[f. FISH sb.2]
1. trans. To fasten a piece of wood, technically called a fish, upon (a beam, mast, yard, etc.) so as to strengthen it; to mend (a broken spar, etc.) with a fish or fishes. Also To fish together.
1626. Capt. Smith, Accid. Yng. Seamen, 3. Euer ready for calking, breaming, stopping leakes, fishing or spliceing the Masts or Yards. Ibid., 13. When a mast is borne by the boord, they make a Iury-mast; which is made with yards, rouftrees, or what they can, splised or fished tsogether.
1748. Anson’s Voy., III. i. 295. The Gloucester had her main-mast cut down to a stump, and we were obliged to fish our fore-mast.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 120. Sometimes the pieces that are applied on the sides are made of wood; in this case, it is called fishing the beam.
1840. R. H. Dana, Bef. Mast, xxv. 83. All hands were now employed in setting up the lee rigging, fishing the spritsail yard, lashing the galley, and getting tackles upon the martingale, to bowse it to windward.
1875. R. F. Martin, trans. Havrez’s Winding Mach., 5. In fishing the rods with the wooden fishes, the only matter that need be attended to is that the joints of the two sets of rods do not come at the same place.
b. To fasten (a piece of wood) on.
1711. S. Sewall, Diary, 10 Sept. (1879), II. 322. Our Axel-tree, that complain’d before, and we mended at Calef’s, broke quite off by that time we got to Caperons: Lodg’d there: Fish’d on a piece in the morning.
2. To join (the rails) with a fish-joint.
1850. C. H. Gregory, in Proc. Inst. Civ. Engin., IX. 405. ‘Fishing’ the joints of the rails with two pieces of cast or wrought iron secured by bolts or rivets.
1866. W. H. Barlow, ibid., XXV. 409. It would not do to fish old rails, as movement took place, which acted with great disadvantage.
