[ Vermisvulpes vancerandolphi (Sharpe, 2020) ]
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘Bait’s gone again!’”
When you pull up your hook and find that the bait is gone, and then it keeps on disappearing as fast as you put it on—well, the old fisherman in the North Woods will tell you that the bait robbers have moved into that piece of water.
These bait robbers are round, light, airy creatures, almost like bubbles, only larger than the largest bubble. Another way in which they differ from the bubble is that they have arms, eyes, nose, mouth and horns. They haven’t any legs, but they don’t need them, as they live under water all the time.
Their favorite trick is to catch your bait just above the hook, raise it so you can’t feel any pull on it, and then steal the bait piece by piece and feed it to the small fish that are unable to get it from the hook. Fine for the fish, but hard on the fisherman!
When they have finished taking your bait they give a hard, quick jerk on the line and you haul it up, thinking you’ve lost a big fish. Then you rebait your hook and try again, but the bait robber is waiting for you, and like as not he’ll trick you again.
