Pater-noster Tackling

*Pater-noster fishing-tackle*, so called in the shops, is used to catch fish (perch, for instance) which take the bait at various distances between the surface and the bottom of the water. Accordingly, hooks are attached to a line at given intervals throughout its length, with leaden shots, likewise regularly distributed, in order to sink it, and keep it extended perpendicularly in the water. This regularity of arrangement, and the resemblance of the shots to *beads*, seems to have caused the contrivance to have been, somewhat fancifully, likened to a *chaplet* or *rosary*. In a rosary there i…