spawning-grounds of these fish in question. And not only a
spawning-ground, but, what is more important, a feeding-ground. And now
the kelp-beds are being exploited. The government needs potash. Formerly
our supply of potash came from Germany. But, now that we are not on
amiable terms with those nice gentle Germans, we cannot get any potash.
Hence the great, huge kelp-cutters that you hear cut only the tops of
the kelp-beds. Six feet they say, and it all grows up again quickly. But
in my opinion the once vast, heaving, wonderful beds of kelp along the
Clemente and Catalina shores have been cut too deeply. They will die.
Some of my predictions made in 1917 were verified in 1918.
A few scattered schools of albacore appeared in the channel in July. But
these were soon caught or chased away by the market boats.
Albacore-fishing was poor in other localities up and down the coast.
Many of the Jap fishermen sold their boats and sought other industry.
It was a fact, and a great pleasure, that an angler could go out for
tuna without encountering a single market boat on the sea. Maybe the
albacore did not come this year; maybe they were mostly all caught;
maybe they were growing shyer of boats; at any event, they were scarce,
and the reason seems easy to see.
It was significant that the broadbill swordfish did not return to Avalon
in 1918, as in former years. I saw only one in two months roaming the
ocean. A few were seen. Not one was caught during my stay on the island.
Many boatmen and anglers believe that the broadbills follow the
albacore. It seems safe to predict that when the albacore cease to come
to Catalina there will not be any fishing for the great flat-sworded
_Xiphias_.
The worst that came to pass in 1918, from an angler's viewpoint, was
that the market fishermen found a way to net the blue-fin tuna, both
large and small. All I could learn was that the nets were lengthened and
deepened. The Japs got into the great schools of large tuna which
appeared off Anacapa Island and netted tons and tons of hundred-pound
tuna. These schools drifted on down the middle of the Clemente Channel,
and I was the lucky fellow who happened to get among them for one
memorable day.
Take it all in all, my gloomy prophecies of other years were
substantiated in 1918, especially in regard to the devastated kelp-beds;
but there have been a few silver rifts in the black cloud, and it seems
well to end this book with mention of brighter things.
All fish brought into Avalon in 1918 were sold for food.
We inaugurated the releasing of small Marlin swordfish.
There was a great increase in the interest taken in the use of light
tackle.
We owe the latter stride toward conservation and sportsmanship to Mr.
James Jump, and to Lone Angler, and to President Coxe of the Tuna Club.
I had not been entirely in sympathy with their feats of taking Marlin
swordfish and tuna on light tackle. My objections to the use of too
light tackle have been cited before in this book. Many fish break away
on the nine-thread. I know this because I tried it out. Fifteen of those
small tuna, one after another, broke my line on the first rush. But I
believe that was my lack of skill with handling of rod and boat.
As for Marlin, I have always known that I could take some of these
roundbill swordfish on light tackle. But likewise there have been some
that could not have been taken so, and these are the swordfish I have
fished for.
Nevertheless, I certainly do not want to detract from Jump's
achievements, as I will show. They have been remarkable. And they have
attracted wide attention to the possibilities of light tackle. Thus Mr.
Jump has done conservative angling an estimable good, as well as placed
himself in a class alone.
The use of light tackle by experts for big game fish of the sea has come
to be an established practice in American angling. A few years ago, when
sport with light tackle was exceptional, it required courage to flaunt
its use in the faces of fishermen of experience and established
reputation. Long Key, now the most noted fishing resort on the Atlantic
coast, was not many years back a place for hand-lines and huge rods and
tackle, and boat-loads of fish for one man. It has become a resort for
gentlemen anglers, and its sportsmen's club claims such experts and fine
exponents of angling as Heilner, Lester, Cassiard, Crowninshield,
Conill, the Schutts, and others, who can safely be trusted to advance
the standard. Fishermen are like sheep--they follow the boldest leaders.
And no one wants to be despised by the elect. Long Key, with its
isolation, yet easy accession, its beauty and charm, its loneliness and
quiet, its big game fish, will become the Mecca of high-class
light tackle anglers, who will in time answer for the ethics and
sportsmanship of the Atlantic seaboard.
On the Pacific side the light tackle advocates have had a different row
to hoe. With nothing but keen, fair, honest, and splendid zealousness
Mr. James Jump has pioneered this sport almost single-handed against the
heavy tackle record-holder who until recently dominated the Tuna Club
and the boatmen and the fishing at Avalon. To my shame and regret I
confess that it took me three years to recognize Jump's bigness as an
angler and his tenacity as a fighter. But I shall make amends. It seems
when I fished I was steeped in dreams of the sea and the beauty of the
lonely islands. I am not in Jump's class as a fisherman, nor in Lone
Angler's, either. They stand by themselves. But I can write about them,
and so inspire others.
Jump set out in 1914 to catch swordfish on light tackle, and
incidentally tuna under one hundred pounds. He was ridiculed, scorned,
scoffed at, made a butt of by this particular heavy tackle angler, and
cordially hated for his ambitions. Most anglers and boatmen repudiated
his claims and looked askance at him. Personally I believed Jump might
catch some swordfish or tuna on light tackle, but only one out of many,
and that one not the fighting kind. I was wrong. It was Lone Angler who
first drew my attention to Jump's achievements and possibilities.
President Coxe was alive to them also, and he has rebuilt and
rejuvenated the Tuna Club on the splendid standard set by its founder,
Dr. Charles Frederick Holder, and with infinite patience and tact and
labor, and love of fine angling and good fellowship, he has put down
that small but mighty clique who threatened the ruin of sport at fair
Avalon. This has not been public news, but it ought to be and shall be
public news.
The malignant attack recently made upon Mr. Jump's catches of Marlin
swordfish on light tackle was uncalled for and utterly false. It was
an obvious and jealous attempt to belittle, discredit, and dishonor
one of the finest gentlemen sportsmen who ever worked for the good
of the game. I know and I will swear that Jump's capture of the
three-hundred-and-fourteen-pound Marlin on light tackle in twenty-eight
minutes was absolutely as honest as it was skilful, as sportsman-like as
it was wonderful. A number of well-known sportsmen _watched_ him take
this Marlin. Yet his enemies slandered him, accused him of using ropes
and Heaven knows what else! It was vile and it failed.
Jump has performed the apparently impossible. Marlin swordfish hooked on
light tackle can be handled by an exceedingly skilful angler. They make
an indescribably spectacular, wonderful fight, on the surface all the
time, and can be taken as quickly as on heavy tackle. Obviously, then,
this becomes true of tarpon and sailfish and small tuna. What a world to
conquer lies before the fine-spirited angler! A few fish on light
outfits magnifying all the excitement and thrills of many fish on heavy
outfits! There are no arguments against this, for men who have time and
money.
We pioneers of light tackle are out of the woods _now_. There was a
pride in a fight against odds--a pride of silence, and a fight of
example and expressed standards and splendid achievements. But now we
have followers, disciples who have learned, who have profited, who have
climbed to the heights, and we are no longer alone. Hence we can scatter
the news to the four winds and ask for the comradeship of kindred
spirits, of men who love the sea and the stream and the gameness of a
fish. The Open Sesame to our clan is just that love, and an ambition to
achieve higher things. Who fishes just to kill? At Long Key last winter
I met two self-styled sportsmen. They were eager to convert me to what
they claimed was the dry-fly class angling of the sea. And it was to jab
harpoons and spears into porpoises and manatee and sawfish, and be
dragged about in their boat. The height of their achievements that
winter had been the harpooning of several sawfish, each of which gave
birth to a little one while being fought on the harpoon! Ye gods! It
would never do to record my utterances.
But I record this fact only in the hope of opening the eyes of anglers.
I have no ax to grind for myself. I have gone through the game, over to
the fair side, and I want anglers to know.
We are a nation of fishermen and riflemen. Who says the Americans cannot
shoot or fight? What made that great bunch of Yankee boys turn back the
Hun hordes? It was the quick eye, the steady nerve, the unquenchable
spirit of the American boy--his heritage from his hunter forefathers. We
are great fishermen's sons also, and we can save the fish that are being
depleted in our waters.
Let every angler who loves to fish think what it would mean to him to
find the fish were gone. The mackerel are gone, the bluefish are going,
the menhaden are gone, every year the amberjack and kingfish grow
smaller and fewer. We must find ways and means to save our game fish of
the sea; and one of the finest and most sportsman-like ways is to use
light tackle.
* * * * *
Wiborn, the Lone Angler, is also in a class by himself. To my mind
Wiborn is the ideal angler of the sea. I have aspired to his method, but
realize it is impossible for me. He goes out alone. Hence the name Lone
Angler. He operates his motor-launch, rigs his tackle and bait and
teasers, flies his kite, finds the fish, fights the one he hooks, and
gaffs and hauls it aboard or releases it, all by himself. Any one who
has had the slightest experience in Pacific angling can appreciate this
hazardous, complicated, and laborsome job of the Lone Angler. Any one
who ever fought a big tuna or swordfish can imagine where he would have
been without a boatman. After some of my fights with fish Captain
Danielson has been as tired as I was. His job had been as hard as mine.
But Wiborn goes out day by day alone, and he has brought in big tuna and
swordfish. Not many! He is too fine a sportsman to bring in many fish.
And herein is the point I want to drive home in my tribute to Lone
Angler. No one can say how many fish he catches. He never tells. Always
he has a fine, wonderful, beautiful day on the water. It matters not to
him, the bringing home of fish to exhibit. This roused my admiration,
and also my suspicion. I got to believing that Lone Angler caught many
more fish than he ever brought home.
So I spied upon him. Whenever chance afforded I watched him through my
powerful binoculars. He was always busy. His swift boat roamed the seas.
Always he appeared a white dot on the blue horizon, like the flash of a
gull. I have watched his kite flutter down; I have seen his boat stop
and stand still; I have seen sheeted splashes of water near him; and
more than once I have seen him leaning back with bent rod, working and
pumping hard. But when he came into Avalon on these specific occasions,
he brought no tuna, no swordfish--nothing but a cheerful, enigmatic
smile and a hopeful question as to the good luck of his friends.
"But I saw you hauling away on a fish," I ventured to say, once.
[Illustration: SEAL ROCKS]
"Oh, that was an old shark," he replied, laughing.
Well, it might have been, but I had my doubts. And at the close of 1918
I believed, though I could not prove, that Lone Angler let the most of
his fish go free. Hail to Lone Angler! If a man must roam the salt sea
in search of health and peace, and in a manly, red-blooded
exercise--here is the ideal. I have not seen its equal. I envy him--his
mechanical skill, his fearlessness of distance and fog and wind, his
dexterity with kite and rod and wheel, but especially I envy him the
lonesome rides upon a lonesome sea--
Alone, all alone on a wide, wide sea.
The long, heaving swells, the windy lanes, the flight of the sheerwater
and the uplifted flukes of the whale, the white wall of tuna on the
horizon, the leap of the dolphin, the sweet, soft scent that breathes
from off the sea, the beauty and mystery and color and movement of the
deep--these are Lone Angler's alone, and he is as rich as if he had
found the sands of the Pacific to be pearls, the waters nectar, and the
rocks pure gold.
Happily, neither war nor business nor fish-hogs can ruin the wonderful
climate of Catalina Island. Nature does not cater to evil conditions.
The sun and the fog, the great, calm Pacific, the warm Japanese current,
the pleasant winds--these all have their tasks, and they perform them
faithfully, to the happiness of those who linger at Catalina.
Avalon, the beautiful! Somehow even the fire that destroyed half of
Avalon did not greatly mar its beauty. At a distance the bay and the
grove of eucalyptus-trees, the green-and-gold slopes, look as they
always looked. Avalon has a singular charm outside of its sport of
fishing. It is the most delightful and comfortable place I ever visited.
The nights are cool. You sleep under blankets even when over in Los
Angeles people are suffocating with the heat. At dawn the hills are
obscured in fog and sometimes this fog is chilly. But early or late in
the morning it breaks up and rolls away. The sun shines. It is the kind
of sunshine that dazzles the eye, elevates the spirit, and warms the
back. And out there rolls the vast blue Pacific--calm, slowly heaving,
beautiful, and mysterious.
During the summer months Avalon is gay, colorful, happy, and mirthful
with its crowds of tourists and summer visitors. The one broad street
runs along the beach and I venture to say no other street in America can
compare with it for lazy, idle, comfortable, pleasant, and picturesque
effects. It is difficult to determine just where the beach begins and
the street ends, because of the strollers in bathing-suits. Many a time,
after a long fishing-day on the water, as I was walking up the middle of
the street, I have been stunned to a gasp by the startling apparition of
Venus or Hebe or Little Egypt or Annette Kellermann parading
nonchalantly to and fro. It seems reasonable and fair to give notice
that broadbill swordfish are not the only dangers to encounter at
Avalon. I wish they had a policeman there.
But the spirit of Avalon, like the climate, is something to love. It is
free, careless, mirthful, wholesome, restful, and serene. The resort is
democratic and indifferent and aloof. Yet there is always mirth, music,
and laughter. Many and many a night have I awakened, anywhere from ten
to one, to listen to the low lap of the waves on the beach, the soft
tones of an Hawaiian ukulele, the weird cry of a nocturnal sea-gull, the
bark of a sea-lion, or the faint, haunting laugh of some happy girl,
going by late, perhaps with her lover.
Avalon is so clean and sweet. It is the only place I have been, except
Long Key, where the omnipresent, hateful, and stinking automobile does
not obtrude upon real content. Think of air not reeking with gasolene
and a street safe to cross at any time! Safe, I mean, of course, from
being run down by some joy-rider. You are liable to encounter one of the
Loreleis or Aphrodites at any hour from five till sunset. You must risk
chance of that.
So, in conclusion, let me repeat that if you are a fisherman of any
degree, and if you aspire to some wonderful experiences with the great
and vanishing game fish of the Pacific, and if you would love to
associate with these adventures some dazzling white hot days, and
unforgetable cool nights where your eyelids get glued with sleep, and
the fragrant salt breath of the sea, its music and motion and color and
mystery and beauty--then go to Avalon before it is too late.
THE END