Tip of the Week.....(but keep it under your hat)

[Vagabond]

Viator....Is there any other way to fish for the pickerel ?

 

Piscator.... Yea, as I say, as by walking and fishing with a dead bait, and specially a bleak, though she be a day old and laid against the sun, or carried between the crown of your head, and the top of your hat , to dry the sooner.....

 

William Samuel 1577

[Newt]

Some ideas are so good they just never go away.

 

From http://www.fishbase.org re: Bleak (Alburnus alburnus)

quote:

---

Occurs in shoals near the surface. Feeds mainly on plankton, including crustaceans (Ref. 30578) and insects (Ref. 9696).

Excellent as bait for carnivorous fishes

. May be captured using the smallest hook and a fly as bait.

---

[Chris Plumb]

Dang it - you've got a copy...

 

C.

[chevin]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Vagabond:

 

Piscator.... Yea, as I say, as by walking and fishing with a dead bait, and specially a bleak, though she be a day old and laid against the sun, or carried between the crown of your head, and the top of your hat , to dry the sooner.....

 

William Samuel 1577[/QB]

---

Err, is this why you left some herrings in the boot of one of your mate's car. If I remember rightly though, you left them there for considerably more than a day!

[Vagabond]

Chevin Yes, I did that to remind him to pick me up again the next week - the pike fishing was sooo good

 

Newt, you may be interested to know that bleak were once the starting point for the manufacture of artificial pearls - the scales are very silvery, and easily detached. The French used to use several tons of scales annually - thousands of fish - good job they are very prolific!

 

Now we know where and how "popstars" get their glittery hair - minced bleak coiffure !

[Chris Plumb]

Vagabond:

 

Newt, you may be interested to know that bleak were once the starting point for the manufacture of artificial pearls - the scales are very silvery, and easily detached. The French used to use several tons of scales annually - thousands of fish - good job they are very prolific!

From a history of Imitation Pearls.....

 

Parisian pearls

It was only after 1610 that good quality and aesthetically valid artificial products were to be found. It was in this year that a Frenchman named Jacquin, coroner of Passy, observed the iridescent appearance of the water into which some bleak (Alburnus lucidus) had been scaled. This experiment led him to produce a substance which became universally known as essence of Orient which was none other than a suspension of guanine (minuscule luminous crystals removed from the lining of the membrane of fish scales with an aqueous detergent) in an organic liquid, usually cellulose nitrate, although other substances can also be used. Jacquin used this to coat the inside of glass-blown spheres, which he then filled with wax. The results were highly successful for the times, and commercialization began of these spherules, named “Parisian pearls or French pearls”, resulting in their widespread market approval and distribution up until the XX Century. Nevertheless, because of the high cost of the essence of Orient, pearls with a metallic finish or “metallic pearls” were also widely available.

 

Well it is quiet tonight!!

 

Chris