Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/334

cernible in the luminous water resolve themselves into floating grasses and reeds; the bottom, even where the water is quite deep, becomes plainly visible, and every passing fish is distinctly seen by the spearsman, while he, being in total darkness, is invisible to the creatures below. This effect can be readily understood when one remembers that the ice, unless it be covered with snow, is transparent, and that the light shining through illuminates the water. It is as if you were standing outside of a house on a very dark night looking through a window into a brilliantly lighted room.

The fishermen's shanties are provided with small sheet-iron stoves, which require but very little fire to make the house warm enough for one to sit with his coat off. The stoves are provided with small pipes, which issue through the roof or side of the house. A bench, camp-stool, or chair complete the furniture.

Catfish may be chummed for; that is, attracted by bait cut up and dropped through the hole in the ice. The bait will attract many other fish, which can be snared with a slip-noose made of fine copper or brass wire and attached to the end of a line. There is nothing alarming in the looks of this instrument, and a fish will not notice the snare until it finds the fatal noose tightly drawn about its body. It requires a little practice to snare fish successfully. I well remember my first attempt. A large "mud sucker" was discovered under an overhanging bank. Cautiously I crept to the edge of the stream, and with trembling, yet careful hand, I let the snare glide gently into the water. The fish did not move; by degrees I slipped the noose over the comical slippery head of the creature, and with a mighty jerk landed—not the fish, but my snare in the boughs of a tree that overhung the water. I was thunderstruck when I discovered that the fine wire of the snare had