baitless

Several times, he found his traps emptied of crayfish and returned to the water baitless.

Crayfish Poaching Has Fishermen 2009

And there he sits the livelong day under the shade of the tree, with sapling pole and pin hook, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and waits for a nibble of the drowsy sucker that sleeps on his oozy bed, oblivious of the baitless hook from which he has long since stolen the worm.

Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales Robert L. Taylor

Wearying of the spear, we trolled for swordfish with hook and line, or used the baitless hook to entice the sportful albicore, or dolphin, whose curving black bodies splashed the sea about us.

White Shadows in the South Seas Frederick O'Brien 1900

Along the beach on the southern side of the river stand a hundred or more yelling urchins, with stout lines fitted with many baitless hooks and weighted with a stone.

A Memory Of The Southern Seas 1904 Louis Becke 1884

(Denison was as brown as any of them) would eat a hurried meal of fish and baked taro, and then carry their red-painted canoes down to the water, and, paddling out through the passage in the reef, fish for bonito with thick rods of _pua_ wood and baitless hooks of irridescent pearl shell.

Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories 1898 Louis Becke 1884

"Of course there are no fish," said Rob wearily as he drew in his baitless line, the strong gimp hook being quite bare.

Rob Harlow's Adventures A Story of the Grand Chaco George Manville Fenn 1870

Time and bait are both lost in the vain attempt: patiently he rebaits, until he finds the rebait brings his box of gentles to a discount; and then, in no gentle humour, with a baitless hook, and abated ardor, he winds up his line and his day's amusement (?) -- and departs, with the determination of trying fortune (who has tried him) on some, future and more propitious day.

Sketches — Complete Robert Seymour 1818

Time and bait are both lost in the vain attempt: patiently he rebaits, until he finds the rebait brings his box of gentles to a discount; and then, in no gentle humour, with a baitless hook, and abated ardor, he winds up his line and his day's amusement (?) -- and departs, with the determination of trying fortune (who has tried him) on some, future and more propitious day.

Sketches — Volume 01 Robert Seymour 1818

Snagging (trying to hook a fish by dragging a baitless, big hook along the bottom of the water, hoping it will pierce any part of a fish) is not allowed.

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I've snapped up trout while fly-fishing with baitless treble hooks in Kamchatka and while it was certainly "easy" I can't see how it was any less sportsmanlike.

Wired Campus 2010