bobbing vbl n Cp OED ~ vbl sb 3 fishing for eels' (1653-), EDD bob v⁶: bobbing for sense 1.
   1 Method of catching squids with small fish as bait.
   [1663] 1963 YONGE 60 They catch [squids] in nets or scaines, and sometimes by bobbing (as they call it), which is thus: they take a small cod and skin him, and hanging him a little under the water in the night, the squids will lug at it; then they pull it up softly and clap a cap-net under, and so secure them.
   2 Comb bobbing-hole: small area in an ice floe kept open by a seal; breathing hole; BLOW HOLE.
   [c1900] 1968 RLS 8, p. 23 ~ small hole in whelping ice, kept open by the old seals to come up or down for feeding, &c. 1916 GRENFELL 208 When the sea-ice was frozen far out from the landwash in the fall, and the big seals were no longer able to get near the land, the bay seals in plenty kept bobbing holes open quite far inshore. 1924 ENGLAND 37 'Look out fer de ole siles,' he repeated. 'I see a feller stoopin' over, killin' a whitecoat once, when de ole bitch rosen up out o' de bobbin' hole an' ketched un by de pants, an' tore 'em 'most off o' he.' 1959 SAMSON 57 Baby Harp Seals wait at a 'Bobbing Hole' for their mothers.
   bobbing pole: a long, stout rod with line and baited hooks used to take cod.
   1845 Journ of Assembly Appendix, p. 222 ... than by our way by 'bobbing poles' from the side of the vessel; for this reason, the diameter of the circle in which our hooks play is only about sixty feet, including the breadth of the vessel... The Bultow mode seems to me only an extension of the same means of taking fish as that of the 'bobbing pole,' and I think the hooks of the latter named mode are allowed to lay near the bottom of the sea.

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