forms
of rakes and drags are employed. A shoulder rake, with a handle twelve
to twenty feet in length, is used extensively under the ice in frozen
rivers, and in lakes and other places where the water is still and from
eight to fifteen feet in depth. This is simply an overgrown or
enlarged garden rake, armed with twelve or fifteen iron teeth about
five inches in length. A wire scoop or basket is attached to receive
the catch as it is pulled from the bottom by the teeth, and when this
scoop is well filled it is lifted and the contents dumped on the ice or
into the skiff. This method is laborious, and is employed only where
the water is shallow and the mollusks are abundant. Scissor
tongs—similar to those used by oystermen on the Atlantic coast—are also
employed in some localities, especially in Arkansas, where it is
estimated that 1700 pairs were manufactured and sold in 1899 and 1900,
at about $7 each.
In
the large streams of the Mississippi Valley, with their slow and steady
currents, and where the Unios are taken largely for their shells to be
used in button manufacture, the most popular form of apparatus since
1896 has been the crowfoot drag. This ingenious contrivance consists of
a crossbar of hollow iron tubing or common gas-pipe, six or eight feet
long, to which are attached, at intervals of five or six inches, stout
twine or chain snoods or stagings, each about eighteen inches in
length. To each of these are attached three or four prongs or "hooks,"
about six inches apart. These "hooks" are four-pronged, and are made of
two pieces of stout wire bent at right angles to each other. According
to the depth of the water, from twenty-five to seventy-five feet of
three quarter inch rope is attached to the drag for the purpose of
towing it behind the boat, which is permitted to drift down the stream
with the current. This contrivance costs about $3, and each fisherman
generally has at least two of them, as well as a wide flat-bottom boat
costing $5 or $10.
Sometimes,
when the current is light, the fisherman prepares a "mule" to assist
the boat in towing the resisting drag. This "mule" consists of a wooden
frame, hinged in V shape, and is fastened several feet in advance of
the boat with the V end pointed down the stream. It sinks low in the
water, and the current pressing against the angle carries it along, and
thus tows the skiff and the resisting drag at a uniform rate of speed.
When there is not sufficient current even for this contrivance, as in
the wide reaches and in the lakes, oars, sails, and even power engines
may be used for propelling the boat.
As
the crowfoot drag is slowly drawn along the bottom, it comes in contact
with the mollusks feeding with open shells. When a hook or other part
of the drag enters an open shell, the mollusk immediately closes firmly
upon the intruding object and clings thereto long enough
