by Grey, Zane
A good many tuna fell to my rod during these seasons. During the present season, to be exact, I caught twenty-two. This is no large number for two months' fishing. Boschen caught about one hundred; Jump, eighty-four; Hooper, sixty. Among these tuna I fought were three that stand out strikingly. One seventy-three-pounder took fifty minutes of hard fighting to subdue; a ninety-one-pounder took one hour fifty; and the third, after two hours and fifty minutes, got away. It seems, and was proved later, that the number fifty figured every time I hooked one of the long, slim, hard-fighting male tuna.
Beginning late in June, for six weeks tuna were caught almost every day, some days a large number being taken. But big ones were scarce. Then one of the Tuna Club anglers began to bring in tuna that weighed well over one hundred pounds. This fact inspired all the anglers. He would slip out early in the morning and return late at night. Nobody knew where his boatman was finding these fish. More than one boatman tried to follow him, but in vain. Quite by accident it was discovered that he ran up on the north side of the island, clear round the west end. When he was discovered on the west side he at once steered toward Clemente Island, evidently hoping to mislead his followers. This might have succeeded but for the fact that both Bandini and Adams hooked big tuna before they had gone a mile. Then the jig was up. That night Adams came in with a one-hundred-and-twenty-and a one-hundred-and-thirty-six-pound tuna, and Bandini brought the record for this season--one hundred and forty-nine pounds.
Next day we were all out there on the west side, a few miles offshore.
The ocean appeared to be full of blackfish. They are huge, black marine creatures, similar to a porpoise in movement, but many times larger, and they have round, blunt noses that look like battering-rams. Some seemed as big as gunboats, and when they heaved up on the swells we could see the white stripes below the black. I was inclined to the belief that this species was the orca, a whale-killing fish. Boatmen and deep-sea men report these blackfish to be dangerous and had better be left alone.
They certainly looked ugly. We believed they were chasing tuna.
The channel that day contained more whales than I ever saw before at one time. We counted six pairs in sight. I saw as many as four of the funnel-like whale spouts of water on the horizon at once. It was very interesting to watch these monsters of the deep. Once when we were all on top of the boat we ran almost right upon two whales. The first spouted about fifty feet away. The sea seemed to open up, a terrible roar issued forth, then came a cloud of spray and rush of water. Then we saw another whale just rising a few yards ahead. My hair stood up stiff.
Captain Dan yelled, leaped down to reverse the engine. The whale saw us and swerved. Dan's action and the quickness of the whale prevented a collision. As it was, I looked down in the clear water and saw the huge, gleaming, gray body of the whale as he passed. That was another sight to record in the book of memory. The great flukes of his tail moved with surprising swiftness and the water bulged on the surface. Then we ran close to the neighborhood of a school of whales, evidently feeding. They would come up and blow, and then sound. To see a whale sound and then raise his great, broad, shining flukes in the air, high above the water, is in my opinion the most beautiful spectacle to be encountered upon the ocean. Up to this day, during five seasons, I had seen three whales sound with tails in the air. And upon this occasion I had the exceeding good fortune to see seven. I tried to photograph one. We followed a big bull. When he came up to blow we saw a yellow moving space on the water, then a round, gray, glistening surface, then a rugged snout. Puff! His blow was a roar. He rolled on, downward a little; the water surged white and green. When he came up to sound he humped his huge back. It was shiny, leathery, wonderfully supple. It bent higher and higher in an arch. Then this great curve seemed to slide swiftly out of sight and his wonderful tail, flat as a floor and wide as a house, emerged to swing aloft. The water ran off it in sheets. Then it waved higher, and with slow, graceful, ponderous motion sank into the sea. That sight more than anything impressed me with the immensity of the ocean, with its mystery of life, with the unattainable secrets of the deep.
The tuna appeared to be scattered, and none were on the surface. I had one strike that plowed up the sea, showing the difference between the strike of a big tuna and that of a little one. He broke my line on the first rush. Then I hooked another and managed to stop him. I had a grueling battle with him, and at the end of two hours and fifty minutes he broke my hook. This was a disappointment far beyond reason, but I could not help it.
Next day was windy. The one following we could not find the fish, and the third day we all concluded they had gone for 1918. I think the fame of tuna, the uncertainty of their appearance, the difficulty of capturing a big one, are what excite the ambition of anglers. Long effort to that end, and consequent thinking and planning and feeling, bring about a condition of mind that will be made clear as this story progresses.
But Captain Danielson did not give up. The fifth day we ran off the west side with several other boats, and roamed the sea in search of fins. No anchovies on the surface, no sheerwater ducks, no sharks, nothing to indicate tuna. About one o'clock Captain Dan sheered southwest and we ran sixteen miles toward Clemente Island.
It was a perfect day, warm, hazy, with light fog, smooth, heaving, opalescent sea. There was no wind. At two thirty not one of the other boats was in sight. At two forty Captain Dan sighted a large, dark, rippling patch on the water. We ran over closer.
"School of tuna!" exclaimed the captain, with excitement. "Big fish! Oh, for some wind now to fly the kite!"
"There's another school," said my brother, R. C., and he pointed to a second darkly gleaming spot on the smooth sea.
"I've spotted one, too!" I shouted.
"When my dearest aunt died every one was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other trials were reserved for her.
"We'll watch the fish and wait for wind," I said.
This situation may not present anything remarkable to most fishermen.
But we who knew the game realized at once that this was an experience of a lifetime. We counted ten schools of tuna near at hand, and there were so many farther on that they seemed to cover the sea.
"Boys," said Captain Dan, "here's the tuna we heard were at Anacapa Island last week. The Japs netted hundreds of tons. They're working southeast, right in the middle of the channel, and haven't been inshore at all. It's ninety miles to Anacapa. Some traveling!... That school close to us is the biggest school I ever saw and I believe they're the biggest fish."
"Run closer to them," I said to him.
"For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to cure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder, and I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any rate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction. My daily vows rose for revenge--a deep and deadly revenge, such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had endured.
Then we beheld a spectacle calculated to thrill the most phlegmatic fisherman. It simply enraptured me, and I think I am still too close to it to describe it well. The dark-blue water, heaving in great, low, lazy swells, showed a roughened spot of perhaps two acres in extent. The sun, shining over our shoulders, caught silvery-green gleams of fish, flashing wide and changing to blue. Long, round, bronze backs deep under the surface, caught the sunlight. Blue fins and tails, sharp and curved, like sabers, cleared the water. Here a huge tuna would turn on his side, gleaming broad and bright, and there another would roll on the surface, breaking water like a tarpon with a slow, heavy souse.
"Look at the leaders," said Captain Dan. "I'll bet they're three-hundred-pound fish."
I saw then that the school, lazy as they seemed, were slowly following the leaders, rolling and riding th
e swells. These leaders threw up surges and ridges on the surface. They plowed the water.
"What'd happen if we skipped a flying-fish across the water in front of those leaders?" I asked Captain Dan.
He threw up his hands. "You'd see a German torpedo explode."
"Say! tuna are no relation to Huns!" put in my brother.
It took only a few moments for the school to drift by us. Then we ran over to another school, with the same experience. In this way we visited several of these near-by schools, all of which were composed of large tuna. Captain Dan, however, said he believed the first two schools, evidently leaders of this vast sea of tuna, contained the largest fish.
For half an hour we fooled around, watching the schools and praying for wind to fly the kite. Captain Dan finally trolled our baits through one school, which sank without rewarding us with a strike.
At this juncture I saw a tiny speck of a boat way out on the horizon.
Captain Dan said it was Shorty's boat with Adams. I suggested that, as we had to wait for wind to fly the kite, we run in and attract Shorty's attention. I certainly wanted some one else to see those magnificent schools of tuna. Forthwith we ran in several miles until we attracted the attention of the boatman Captain Dan had taken to be Shorty. But it turned out to be somebody else, and my good intentions also turned out to my misfortune.
Then we ran back toward the schools of tuna. On the way my brother hooked a Marlin swordfish that leaped thirty-five times and got away.
After all those leaps he deserved to shake the hook. We found the tuna milling and lolling around, slowly drifting and heading toward the southeast. We also found a very light breeze had begun to come out of the west. Captain Dan wanted to try to get the kite up, but I objected on the score that if we could fly it at all it would only be to drag a bait behind the boat. That would necessitate running through the schools of tuna, and as I believed this would put them down, I wanted to wait for enough wind to drag a bait at right angles with the boat. This is the proper procedure, because it enables an angler to place his bait over a school of tuna at a hundred yards or more from the boat. It certainly is the most beautiful and thrilling way to get a strike.
So we waited. The boatman whose attention we had attracted had now come up and was approaching the schools of tuna some distance below us. He put out a kite that just barely flew off the water and it followed directly in the wake of his boat. We watched this with disgust, but considerable interest, and we were amazed to see one of the anglers in that boat get a strike and hook a fish.
That put us all in a blaze of excitement. Still we thought the strike they got might just have been lucky. In running down farther, so we could come back against the light breeze, we ran pretty close to the school out of which the strike had been gotten. Captain Dan stood up to take a good look.
"They're hundred-pounders, all right," he said. "But they're not as big as the tuna in those two leading schools. I'm glad those ginks in that boat are tied up with a tuna for a spell."
I took a look at the fisherman who was fighting the tuna. Certainly I did not begrudge him one, but somehow, so strange are the feelings of a fisherman that I was mightily pleased to see that he was a novice at the game, was having his troubles, and would no doubt be a long, long time landing his tuna. My blood ran cold at the thought of other anglers appearing on the scene, and anxiously I scanned the horizon. No boat in sight! If I had only known then what sad experience taught me that afternoon I would have been tickled to pieces to see all the great fishermen of Avalon tackle this school of big tuna.
Captain Dan got a kite up a little better than I had hoped for. It was not good, but it was worth trying. My bait, even on a turn of the boat, skipped along just at the edge of the wake of the boat. And the wake of a boat will almost always put a school of tuna down.
We headed for the second school. My thrilling expectancy was tinged and spoiled with doubt. I skipped my bait in imitation of a flying-fish leaping and splashing along. We reached the outer edge of the school.
Slowly the little boils smoothed out. Slowly the big fins sank. So did my heart. We passed the school. They all sank. And then when Captain Dan swore and I gave up there came a great splash back of my bait. I yelled and my comrades echoed me. The tuna missed. I skipped the bait. A sousing splash--and another tuna had my bait. My line sagged. I jerked hard. But too late! The tuna threw the hook before it got a hold.
"They're hungry!" exclaimed Dan. "Hurry--reel the kite in. We'll get another bait on quick.... Look! that school is coming up again! They're not shy of boats. Boys, there's something doing."
Captain Dan's excitement augmented my own. I sensed an unusual experience that had never before befallen me.
The school of largest fish was farther to the west. The breeze lulled.
We could not fly the kite except with the motion and direction of the boat. It was exasperating. When we got close the kite flopped down into the water. Captain Dan used language. We ran back, picked up the kite.
It was soaked, of course, and would not fly. While Dan got out a new kite, a large silk one which we had not tried yet, we ran down to the eastward of the second school. To our surprise and delight this untried kite flew well without almost any wind.
We got in position and headed for the school. I was using a big hook half embedded near the tail of the flying-fish and the leader ran through the bait. It worked beautifully. A little jerk of my rod sent the bait skittering over the water, for all the world like a live flying-fish. I knew now that I would get another strike. Just as we reached a point almost opposite the school of tuna they headed across our bow, so that it seemed inevitable we must either run them down or run too close. My spirit sank to zero. Something presaged bad luck. I sensed disaster. I fought the feeling, but it persisted. Captain Dan swore. My brother shouted warnings from over us where he sat on top. But we ran right into the leaders. The school sank. I was sick and furious.
"Jump your bait! It's not too late," called Dan.
I did so. Smash! The water seemed to curl white and smoke. A tuna had my bait. I jerked. I felt him. He threw the hook. Half the bait remained upon it. Smash! A great boil and splash! Another tuna had that. I tried to jerk. But both kite and tuna pulling made my effort feeble. This one also threw out the hook. It came out with a small piece of mangled red flying-fish still hanging to it. Instinctively I jumped that remains of my bait over the surface. Smash! The third tuna cleaned the hook.
Captain Dan waxed eloquent and profane.
My brother said, "What do you know about that?"
As for myself, I was stunned one second and dazzled the next. Three strikes on one bait! It seemed disaster still clogged my mind, but what had already happened was new and wonderful. Half a mile below us I saw the angler still fighting the tuna he had hooked. I wanted him to get it, but I hoped he would be all afternoon on the job.
"Hurry, Cap!" was all I said.
Ordinarily Dan is the swiftest of boatmen. To-day he was slower than molasses and all he did went wrong. What he said about the luck was more than melancholy. I had no way to gauge my own feelings because I had never had such an experience before. Nor had I ever heard or read of any one having it.
We got a bait on and the kite out just in time to reach the first and larger school. I was so excited that I did not see we were heading right into it. My intent gaze was riveted upon my bait as it skimmed the surface. The swells were long, low, smooth mounds. My bait went out of sight behind one. It was then I saw water fly high and I felt a tug. I jerked so hard I nearly fell over. My bait shot over the top of the swell. Then that swell opened and burst--a bronze back appeared. He missed the hook. Another tuna, also missing, leaped into the air--a fish of one hundred and fifty pounds, glittering green and silver and blue, jaws open, fins stiff, tail quivering, clear and clean-cut above the surface. Again we all yelled. Actually before he fell there was another smash and another tuna had my bait. This one I hooked. His rush was irresistible. I released the d
rag on the reel. It whirled and whizzed.
The line threw a fine spray into my face. Then the tip of my rod flew up with a jerk, the line slacked. We all knew what that meant. I reeled in.
The line had broken above the few feet of double line which we always used next the leader. More than ever disaster loomed over me. The feeling was unshakable now.
Nevertheless, I realized that wonderful good fortune attended us in the fact that the school of big tuna had scarcely any noticeable fear of the boat; they would not stay down, and they were ravenous.
On our next run down upon them I had a smashing strike. The tuna threw the hook. Another got the bait and I hooked him. He sounded. The line broke. We tried again. No sooner had we reached the school when the water boiled and foamed at my bait. Before I could move that tuna cleaned the hook. Our next attempt gained another sousing strike. But he was so swift and I was so slow that I could not fasten to him.
"He went away from here," my brother said, with what he meant for comedy. But it was not funny.
Captain Dan then put on a double hook, embedding it so one hook stood clear of the bait. We tested my line with the scales and it broke at fifty-three pounds, which meant it was a good strong line. The breeze lulled and fanned at intervals. It seemed, however, we did not need any breeze. We had edged our school of big tuna away from the other schools, and it was milling on the surface, lazily and indifferently. But what latent speed and power lay hidden in that mass of lolling tuna.
"Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness."
