ever need. If you're fishing from a pier, bridge or causeway, just hitch on more line.

A nice thing about saltwater fishing is the great variety of natural baits and their easy availability. Any of them can be bought, but that takes money and it's more fun to catch your own. Best time is on a low tide when the fish probably aren't biting anyhow. The bait will be fresher, livelier and more tempting when the tide comes in and the fish start feeding.

In the clam clan there is the skimmer, surf or sand clam, the hard-shell, the quahog, the littleneck, the steamer or the soft-shell. They bury themselves in the sand or the mud. In shallow water you can locate them with your bare feet and scoop them out with your hands. Root them out of exposed flats, where they bury themselves a trifle deeper, with a hoe or clam fork.

In the worm family there is the sandworm, mussel worm or pile worm and bloodworm. For some reason saltwater fish won't take an angle or garden worm. Root the sandworm out at the low-water line or in shallow water. The bloodworm pre­fers mud to sand. In digging for worms, go for the big ones. Fish will take a five-inch worm, but bigger fish will take the twelve-inch ones you can come up with.

Bait men take one dig of a shovel for the smaller worms, a second dig in the same hole for the bigger ones, a third dig for the biggest.

Pile worms are great bait for rock fishing on the Pacific Coast. They live under the mussels and you'll need a claw hammer to root them out.

You go to the same beds, pilings or rocks for a good shell­fish bait—mussels—and you use the same claw hammer to tear them loose. They make a tasty piscatorial morsel when crushed. Mussels also make excellent chum.

Just about any shellfish makes good bait, especially shrimp. All fish love* them and, if you're sharp-eyed, you'll harvest them along bay fronts, under the banks of tidal creeks, crawl­ing along sheltered sand coves and trapped in marshland holes. Use a long-handled dip net, or grab one end of a seining net, have Andy take the other, and walk it through the water. When you don't get shrimp you'll get spearing, killies, crabs— all of them bait.

Fish like crabs, too. Perhaps the best is shedder or peeler crab, so called because at intervals in their lives they shed their hard backs. Fish like them best when in the soft, or shedder, stage. When their new shells start to grow they're called paperbacks.

Then there are calico, lady, blue claw, fiddler—both the mud and the china back—and green crabs.

Shedder and calico are in the surf. Best time to catch them, with a long-handled net, is on a low, outgoing tide. Then they're easy to spot. Bag them as a lapping wave washes them ashore and they try to scurry back to sea.

Green crabs can be found scooting between the rocks of jetties and breakwaters at low tide or along any rocky shore.

Blue claws, fiddlers and warm-water crawfish are caught in wire crab traps, baited with chunks of fish.

Sand bugs, also called sand crabs and sand lice, are the most common of the shellfish brigade. Down on the beach you'll see little tykes with their toy buckets and shovels playing with them. They're that easy to catch. Pompano, bonefish, corbina, blackfish and sheep head relish them.

Another good bait, but hard to find, is the squid and, if you do find them, they're hard to keep alive. Clean them quickly, cut them into strips, salt-brine them and store them in a covered jar in the refrigerator or freezer. They make good bait, either alone or in strips baited onto your hook along with a worm, piece of clam or killie. A fish may steal your bait but the tougher-textured squid probably will stay on your hook until your prey comes back for seconds.

Many baits, crabs and clam particularly, will fly off your hook in casting or will be washed off by strong currents. Pre­vent it by wrapping a rubber band, about a number 14, around both bait and hook. When bait is too small for a rubber band, use ordinary sewing thread.

Stripers and other surf fighters can be taken on a hook baited up with three or four whole worms. The hook is laced through the worms so that all ends will flip around like the tentacles of an octopus or squid. But those tentacle-like pen­nants may snap off in casting. You can't wrap them on with a rubber band, because then they'll just be a big glob of worm on a hook.

So here's a trick. Ball up worms, hook and all, in wet sand. Cast. The worms will stay on. The sand ball hits the water, the water washes away the sand—and you're in business.

Not-long-dead fish make good bait. That's cut bait, whether cut into chunks or strips. Chunk bait works best when you're still-fishing; strip bait works wonders when you're casting and retrieving as you would with an artificial lure, live-line fishing or trolling. The size of the fish you're after will determine the size of the chunks or strips you cut.

For chunk bait all you have to do is cut your baitfish up in chunks and thread your hook through a steak (Diagram 1 under Figure No. 12) and around the backbone. Use a rubber band to keep chunk bait on the hook.

Cutting strip bait takes a little more finesse. First fillet the bait fish (Diagram 2) by slicing behind the gill cover and down to the backbone with a sharp knife. Then run the blade along the backbone to the tail. Now shape the fillet as shown in Diagram 3, first removing all the skin except for a small tailpiece that will give it a fish-like wiggle when slicing through the water.

Rigged as in Diagram 4, the strip bait will have a spinning action in retrieving.

Diagram 5. Baiting up the whole fillet on a 2/0, 3/0 or 4/0 hook.

Diagram 6. Baiting up a whole fillet on a 7/0 or 8/0 hook.

Diagram 7. Two ways of baiting up the fish head that will be left after cutting your chunk or strip bait.

Diagram 8. How to put several worms on a hook.

Diagram 9. Baiting up with a whole worm.

Diagram 10. To hook up a crab remove the large claws and thread the hook through one hole and out the other. When using a large whole crab, remove the top shell before baiting up. Crabs can be quartered or halved for smaller fish.

Figure 12

Always use a rubber band or the crab won't stay hooked very long.

Figure 12 (continued)

Diagram 11. Attaching whole baitfish. Two ways of hook­ing them live—a and b. Be sure not to injure the spine. Two ways of hooking them dead—c and d.

No matter what bait you use, no matter how it's cut, change it often because the salt water will wash out its tempting oils.

Artificial Lures

In angling, a lure is any manmade contraption that will get a fish to bite. And man has made quite a business of produc­ing these piscatorial attractions. Bill Wisner, editor of Sport-men's Life, wrote an excellent book, How to Catch Salt Water Fish. In the book he says, "There are about 4,000,000 of these on the market and some guy invented three more while I was writing this sentence!"

And Bill was just talking about modern times. Harlan Major, in Salt Water Tackle, tells us that back in the third century this was written about Macedonian fishermen: "They fasten red wool around a hook, and fit on the hook two feathers, which grow under a cock's wattle and which color is like wax."

Imagine what Bill Wisner's tally might be if he'd started counting way back then! The thing to be learned from it all is this: If man has been making and catching fish with artifi­cial lures all these years there must be something to it.

There are probably a few million saltwater fishermen around the country who wouldn't use a lure if you gave them a lifetime supply free. But there also are a few million others who wouldn't be caught dead with a piece of bait on their hooks. You do your fishing and you take your pick—bait or lures.

In making up your mind you'll have five types of lures to work with: jigs, plugs, tinclads or squids, spoons, and spinners. Each of them may be called something else where you live and, taking them one at a time, we'll list every synonymous name we can think of.

 Jigs Figure 13

Jigs. We'll start with the jigs because, of all the artificials, the jig probably is the one lure that is most ideally made-to-order for the light tackle or spin fisherman, namely you. A jig also is known as a barracuda, bullhead, buck tail, and bug eye. If you know it by some other name, you'll recognize a jig from the six shown in Figure No. 13.

They're dressed up with feathers, rubber, buck tail or plastic skirts, they travel like a rocket when cast on* light line, they're out of this world in any kind of water—fast or still, rough or calm, deep or shallow, troll them fast or troll them slow, fish them fast on the surface or fish them slow on the bottom. No matter how you fish them, no matter where, a jig will knock 'em dead.

They'll cast fast and far because all their weight is concen­trated in the head. Look at the illustrations. They'll all catch fish anywhere but each has its specialties. The thin, two-toned ones are perfect for slipping between rocks. The roundheads can be handled best in cross-currents. The flattops work won­ders in shallow water, which makes them duck soup for bonefish.

Notice two other things about them: (1) They all have their leader eyes on the top. This means they always ride horizontally, on even keel. (2) The hooks are turned up, not down. This means there is far less chance of their getting hung up on the bottom than anything else you can possibly use.

If there are any extremes in inshore saltwater fishing, they are the rigors of the surf where the fighting stripers and chan­nel bass are, and the mild-mannered sheltered bays where easy-going flatties laze on the sandy bottom waiting for dinner to come swimming by. The dressed jig will take anything either water has to offer.

You might even tangle with a fish whose mouth either is too big or too small for the hook—well, don't be surprised if once in awhile you hook them in the gills or the tail.

Never use a jig, or any lure for that matter, without an easily attached braided wire leader. You may not need wire for the fish you're after but you're liable to hook into a sharpie that'll go through monofilament like Andy through Mother's biscuits. So always have a supply of them—wire leaders, not biscuits—with you in varying lengths of from about six inches to about two feet.

The speed of your retrieve and how high you hold your rod tip will determine where your jig rides in the water. After surface feeders? Fast retrieve, high tip. Bottom feeders? Slow retrieve, low tip.

Metal Squids Figure 14

Metal Squids. Fishermen and fishing writers know better, but whenever most people talk about fish biting, they talk about the fish biting because they're hungry. Yet they bite also because they're mad or because they're being playful or because they're being competitive.

The designs of squids, or tinclads, which are far and away the favorite lures of surf fishermen, work with these idiocyn-crasies of fish more so than any other artificial baits. They're made to look like baitfish, to flash and attract the quarry's attention and maybe get him mad enough to attack, and have their hooks on their trailing ends to take care of the mischief-makers who aren't hungry but, being in a playful mood, like to nip baitfish on the tail.

At first made mostly of blocked tin and left in their natural, unplated color, squids now also come in nickel or chrome and can be spotted more easily by fish in dirty water or at night. When the blocked tin becomes discolored, work it over with steel wool or knife.

A piece of pork rind is a tantalizing morsel to add to the fixed hook lure such as (1) the butterfish, (2) the bent sand eel and (3) the diamond. They also come with tail feathers and a swinging hook such as (4) the keel-type which looks like it was crossed with a dressed jig and then there's the killer with a treble hook tail (5). If one kind of squid doesn't take a fish today it will tomorrow. Better than that no man can say.

The pork rind is available at tackle shops, packed in handy jars. Some are short, tapered strips, others are longer and have a built-in fixed Z-nickel hook. Surf men prefer the latter.

A tinclad gets best results in its natural color but many fishermen also are artists who can't resist a paint brush. If you're one of them and you want to do some experimenting, confine your Grandma Moses urges to green, blue, red, orange, white, silver and yellow. When you want to change the color scheme, you'll find that block tin scrapes very nicely. Don't be confused, incidentally, by the interchange­able use of the name squid for both the natural bait and arti­ficial lure. A long time ago someone decided to call a metal lure a squid and that's the way it's been ever since.

Plugs. Here, truly, is where the lure-makers had a holiday. And well they might, because no sight can be sweeter than that of a fish ripping through the surface and taking the bait.

Plugs ride high, plugs ride low, they have lips for diving, concave noses for kicking up a spray, butterfly tails for spin­ning up a small storm, they come double-jointed and triple-jointed, they come in every color of the finny rainbow. And when a fish hits a plug you generally see it happening.

So the lure-makers outdo themselves in dreaming up de­signs. At first they worked with wood. Now they work mostly in more durable color-fast plastic.

All you, the fisherman, have to do is get the plug out there and the fish will come a-running. Assuming, of course, that the fish are out there.

You can cast a plug. But, generally, you can't cast it far enough if you're standing on the beach. Being less compact than the jig and squid, the plug offers more wind resistance. So the plug is used more by jetty jockies and by boat fishermen trolling or casting into the jetties. But, wind permitting, you can use a plug anywhere.

You're in for a spine-tingling thrill when you cast a popper  (1) and a fish comes slamming up from down under to take it. You start your retrieve the moment the popper hits the sur­face. You give the rod tip a slight jerk. The scoop-shovel nose sends up a splash and that's when your quarry comes hurrying along. But he doesn't take the bait!

Plugs Figure 15

Mad, he sends it slamming toward the heavens. It hits the water and you tweak its nose. This time the fish takes the hook. Brother, hang on!

You need placid water for a popper to be at its best. If the surface is kicking up, if it's night or if the water is cloudy, then a plug (2) that both floats and dives is in order. Hold your rod and reel still and the plug floats on the surface; start your retrieve and its metal lip sends it into a dive; jerk your rod and it zig zags like a frantic baitfish.

The darter (3) is a favorite of anglers who work the surf at night. The surf man reels in slowly, very slowly, with the darter, tweaking its nose as it lies quietly on the surface. Then he reels again, very slowly. Striped bass love it.

Types 4 and 5 are just two of the many plugs that you’ll find in the tackle shop, every one—generally speaking—a proven fish-getter. Type 4, with its propellers fore and aft, stirs up the surface as you retrieve; a two- or three-piece lure (5) wiggles like an eel as you retrieve.

How any of the plugs act in the water also depends a great deal on the angler. Bend the lip up to dive it deeper, bend the lip down to ride nearer the surface. Jerk it as you retrieve and it will act like baitfish trying to escape. Let it lie still for a moment and a fish may come over to inspect it. But never let the fish get too close a look or he'll learn, it's not for real. Jerk it from under his nose and his temper will show and you've hooked a fish.

Work the plugs faster in daylight, slower at night. Use the brighter hues at night, the dark hues in clear water and during the day. Cast them behind the breakers. Let them land in front and you'll have too much slack line on your hands. If you need added weight for casting, clamp a fight rubber-lined clincher on your line.

Spoon Figure 16

Spoons. You'll recognize a spoon the moment you see one because it looks exactly like just that—a spoon. They can be cast but they're meant chiefly for trolling. They come in larger sizes, with fixed hooks, for offshore trolling; in smaller sizes, with swinging hooks, for bay and flat fishing.

Success with a spoon depends chiefly on the expertness of the fisherman. A spoon has a built-in wobbling, limping motion but how much it limps and wobbles is determined by the speed of the retrieve. Jerk the tip as you retrieve; the spoon will leap forward and make for the surface. Drop the tip and take a few slow turns of the line, the spoon will flutter and sink, making like a crippled baitfish.

Spoons come in all sizes to fit all fish. Name your quarry, the tackle man has the spoon to feed him.

Spinner Figure 17

Spinners. This is the one manmade lure that combines the tantalizing action of the artificial and the taste of natural bait. Typical of all the spinners is the Cape Cod shown in the illus­tration. The blades are brightly plated metal that spin and flash alluringly. Properly attracted, the quarry fish swims up and is greeted by a worm, a piece of strip bait, squid or pork-rind attached to both hooks. If he's hungry, the fish will bite big and take both hooks. If he's playful, he'll nip the tail and end up with just one hook in his jaw. And one hook in his jaw is all you need.

A spinner is primarily a trolling lure. Towed behind a slow-moving boat, it flirts with fish like nobody's business. It also is a dandy little fish catcher from piers, bridges and causeways. Open your pickup bail, let the line drift slowly down-current and start a slow retrieve whenever you're ready. Or add a little weight, cast, let the spinner sink to the bottom and then slowly retrieve.

The long list of lures doesn't stop with jigs, spoons, spinners and metal squid. It goes on and on. Japanese feathers, rigged eels, eelskin rigs, surgical tube and plastic tube to name just a few.

Chaser Figure 18

A few pages back we talked about the reasons fish have for striking a lure. We talked about their competitive urge, their mania for getting there first. Now we'll talk about what you can do about that mania for beating another fish to the bait.

Tie a large popper plug to a three-foot leader. Tie a small jig to a one-foot leader. (See figure 18). Using just one snap swivel, pin them to your line. Now cast and retrieve—fast. What you have is a big fish chasing a little fish.

A real fish lurking in the neighborhood sees the chase. He can't stand the sight of another fish beating him to the dinner table. The competitive urge is upon him. He slashes in for the kill. He takes the hook. Not the popper hook, the jig hook. He wanted to get to that little fish first. Well, he did, and you've got him!

Somewhere, sometime, a fisherman dreamed up that deadly combination. Somewhere, right now, a fisherman is dreaming up one just as deadly. Dream right along with him. There's no telling what you'll come up with.

As we said much earlier in this chapter, every lure has its purpose and they'll all catch fish. But you needn't stop with the store-bought lures. Suppose you're fishing and it's been a real bad day. You've used up all your bait, you've lost every lure because of one mishap or another.

The fish are biting like mad and all you have left are some hooks. Look around you for a bright piece of rag, a broken toy balloon, aluminum foil off your sandwich. Anything. Dangle a piece of what-have-you from your hook. Add what­ever weight you need to get it out where the fish are and you'll have the fish coming to you.

Fish have been caught by baiting up with a red matchtip!

Just to show you what we mean:

We wrote these last few paragraphs on a Friday and our Saturday newspaper told about a California freshwater fisher­man who ran out of worms, baited up with green trading stamps and went home with a string of ten fish!

The lesson to be learned is simple: Don't spend too much money on artificial lures because anything will catch fish if they want to be caught. Buy what you can afford and no more. Add to your supply as you go along. In buying, these are some additional things to watch out for:

Lure weights range from a quarter-ounce on up. With your spinning outfits, the lightweights on up to two ounces will do very nicely.

Lures, especially the small spoons, started as freshwater tempters. Some tackle stores sell the same lure for both fresh­water and saltwater use. Don't buy that. You want lures made expressly for salt water. They're stronger, tougher, more dur­able. The hooks not only are stronger, they're also sharper.

Plugs are made for easy replacement of gang hooks. Any good tackle salesman will show you how in four seconds flat.

When you land a fish on a plug, be sure to club him sense­less before trying to free the lure. These hooks can tear your hands. For that matter, all saltwater fish of any size should be clubbed before handling. Their sharp fins and teeth are as much of a peril as the hooks.

If a lure gets hung up on a rock or a piece of sunken debris, give it plenty of slack line and let the action of the water wash it free. Don't try to pull it loose; you'll just hang it up more firmly. If it doesn't come free, cut off enough line to tie the lure to anything that's handy. Mark the spot and go back at low tide to get it and save yourself a couple of bucks.

Figure 19

Floats

A float can be anything that does just that—floats on the surface while your bait or small lure dangles below. How far below depends on what level you discover the fish are feeding. Just allow that much line between hook and float. If you're using a cork float, just slide it along the line to where you want it and wedge it tight. Plastic floats have a spring-lock device for the same purpose.

Once rigged, all you have to do is drop it over the side and let it drift. When a fish hits he'll yank the float underwater and you'll not only feel the strike, you'll see it, too. And a float is perfect for dainty bait-nibblers. You can't feel them but with a float you'll see them.

We talked about experimenting and dreaming up new ways of catching fish a little while back. Now let's do some experi­menting together.

We know how to bottom fish the surf. We rig up hook, bait and lead sinker, cast out beyond the breakers, let it all sink to the bottom and lay there.

But now we want to top fish the surf. We have the bait, we have the hook and we have the float, but where is the weight coming from for casting? Cork is too light. So is a hollow plastic float.

Let's look around the house. There's Andy bouncing a ball against the wall. You tell him about the problem, maybe he can find the solution. Kids have a way of cutting to the root of things. He bounces the ball, stops and turns to you.

"Balls are made for throwing," he says. "Why can't we cast them, too?" He holds out his ball. "Rubber also floats," he adds.

Andy lets you heft the ball. It's about two inches in dia­meter. It's made of solid sponge rubber. Later you put it on a postage scale and discover it weighs about an ounce and a half —just the casting weight you need.

Now if you can only run some leader wire through the middle and crimp a loop on each end you're ready to go fish­ing. You go down in the cellar, dig up an old ice pick and force a hole through dead center.

Next step is to force the fine leader wire through the hole. But the sponge rubber has closed up. You raid your wife's sewing basket and come up with the largest darning needle you can find. You thread the wire through the eye, push the needle through the hole using a pair of pliers to help it along.

The rest is easy. Crimping pliers and sleeves, a loop on each end and a snap swivel on one of them to take your hook leader. You've already got a snap swivel on the end of your line to pin on the rubber-ball casting float!

Down to the beach you go, bait up with a long wiggly worm or a lively baitfish. Heave back and let go, out beyond the breakers. You're top fishing the surf with a float! And you don't have to do a thing now but relax and save your energy for when a game fish strikes—right up there where you can see it happen. The waves, the bobbing rubber ball and the frantic antics of your live bait will provide more than enough attraction to bring on the fish.

But suppose Andy wasn't playing with a ball and sister Peg was sweeping the steps when you went home with your problem. Well, she's holding the answer right in her hands. The broomstick. Somewhere around the house you'll find an old broomstick or mop handle. Cut a short piece off the end. Put an eyes crew in each end and you've got a wooden casting float.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here….