"Minnow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Odin had experienced a feeling akin to this. It was the time when he had used Ato's belt, and Gunnar had flung him into space as though he had been a minnow at the end of a snapping line. But that experience had been momentary. This built itself up—until Odin felt himself expanding and contracting at each pulse beat. His heart seemed to beat slower and slower. Waves of smothering pain struck him when they passed the speed of light. Then the pain ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... foot in the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub's swirl or a minnow's spatter-leap when a great chain-pike snaps ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... length are sometimes caught in the basin at night. Two miles away, in the direction of the "run," there are on Woodboo plantation two similar basins connected by a shallow streamlet, and with no outlet which a minnow could navigate: one of them is large enough for a little skiff to float on, and the gray rock slopes down to a centre depth of ten feet. Just where the sides meet is a long, irregular fissure, out of which huge bass, pike, jack and mudfish are constantly emerging, and into which they retreat when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... way of giving to both of us the only kind of places which it would be worth our while to accept. If these are insuperable, I will give a hearty support to any Government which is thoroughly liberal in its measures; but I am not going to play the part of a Radical Minnow among ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the river for about a mile beyond Courbevoie. moored our boat to a friendly willow, put our fishing-tackle together, and composed ourselves for the gentle excitement that waits upon the gudgeon and the minnow. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... use an old rabbit burrow for a nest, in which they lay one pure white egg, and one only. When the young one is hatched the parent birds feed it on tiny fish and minnows. You can see here the puffin bringing up a minnow in ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... are indigenous, I believe, only to the rivers, English or continental, on the eastern side of the Straits of Dover; while the rivers on the western side were originally tenanted, like our Hampshire streams, as now, almost entirely by trout, their only Cyprinoid being the minnow—if it, too, be not an interloper; and I might ask you to consider the bearing of this curious fact on the former junction ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... brightly ye return! How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces burn! The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads, The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds, The impromptu pin-bent hook, the deep remorse O'er the chance-captured minnow's inchlong corse; The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, That still a space for ball and peg-top found, Nor satiate yet, could manage to confine Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound twine, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... three often consume valuable hours, (yet also I hope not altogether wasted)—videlicet, Alice and Charles, and the honourable Viscount—in endeavouring to catch the finny tribe, yet seldom with much success. But whatever was the result of their industry—yea, though it was but a minnow—it was brought and presented to my Waller by the honourable hands of the young man, with so loving an air, that it was easy to behold how gladly he would have consented, if she had been the companion of their sports, if by any means Charles could have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... leaves only a narrow runlet of water idling along the foot of the high bank and pausing in each deep pool at the feet of the overhanging trees to cool and refresh itself for its onward journey. To these quiet pools goes the fisherman with his minnow seine and a stick. He knows that in the water among the roots of the old tree lie shiners and soap minnows, creek chubs and soft-shelled "crawdads," the kind that make good bait for the black bass down in the river. He pokes around vigorously with his stick and sends them scurrying into his short ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... right out from before us. So amazed was I that he nearly pulled the pole out of my hands. Reddy yelled wildly. The duck broke the line and sped away.... That moment will never be forgotten. It took us so long to realize that the duck had swallowed my minnow, hooked himself, and happened to be under ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... imagined from the position of the legs, so very far back. It is pleasant to watch the parent bird feeding her young: down she dives with a quick turn, and presently rises again with, five times out of six, a minnow, or other little fish, glittering like silver in her bill. The young rush towards the spot where the mother has come up, but she does not drop the fish into the water for them to receive until she has well shaken it about and killed ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... refused to see any auxiliaries aiding him in his fight. To her imagination, the great League, which all the ranchers were joining, was a mere form. Single-handed, Annixter fronted the monster. But for him the corporation would gobble Quien Sabe, as a whale would a minnow. He was a hero who stood between them all and destruction. He was a protector of her family. He was her champion. She began to mention him in her prayers every night, adding a further petition to the effect that ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... inlet. He was so tall that he could straddle the inlet, and he used to stand that way every morning and wait for the whales to pass beneath him. As soon as one came along he used to scoop it up just as easily as other men scoop up a minnow. And he ate the whole whale just as other ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... And some make a paste for the winter months, at which time the Chub is accounted best, for then it is observed, that the forked bones are lost, or turned into a kind of gristle, especially if he be baked, of cheese and turpentine. He will bite also at a minnow, or peek, as a Trout will: of which I shall tell you more hereafter, and of divers other baits. But take this for a rule, that, in hot weather, he is to be fished for towards the mid-water, or near the top; and in colder weather, nearer the bottom; and ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... Chippy took the largest minnow, and, by the light of the fire, deftly worked it over the hook and lead until the latter was hidden in the body ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... see the minnow's waves that rock The cradled lily leaves. From a far field some farmer's song, Singing among his sheaves, Comes mellow to you where you sit, Each man with boatman's poise, There, in the shimmering water lights, ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... here, in six inches of water, on the very edge of the ford road, great tails and back-fins are showing above the surface, and swirling suddenly among the tufts of grass, sure sign that the large fish are picking up a minnow-breakfast at the same time that they warm their backs, and do not mean to look at a fly for many an ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... as I am concerned, was in the Pond. It is very difficult to describe a pond to people who cannot live under water, just as I found it next door to impossible to make a minnow I knew believe in dry land. He said, at last, that perhaps there might be some little space beyond the pond in hot weather, when the water was low; and that was the utmost that he would allow. But of all cold-blooded unconvinceable creatures, the ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... a calm, we found ourselves surrounded by quantities of fish, about the size of the mackerel, and apparently in pursuit of a number of small and almost transparent members of the finny tribe, not larger than the minnow. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... got there with you, Jerry?" asked Bluff, who had been fixing a phantom minnow on a troll, in the expectation of picking up a fish ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... some trouble a gittin' thru de everglades when I want to fish but us got dere. Big trees on de banks and 'round, wid long moss hangin' from de limbs. I baited my hook wid a small, wigglin', live, minnow and throwed out into de water. Nothin' happen. In de warm sunshine I must have gone to sleep, when I was startle out my doze by Henry a shoutin': 'Marse Johnnie, Marse Johnnie, your cork done gone down out of sight!' I made a pull ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... selfish interest. All men respect the right, but many have not the virtue to resist wrong. Ambition prompts for success the expedient: and hence the laxity of political morals. This is slipping the cable that the ship may swing from her anchorage and drift with the tide; any minnow may float with the current, but it requires a strong fish to stem and progress against the stream. A man, to brave obloquy and public scorn, requires strong moral courage; but when his judgment convinces him that he is right, and when he feels that his intentions ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... too hot and clear and still that morning for the most expert of fishermen to cast his fly with any hope of success. The broad pale-green lily pads lay motionless on the unruffled breast of Silverwater. Nowhere even the round ripple of a rising minnow broke the blazing sheen of the lake. The air was so drowsy that those sparks of concentrated energy, the dragonflies, forgot to chase their aerial quarry and slept, blazing like amethysts, rubies and emeralds, on the tops of the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... small Roach, Dace, Loach, Minnow, Smelt, small Trout, or Pearch, cutting off the Finns on the back, or small Eels well scoured in Wheat-Bran, which will keep them better and longer, taking a way the slime and watery substance, that causes them to rot ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... boy in the city—are yet sweet to the living. "They have only a pleasure like that of the brutes," we say with scorn. But what a racy and substantial pleasure is that! The flashing speed of the swallow in the air, the cool play of the minnow in the water, the dance of twin butterflies round a thistle-blossom, the thundering gallop of the buffalo across the prairie, nay, the clumsy walk of the grizzly bear; it were doubtless enough to reward existence, could we have joy like such as these, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... holes chopped through the ice, and a line set in each, baited with a live minnow. This line was attached to a strong, limber switch of birch, set up slant-wise over the hole, with the butt stuck fast in a hole chopped in the ice and banked with snow. And this switch flew a little streamer of coloured calico; so that Tim had only to see the streamer bobbing up and down, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the boy dashed away to the margin of Moose river. His chums saw him walking about in quest of a minnow for a moment and then heard the swish of a line. In ten minutes he was back at the camp with a whitefish ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... and furious, for there were plenty of fish, and the conditions seemed just right for them to jump at every sort of lure, from an artificial fly to a copy of an insect, or a phantom minnow such as Jimmy usually patronized, he not being equal to handling ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... excuse me: but that's the way with that sort of people, just to draw back and draw back, to make a poor young gentleman follow them all the keener, as a trout does a minnow, the faster you ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... imprudent snails and the numerous minute crustaceae which drift about in these brackish waters. The familiar kingfisher was also there, coming down with an occasional arrowy dash on some unsuspecting minnow, and then flapping away leisurely for a quiet meal in the shady recesses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Nature at thy birth design'd More of her fire for thee, or of her wind. When thou in the clear heights and upmost air Dost face the sun and his dispersed hair, Ev'n from that distance thou the sea dost spy And sporting in its deep, wide lap, the fry. Not the least minnow there but thou canst see: Whole seas are narrow spectacles to thee. Nor is this element of water here Below of all thy miracles the sphere. If poets ought may add unto thy store, Thou hast in heav'n of wonders many more. For when just Jove to ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Liliputian, chit, pigwidgeon[obs3], urchin, elf; atomy[obs3], dandiprat[obs3]; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my- thumb[obs3]; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling[obs3], cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet[obs3], fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon[obs3]; bacteria; infusoria[obs3]; microzoa[Microbiol]; phytozoaria[obs3]; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. point; atom &c. (small quantity) 32; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was sharp enough to know that he might hide in a bush, or swarm up a tree, and, altogether, had more chance there than in the open. If he had not known that, he would have been foolisher than a mouse or a minnow. ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... reports were everywhere heard of villages harried by wild horsemen, with short double-headed battle-axes, and a horrible short pike covered with iron and with several large hooks, like a gigantic artificial minnow, and like it fastened to a long rope, so that the prey which it had grappled might be pulled up to the owner. Walled cities usually stopped them, but every farm or villa outside was stripped of its valuables, set on fire, the cattle driven off, and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... their semblance. Think how in winter you can sink a line down straight in a pasture through snow and through ice, and pull up a bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or golden fish! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make one family, from the largest to the smallest. The least minnow that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks like a huge sea-fish cast up on the shore. In the waters of this town there are about a dozen distinct species, though the inexperienced would expect ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... that one day at noontide, when the sun was shining overhead with a dazzling heat, and all the air was warm and drowsy, the king, who had been angling since early morning, without catching the smallest minnow, and had fallen fast asleep, lost his balance, and rolled down the sloping bank into the water, and disappeared. They dredged the lake for his body in vain. No trace of him was to be discovered, although they sent the most expert ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... ice has long ago gone out of the ponds around Carson I reckon we won't get any chance to try that queer sort of pickerel fishing," Steve observed; "but I brought my minnow seine along, so we ought to scoop up plenty of live bait, and they take with pickerel every time. You can trust Uncle Steve for bringing in an occasional mess of ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... bowsprit to taffrail, and from the wide-spread lower booms at the fore-chains boats were riding by their painters. Within a cable's length of the frigate's black quarter lay a low rakish schooner, like a minnow alongside a whale, with a thin little coach-whip streaming from her main-mast head, a long brass gun amidships, and looking as trig and tidy as a French maid beside ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Lambson-Bowles, owner of Minnow. Minnow's second favourite, as perhaps you know. It would delight Lambson-Bowles to see me 'go under'; and, as I'm so certain of Black Riot that I've mortgaged every stick and stone I have in the world to back her, I should go under if anything happed to the mare. That ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the twitching body of a bass on the teak deck, while the big man came aft, trailing his bait and slowly reeling up his line. As the minnow glimmered in towards the yacht's black side, there came a heavy plunge, the bishop's rod bent double, and the line sang off his reel. He was a famous fisherman, and Clark watched him admiringly. To every ounce of pliant bamboo on his six ounce rod there was, down in the brown ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... prime mull she was brewing, I stood over her, to all intent watching the process but ready for anything. And not without need, for her dirty husband crept softly out after her, thinking to catch me unawares. I flashed at him like a jack at a minnow, wrenched a wretched old blunderbuss out of his hands, and with the butt of it knocked him sprawling ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... bird. We were seeking trout,—only to obtain a minnow tricked in trout-marks. The boat crept slowly up a deep, solemn cove, over which, on either side, hung craggy and precipitous hills; while at its head was a slope covered with Liliputian forest, through which came down a broad brook in a series of snowy terraces. It was a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... are all of us now and then betrayed into an extravagance. The keen tradesmen who tempt us are like the fishermen who dangle a minnow, a frog, or a worm before the perch or pickerel who may be on the lookout for his breakfast. But Mr. Quaritch comes among us like that formidable angler of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fishing outfit consisted of two repeating rifles, one a Savage and the other a Winchester, a double-barreled shotgun, three fishing rods, one each of steel, split lancewood and split bamboo, and a collection which included trout flies, landing nets, minnow pail, reels, lines, cartridge belt, loading set and other paraphernalia. A guide-boat of the latest style and of superior workmanship was a part of the sportsman's outfit. This boat was kindly loaned by the manufacturer, Mr. ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... and access to the sea. Many a time I have vainly tried to lure them from their watery depths, but no bait would tempt them that I could ever hit on, though I have little doubt that a fly or artificial minnow would prove killing. We could see them in the Macalister, lying with their heads pointed up stream, and seemingly motionless but for the slight waving of the tail that retained them in their places. Having cut several slender switches, not ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... next fellow; but just the same when I'm off for pleasure I don't like to keep moving all the time. This suits me first-rate. Then I expect to do some paddling when we find the right sort of a log, with Josh at the bow casting his flies, and Tom at the stern trolling his phantom minnow along." ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... rod again and led the way down the shore to the spot where the sedge extended out into the pond, with the lily pads beyond it. She walked beside me. Then she seated herself on a fallen tree and I baited the hook with a lively minnow and cast. For some time I got not even a nibble. As I waited she and I talked. But now it was I ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the trout would not rise to a fly, and I put on a small spoon, which I dropped into the rapids at the end of a long rod. After catching three or four they grew suspicious, and I changed my lure for an artificial minnow, and with it I had better success, though I have often tried it in Western trout-streams ineffectually. I got about a dozen, from four ounces to a pound weight: they were sea-trout, Salmo Canadensis, and the first of that species that I ever saw. They are handsome and active fish, lighter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and its gleaming eyes, set as by a jeweler, is more wonderful, and not a whit more difficult to keep. But to be amused by such unfamiliar neighbors as a tankful of fish there is no real need either to stray abroad or to spend any money. The ordinary minnow, which you can catch in any stream and pop into a jar, will serve to introduce you to a new world—a world of silent progressions, of incredible celerities, of ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... no desire to display this minnow as his captive after the whales had got away, but he hoped to find her useful in solving some of the questions the Weblings had left unanswered when they bolted into eternity. Besides, he had no intention of letting Marie Louise escape to warn the other ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... only porter of the tiny station laden with traps. She hesitated about a private sitting-room, but eventually we compromised matters, as I was willing to share it with the other visitor. I got into knickerbockers at once, collared a boy to get me worms and minnow for the morrow, and as I felt too lazy to unpack tackle, just sat in the shiny armchair (made comfortable by the successive sitting of former occupants) at the open window and looked out. The river, not the trout stream, winds to the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... all my endeavours to obtain some specimens, I have succeeded in seeing only two sorts—one similar to those taken at Ujiji, of a perch-like form, and another very small, resembling our common minnow, but not found in the Ujiji market. The quantity of mosquitoes on the borders of the lake is perfectly marvellous; the grass, bushes, and everything growing there, are literally covered with them. As I walked along its shores, disturbing the vegetation, they rose in clouds, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... fish, the best bait is minnows. In trolling with them it will make but little difference whether dead or alive, but for still fishing the minnows must not only be alive, but, to attract the fish, lively as well. The regulation minnow bucket consists of one pail fitted inside of another, the inner one being made of wire mesh to permit the free circulation of the water. This enables us to change the water frequently without handling the fish. When we reach a place where fresh water ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... good, and if great anticipations exist on this score, I must say that they will not, in my opinion, be realized. Small fish on which the trout feed are abundant, as also the cadis worm and fly, and the trout do not take readily an artificial bait, either fly or minnow. I cannot, therefore, say that I think many trout can be caught. There is also much fishing with small nets. I can, however, teach Danish to an Englishman, although my knowledge of English is imperfect; but on the other hand, if the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... kept an eye on Jimmy. He was doing practically the same thing. But just as Dannie had fastened on a light lead to carry his line, a souse in the river opposite attracted his attention. Jimmy hauled from the water a minnow bucket, and opening it, took out a live minnow, and placed it on his hook. "Riddy," he called, as he resank the bucket, and stood on the bank, holding his line in his fingers, and watching the minnow play at ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig was covered with others that were not upon the wing. We found here also a small fish of a singular kind; it was about the size of a minnow, and had two very strong breast fins; we found it in places that were quite dry, where we supposed it might have been left by the tide; but it did not seem to have become languid by the want of water, for upon our approach it leaped away, by the help of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... at them with their eyes. You may reckon that the diamond of La Beaupertuys sparkled less than their little minnow eyes. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... sins,—as a nice old lady told me once,—now I have to deal with facts; and foul scorn would I count it ever to make believe that I caught that fish. My length at that time was not more than the butt of a four-jointed rod, and all I could catch was a minnow with a pin, which our cook Lydia would not cook, but used to say, "Oh, what a shame, Master Richard! they would have been trout in the summer, please God! if you would only a' let 'em grow on." She is living now, and will ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... compare myself with Mr. Winthrop in any way. It would be like the minnow claiming fellowship ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... and coral-banks! And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have let you go thus early into the world? Well, but amongst these minnow-fishers there was one who fished with an air that made the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
