Saltwater Fishing Secrets Sitemap

Preface - You're a family man. You've got a ten-year-old son who got sand in his toes, salt in his hair and sun on his nose last summer. In the course of so doing he saw some men and boys fishing and catching fish in the surf just the other side of the lifelines.

01. Tackle - Just dig into your wife's sewing basket for a spool of thread and you'll be able to see in quicker than it takes to tell exactly how the free spool and the fixed spool differ. (See Fig. 1)

Okay, you've got the thread in your hand. Now dig out a crocheting needle and poke it through the hole in the spool. If your wife isn't the crocheting type try something else, maybe a lollipop stick.

02. Terminal Tackle - This chapter is all about the end, the payoff end of your fishing gear. The hooks without which you cannot catch a fish, the sinkers for keeping your bait on the bottom when you're after fish that like to feed way down there, the swivels that keep your line from twisting by taking up the shock of the saltwater currents, the snaps and the connecting links for easy interchange of them all, and the knots that you'll have to learn how to tie no matter what Andy learned in the Cub Scouts and sister Peg learned in the Girl Scouts because they were taught with an old-fashioned material called rope and you'll be working with monofilament.

03. Feeding - 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.

04. Inshore Fishing - You've got your fishing tackle now. You know about baits, artificial and natural. You know how to rig up. You're ready to go fishing. But you're a family man and you want your family to have fun fishing with you.

The family. That's Andy. And Peg. And Mother. And you. Four people on a fishing trip? That costs money, a lot of money. More than a salaried man with a fixed income can afford. That's right. It costs a lot of money to go fishing—if you don't know where to go.

05. Boat Fishing - This book is written for the average man, the man whose pay is neither much more nor much less than the next fellow's. And the average man can't afford to buy, operate and main­tain a motor-driven boat just to go fishing.

But that doesn't mean Mr. Average Joe can't go out on thewater to catch a fish. Scattered around the country there are boats of all sizes, shapes and styles that are available to him for an hour, a day or a week. They're there for just one reason—to take Mr. Average Joe and his family out on the water any time they want to go, at prices they can afford to pay.

06. Water Safety - The section of the previous chapter on outboards contains fifteen safety precautions of particular importance to the row-boat fisherman. But the list doesn't stop there. There are other dangers to guard against.

1. Never board or leave a boat with your fishing lines already rigged up. Dangling hooks can do a lot of damage. Attach and detach hooks only while aboard the craft.

07. Nature's Signs - Nature, if you know how to read her, is just like an open book. She'll tell you almost anything you want to know. Learn to read her sign language and you'll learn how to tell where the fish ought to be. After that, all you have to do is fish and find out.

Where do you start reading? You start by reading the fishing column in your daily newspaper. The column will tell you, not where the fish are today, but where the fish were yesterday.

08. Casting - If anyone reading this book has never learned to throw a ball he's going to find it difficult to understand this chapter on casting. For that's all casting is—just another way of throwing. Rear back with your arm, whip forward and let go.

That is the way you throw a ball and that is the way you cast your fish hook into the water with a spinning outfit.

09. Hook 'em - Well, here we are. We've finally reached that part of the book that makes all the rest incidental. From here on we can just settle down to the grand and ancient sport called fishing.

You can regard what's gone before in this book as you would the days when you were learning to drive a car. You learned so you could get in a car and go somewhere without being driven. What you learned became drilled into your sub­conscious. From then on driving was nothing more nor less than a matter of doing what comes naturally.

10. Big Game - There comes at least one time in every woman's life when she's got to buy a hat. The wildest, the gayest, the most frivolous, the most expensive hat she ever bought in her life.

It happens, we imagine, when her whole world is fast clos­ing in on her and there's no place to stand up and fight back, no place to run, no place to hide. There's no escape from the pileup of problems. No escape from her children, from her husband, from her home, from civilization and the things that modern mankind calls progress.

11. Boat Camping - Just as surely as you went big game fishing yesterday one of the kids in your family will ask tomorrow, "Why don't we buy a boat?"

He'll have a good argument. After all, you did spend what to Andy and Peg is an awful lot of money, even if you did divide the cost of the safari with three friends. You did do a little celebrating after you got back to shore and that cost money, too.

12. Complete Almanac - In this two-part chapter, we'll skim the cream off saltwater fishing around the United States. Skim the cream, we say, be­cause we'll talk only about the 107 fish most likely to be taken by sports anglers and well disregard the countless others in our waters that have nothing much to offer the sportsman or the family man out just for a day of old-fashioned fun.

13. Go Fishing - Before a fish can bite he, being just like people in this re­spect, has to have something to bite at or on. That's what this chapter is about—bait for fish to bite at, hooks for fish to bite on, leaders they can't bite through. In short, we'll get down to the meat of what this book is all about.

14. Equipment Care - The man who discovered salt did a wonderful thing for mankind. Salt adds taste to your food. It melts the ice on your sidewalk. It's great stuff for tanning hides. It gives a wonderful tang to sea air.

But along about the time you're heading home from the fishing grounds you're probably wishing that the gent who dis­covered salt had stopped short of sprinkling the stuff all over your tackle.

15. Clean + Cook - Next to catching them, the nicest thing about fish is eating them.

First, though, you have to clean them and cook them. And that takes know-how. Clean them wrong or clean them too late and not even the cat will eat them. Cook them wrong and you'll wish you'd thrown Mr. Fin back for someone else to catch. You'll become a member of that oddball angling fra­ternity whose motto is "Catch 'em, yes; eat 'em, no!

THE END