"Minnow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... lived in security, and 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, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... very keen indeed. Yet the form of bill most in use is very simple—just a plain pair of forceps, long and sharp-pointed like scissors. This is evidently hard to beat, for birds of many sorts use it, handling it variously. The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from a "pernicious height"; the heron, high on its stilts, darts out a long and serpentine neck; the diver, with similar beak and neck, but ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... will rise to a fly at such times in the rapids; but no allurement excepting the troll will bring them to the surface in still water. When the river is rising, or the water is clouded with mud or drift, bass scorn all surface-diet; but the live minnow or crawfish, hellgramite or fish-worm, will capture them on trout-line or hook attached to the soul-absorbing bob. A clothes-line wire cable, furnished with well-assorted hooks baited with cotton, dough, and cheese well mixed together, and stretched in eddy-water when the river is muddy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... and soaked to his knees. Then she saw him untie the queer "gun" on his saddle, pull it out of a case and—her eyes got big with wonder—take it to pieces and make it into a long limber rod. In a moment he had cast a minnow into the pool and waded out into the water up to his hips. She had never seen so queer a fishing-pole—so queer a fisherman. How could he get a fish out with that little switch, she thought contemptuously? By and by something hummed queerly, the man gave a slight jerk and a shining fish flopped two ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... compare myself with Mr. Winthrop in any way. It would be like the minnow claiming ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... 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
... be permitted to express an opinion, I think that there is not a single creature, from the sand-marten and the black-headed bunting to the broad-winged heron, from the water-vole to the otter, from the minnow on one side of the tidal boundary to the porpoise on the other—big and little, beasts and birds (of prey or not)—that should not be encouraged and protected on this beautiful river, morally the property of the greatest ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... gowne, his nice gate in his pantofles, or the affected accent of his speech—Let him deny that there was a shewe made at Clarehall of him and his brothers, called Tarrarantantara turba tumultuosa Trigonum Tri-Harveyorum Tri-harmonia; and another shewe of the little minnow his brother, at Peter-house, called Duns furens, Dick Harvey in a frensie." The sequel is thus told:—"Whereupon Dick came and broke the college glass windows, and Dr. Perne caused him to be set in the stockes till ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... ponds—rarely in Witham; rudd (Cyprinus Erythrophthalmus), Witham; bream (Abramis Brama), Witham; silver bream (Abramis Blicca), ponds; roach (Leuciscus rutilus), ponds, canals, Bain; dace (Leuciscus vulgaris), ponds, canal, Bain; blick (Alburnus lucidus), Witham; minnow (Leuciscus Phoxinus), Bain; tench, (Tinca vulgaris), ponds; perch (Perca fluviatilis), canal; loach (Nemachilus barbatulus), canal and river Waring; gudgeon (Gobio fluviatilis), canal, Bain, Waring, Witham; miller’s thumb (Gobio cottus), canal; ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... detect 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 ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... am a-comin', and the dogwood soon will bloom, With the blossoms ten times thicker than the green leaves are in June, And if yer want some pleasure that I nominate divine, Just git yer minnow bucket, and yer hook and pole and line, And slip away some mornin', when the weather's bright and still, And hang a four-pound jumper at the dam ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... 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 he would become a good man, and that he should not swear so much, and that he should ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... on the sluggish waters that earnestly pretended they had never harboured a single minnow when a loud ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... exceeding shy and artful, nor will he bite at a fly unless it falleth lightly, just above his mouth, and floateth dry over him, for all the world like the natural ephemeris. And we may no longer angle with worm for him, nor with penk or minnow, nor with the natural fly, as was your manner, but only with the artificial, for the more difficulty the more diversion. For my part I may cry, like Viator in your book, "Master, I can neither catch with the first nor second ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... and excellent fish, and is, of course, a fish of prey. Is he not an object of sport to the angler?—Hal. They generally haunt deep, cool lakes, and are seldom found at the surface till late in the autumn. When they are at the surface they will, however, take either fly or minnow. I have known some caught in both these ways; and have myself taken a char, even in summer, in one of those beautiful, small, deep lakes in the Upper Tyrol, near Nazereit; but it was where a cool stream entered from the mountain; and the fish did not rise, but swallowed the artificial ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... sand; it 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 ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... water on cliffs, and sometimes 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
... 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 ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... 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 back into ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... fight over my body!" remonstrated Nick. "I never professed to be more than a minnow among Tritons, and quite a lean ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... 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 of ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... pigwidgeon^, urchin, elf; atomy^, dandiprat^; doll, puppet; Tom Thumb, Hop-o'-my-thumb^; manikin, mannikin; homunculus, dapperling^, cock-sparrow. animalcule, monad, mite, insect, emmet^, fly, midge, gnat, shrimp, minnow, worm, maggot, entozoon^; bacteria; infusoria^; microzoa [Micro.]; phytozoaria^; microbe; grub; tit, tomtit, runt, mouse, small fry; millet seed, mustard seed; barleycorn; pebble, grain of sand; molehill, button, bubble. point; atom ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... when the Prince arrived—and the fact that Nipigon had had a record summer, with large parties of sportsmen working its reaches steadily all the time. The fish were certainly shy, particularly, it seemed, of fly, and the best catches were made with a small fish, a sort of bull-headed minnow called cocatoose, that creeps about close to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... begins to fall, and keeps on fall, fall, for twenty hours together. His head is bullet-shaped, his neck short, his body all thickened up to the shoulders, tailing out to the merest streak of feather. His form is like a plummet—he is not unlike the heavily weighted minnow used in trolling for pike. Before the bend of the firmly elastic rod, the leaded minnow slides out through the air, running true and sinking without splash into the water. It is proportioned and weighted so that its flight, which is a long fall, may be smooth, and perfectly under control. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... effective fish bait is made by inclosing a live minnow in a short section of glass tube, which is filled with water and both ends closed with corks. This is used in place of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the boat, for there was a great swirl in the water where his minnow was spinning along, a broad tail came out and hit the water with a tremendous splash, and he struck but did not hook the fish, which, however, he saw ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... wives and little ones have none; ourselves will be in straits to get our living if the Kingdom be delayed in its coming, for what good are fishermen except along the sea coast or where there is a lake or a river, and here there isn't enough water for a minnow to swim in. Our wives and our children are better off than we are, for they'll be getting someone to fish for them, and will stand at the doors at Capernaum waiting for the boats to return, praying that the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... among many other 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 bear me out ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... our friend, rising and taking down his coat. "Yes," he continued, "it wur sixteen year ago, come the third o' next month, that I landed him. I caught him just below the bridge with a minnow. They told me he wur in the river, and I said I'd have him, and so I did. You don't see many fish that size about here now, I'm thinking. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... exultantly as his fingers extracted the hook. John brought out the fish stringer, and the unfortunate minnow, firmly tied by the gills, was lowered slowly into the water. The pair watched its spasmodic efforts at escape with a great ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish tufts of a modest verdure, which by-and-by will be long and glossy leaves. The dogwood pitches his broad, white tent in the edge of the forest; the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... also from sunshine to cloud. I generally start in the early morning with grasshoppers, and if that does not suit them, I vary it to the helgramite—known to naturalists as the larvae of the horned corydalis, locally called "dobsons," "dobsell," "hellion," "crawler," "kill-devil," etc.—a live minnow, small green frog, small bull-head, or a "lamper"—local name for small ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... townsmen nibbled at them with their eyes. You may reckon that the diamond of La Beaupertuys sparkled less than their little minnow eyes. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... not aspire to the presumptuous hope that any one may say "Well, I see this man Cobb is doing for Miss Ashford's second book what Barrie did for her first one." I have no such ambition. A minnow always errs when he undertakes to swim in the company of a whale. If he tries to swim alongside he is unnoticed; if he swims in the wake he is swamped. He makes other minnows jealous or contemptuous as the case may be, and he is ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... gradually closing as Paul, chewing the cud of his bitter fancies, found himself on London Bridge. He paused there, and leaning over the bridge, gazed wistfully on the gloomy waters that rolled onward, caring not a minnow for the numerous charming young ladies who have thought proper to drown themselves in those merciless waves, thereby depriving many a good mistress of an excellent housemaid or an invaluable cook, and many a treacherous Phaon of letters beginning with "Parjured Villen," and ending ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sung a single sentence, the branches above her head would be filled with the birds that came thither to listen, the thickets around her would be crowded with beasts, and the waters rolling beside her would be alive with fishes, all attracted by the sweet sounds. From the minnow to the porpoise, from the wren to the eagle, from the snail to the lobster, from the mouse to the mole—all hastened to the spot to listen to the charming songs ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... in a proof-room is like fishing for trout: the big ones always get away. Or, as Old Bill Byrne puts it, while you're fishing for a minnow a whale comes up and bites ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... qualms of political conscience, but for the fact that earthly politics, social theories, and social instincts were less to him now than to an inhabitant of the dark body that tumbles and fumbles around Sirius. Less than the difference between the minnow and the roach to the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... 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
... "Pike," when he grows older; and ever since then I have contrived to have a pet one, and this, drawn from life by Mr. Harrison Weir, is an accurate portrait of the one I now possess in the Crystal Palace Aquarium. There he is, just as he steals round the corner of a bit of rock. He is glaring at a minnow, at which he is taking most accurate aim; he hardly seems to move, but yet he does by a very trifling motion of the edge of his back fin—sometimes resting a little on the tips of his two foremost fins, as they touch the ground, carefully calculating ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... 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
... 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 men eat a ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss |
