Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1895 — LEECH FISHING. [ARTICLE]

LEECH FISHING.

The Fishers Use Their Bare Legs for Bait. The leech is a strange, unlovely creature. Fortunately it has gone out of fashion. But thirty or forty years ago when medical men had a pleasant way of bleeding every patient who fell into their hands, the little blood suckers used to be in great demand. Even now the trade in leeches is considerable. Leech fishing is not a pleasant occupation . It condemns the fishers to foggy mists, foul, muddy waters, and most fetid odors. And worse than this the fisher has himself to be the bait. Blood for blood is the motto of those sanguinary beasts, and nothing but a pair of plump and naked legs will tempt them from their stagnant pools. The leech lives in a semi-aquatic existence; it must have plenty of air and plenty of water, and it likes them foul. They are caught in the spring and early summer. The men turn up their trousers and wade knee deep into the water. The sight of the legs acts like a magnet on the leeches. They make a rush for them, cling on and begin to suck. The men pick them off as fast as they can, and put them into bags, which they carry fastened round their waists. They do not lose any time, for the little black creatures will swallow five times their own weight in the blood of a victim in no time, and cause as much again to flow away. Toward the end of the season the leeches retire into deep water, and then their pursuers are'compelled to wade in up to their chins. An alternative to this plan is to take a raft out and dangle arms and legs in the water. An expert catches many just as they are fastening on, and so saves a certain amount of blood. This is an important item. A gobd fisher can, if he is careful, goon for four or five hours before he gets exhausted from loss of blood. In that time he will have caught nearly two hundred leeches. It is a funny, almost uncanny, sight to see these unhealthy looking men wading along through marshes and swamps and dirty streams, their arms and legs bare, poking about among the rushes, and turning the mossy pebbles over with their toes in the hopes of stirring up some colony of leeches. Every now and then they stop and you see them raise one black bespeckled leg and pick away until the furious sucking on the other causes them to bring that up hastily for inspection, while the former takes its place as bait.