The Republican

A Novel Way to Fish.

The winter fishing on Chautauqua Lake is quite a business. Being an inland lake, it freezes over quicker than Lake Erie and when the latter body is open Chautauqua Lake has ice enough to hold up an army of fishermen. There are now about twenty "coops," as they are called, out on the ice. A "coop" is a box about three feet square with a hole in the bottom. A hole is cut in the ice and the box placed over it so that the two holes match. A man crawls into this box and it being perfectly dark in there he can see the bottom as plain as day if the water is clear. If it is not clear, a newspaper is sunk to the bottom under the coop and fish passing over it are easily seen. Through this hole in the ice a wooden fish, properly weighted, is sunk to the proper depth and with the cord attached to it, the bogus fish is made to fly around lively and thereby attracts other fish to its locality. The man in the coop keeping watch, seeing a fish in good position, lets drop his heavy spear, weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds, fastening him to the bottom. Some large fish are caught in that way. The Monday before New Year's there were caught three pickerel, weighing respectively twenty-seven, thirty and forty pounds. It is quite a business when the lake is frozen over and those who follow it make money.—Silver Creek Local.