Tales of Fishes Part 25

We owe the latter stride toward conservation and sportsmanship to Mr.

James Jump, and to Lone Angler, and to President c.o.xe 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 cla.s.s 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, Ca.s.siard, 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-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 b.u.t.t 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 c.o.xe 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.ds! 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 cla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 j.a.panese 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 a.s.sociate 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