by Zane Grey
It became manifest then that my knees were wabbling, my feet puttering around, my whole lower limbs shaking as if I had the palsy. I had lost control of my lower muscles. It was funny; it was ridiculous. It showed just what was my state of excitement.
The kite fluttered down to the water. The kite-line had not broken off, and this must add severely to the strain on the fish. Not only had I stopped the tuna, but soon I had him coming up, slowly yet rather easily. He was directly under the boat. When I had all save about one hundred feet of line wound in the tuna anchored himself and would not budge for fifteen minutes. Then again rather easily he was raised fifty more feet. He acted like any small, hard-fighting fish.
“I’ve hooked a little one,” I began. “That big fellow missed the bait, and a small one grabbed it.”
Dan would not say so, but he feared just that. What miserable black luck! Almost I threw the rod and reel overboard. Some sense, however, prevented me from such an absurdity. And as I worked the tuna closer and closer I grew absolutely sick with disappointment. The only thing to do was to haul this little fish in and go hunt up the school. So I pumped and pulled. That half-hour seemed endless and bad business altogether. Anger possessed me and I began to work harder. At this juncture Shorty’s boat appeared close to us. Shorty and Adams waved me congratulations, and then made motions to Dan to get the direction of the school of tuna. That night both Shorty and Adams told me that I was working very hard on the fish, too hard to save any strength for a long battle.
Captain Dan watched the slow, steady bends of my rod as the tuna plugged, and at last he said, “Doc, it’s a big fish!”
Strange to relate, this did not electrify me. I did not believe it. But at the end of that half-hour the tuna came clear to the surface, about one hundred feet from us, and there he rode the swells. Doubt folded his sable wings! Bronze and blue and green and silver flashes illumined the swells. I plainly saw that not only was the tuna big, but he was one of the long, slim, hard-fighting species.
Presently he sounded, and I began to work. I was fresh, eager, strong, and I meant to whip him quickly. Working on a big tuna is no joke. It is a man’s job. A tuna fights on his side, with head down, and he never stops. If the angler rests the tuna will not only rest, too, but he will take more and more line. The method is a long, slow lift or pump of rod—then lower the rod quickly and wind the reel. When the tuna is raised so high he will refuse to come any higher, and then there is a deadlock. There lives no fisherman but what there lives a tuna that can take the conceit and the fight out of him.
For an hour I worked. I sweat and panted and burned in the hot sun; and I enjoyed it. The sea was beautiful. A strong, salty fragrance, wet and sweet, floated on the breeze. Catalina showed clear and bright, with its colored cliffs and yellow slides and dark ravines. Clemente Island rose a dark, long, barren, lonely land to the southeast. The clouds in the west were like trade-wind clouds, white, regular, with level base-line.
At the end of the second hour I was tiring. There came a subtle change of spirit and mood. I had never let up for a minute. Captain Dan praised me, vowed I had never fought either broadbill or roundbill swordfish so consistently hard, but he cautioned me to save myself.
“That’s a big tuna,” he said, as he watched my rod.
Most of the time we drifted. Some of the time Dan ran the boat to keep even with the tuna, so he could not get too far under the stern and cut the line. At intervals the fish appeared to let up and at others he plugged harder. This I discovered was merely that he fought the hardest when I worked the hardest. Once we gained enough on him to cut the tangle of kite-line that had caught some fifty feet above my leader. This afforded cause for less anxiety.
“I’m afraid of sharks,” said Dan.
Sharks are the bane of tuna fishermen. More tuna are cut off by sharks than are ever landed by anglers. This made me redouble my efforts, and in half an hour more I was dripping wet, burning hot, aching all over, and so spent I had to rest. Every time I dropped the rod on the gunwale the tuna took line—zee—zee—zee—foot by foot and yard by yard. My hands were cramped; my thumbs red and swollen, almost raw. I asked Dan for the harness, but he was loath to put it on because he was afraid I would break the fish off. So I worked on and on, with spurts of fury and periods of lagging.
At the end of three hours I was in bad condition. I had saved a little strength for the finish, but I was in danger of using that up before the crucial moment arrived. Dan had to put the harness on me. I knew afterward that it saved the day. By the aid of the harness, putting my shoulders into the lift, I got the double line over the reel, only to lose it. Every time the tuna was pulled near the boat he sheered off, and it did not appear possible for me to prevent it. He got into a habit of coming to the surface about thirty feet out, and hanging there, in plain sight, as if he was cabled to the rocks of the ocean. Watching him only augmented my trouble. It had ceased long ago to be fun or sport or game. It was now a fight and it began to be torture. My hands were all blisters, my thumbs raw. The respect I had for that tuna was great.
He plugged down mostly, but latterly he began to run off to each side, to come to the surface, showing his broad green-silver side, and then he weaved to and fro behind the boat, trying to get under it. Captain Dan would have to run ahead to keep away from him. To hold what gain I had on the tuna was at these periods almost unendurable. Where before I had sweat, burned, throbbed, and ached, I now began to see red, to grow dizzy, to suffer cramps and nausea and exceeding pain.
Three hours and a half showed the tuna slower, heavier, higher, easier. He had taken us fifteen miles from where we had hooked him. He was weakening, but I thought I was worse off than he was. Dan changed the harness. It seemed to make more effort possible.
The floor under my feet was wet and slippery from the salt water dripping off my reel. I could not get any footing. The bend of that rod downward, the ceaseless tug, tug, tug, the fear of sharks, the paradoxical loss of desire now to land the tuna, the change in my feeling of elation and thrill to wonder, disgust, and utter weariness of spirit and body—all these warned me that I was at the end of my tether, and if anything could be done it must be quickly.
Relaxing, I took a short rest. Then nerving myself to be indifferent to the pain, and yielding altogether to the brutal instinct this tuna-fighting rouses in a fisherman, I lay back with might and main. Eight times I had gotten the double line over the reel. On the ninth I shut down, clamped with my thumbs, and froze there. The wire leader sung like a telephone wire in the cold. I could scarcely see. My arms cracked. I felt an immense strain that must break me in an instant.
Captain Dan reached the leader. Slowly he heaved. The strain upon me was released. I let go the reel, threw off the drag, and stood up. There the tuna was, the bronze-and-blue-backed devil, gaping, wide-eyed, shining and silvery as he rolled, a big tuna if there ever was one, and he was conquered.
When Dan lunged with the gaff the tuna made a tremendous splash that deluged us. Then Dan yelled for another gaff. I was quick to get it. Next it was for me to throw a lasso over that threshing tail. When I accomplished this the tuna was ours. We hauled him up on the stern, heaving, thumping, throwing water and blood; and even vanquished he was magnificent. Three hours and fifty minutes! The number fifty stayed with me. As I fell back in a chair, all in, I could not see for my life why any fisherman would want to catch more than one large tuna.
CHAPTER XIV
AVALON, THE BEAUTIFUL
If you are a fisherman, and aspire to the study or conquest of the big game of the sea, go to Catalina Island once before it is too late.
The summer of 1917 will never be forgotten by those fishermen who were fortunate enough to be at Avalon. Early in June, even in May, there were indications that the first record season in many years might be expected. Barracuda and white sea-bass showed up in great schools; the ocean appeared to be full of albacore; yellowtail began to strike all along the island shores and even in the bay of
Avalon; almost every day in July sight of broadbill swordfish was reported, sometimes as many as ten in a day; in August the blue-fin tuna surged in, school after school, in vast numbers; and in September returned the Marlin, or roundbill swordfish that royal-purple swashbuckler of the Pacific.
This extraordinary run of fish appeared like old times to the boatmen and natives who could look back over many Catalina years. The cause, of course, was a favorable season when the sardines and anchovies came to the island in incalculable numbers. Acres and acres of these little bait fish drifted helplessly to and fro, back and forth with the tides, from Seal Rocks to the west end. These schools were not broken up until the advent of the voracious tuna; and when they arrived the ocean soon seemed littered with small, amber-colored patches, each of which was a densely packed mass of sardines or anchovies, drifting with the current. It has not yet been established that swordfish feed on these schools, but the swordfish were there in abundance, at any rate; and it was reasonable to suppose that some of the fish they feed on were in pursuit of the anchovies.
Albacore feeding on the surface raise a thin, low, white line of water or multitudes of slight, broken splashes. Tuna raise a white wall, tumbling and spouting along the horizon; and it is a sight not soon to be forgotten by a fisherman. Near at hand a big school of feeding tuna is a thrilling spectacle. They move swiftly, breaking water as they smash after the little fish, and the roar can be heard quite a distance. The wall of white water seems full of millions of tiny, glinting fish, leaping frantically from the savage tuna. And when the sunlight shines golden through this wall of white spray, and the great bronze and silver and blue tuna gleam for an instant, the effect is singularly exciting and beautiful.
All through August and much of September these schools of tuna, thousands of them, ranted up and down the coast of Catalina, thinning out the amber patches of anchovies, and affording the most magnificent sport to anglers.
These tuna may return next year and then again they may not return for ten years. Some time again they will swing round the circle or drift with the currents, in that mysterious and inscrutable nature of the ocean. And if a fisherman can only pick out the year or have the obsession to go back season after season he will some day see these wonderful schools again.
But as for the other fish—swordfish, white sea-bass, yellowtail, and albacore—their doom has been spelled, and soon they will be no more. That is why I say to fishermen if they want to learn something about these incomparable fish they must go soon to Catalina before it is too late.
The Japs, the Austrians, the round-haul nets, the canneries and the fertilizer-plants—that is to say, foreigners and markets, greed and war, have cast their dark shadow over beautiful Avalon. The intelligent, far-seeing boatmen all see it. My boatman, Captain Danielson, spoke gloomily of the not distant time when his occupation would be gone. And as for the anglers who fish at Catalina, some of them see it and many of them do not. The standard raised at Avalon has been to haul in as many of the biggest fish in the least possible time. One famous fisherman brought in thirteen tuna—nine hundred and eighty-six pounds of tuna—that he caught in one day! This is unbelievable, yet it is true. Another brought in eleven tuna in one day. These fishermen are representative of the coterie who fish for records. All of them are big, powerful men, and when they hook a fish they will not give him a foot of line if they can help it. They horse him in, and if they can horse him in before he wakes up to real combat they are the better pleased. All of which is to say that the true motive (or pleasure, if it can be such) is the instinct to kill. I have observed this in many fishermen. Any one who imagines that man has advanced much beyond the savage stage has only carefully to observe fishermen.
I have demonstrated the practicability of letting Marlin swordfish go after they were beaten, but almost all of the boatmen will not do it. The greater number of swordfish weigh under two hundred pounds, and when exhausted and pulled up to the boat they can be freed by cutting the wire leader close to the hook. Probably all these fish would live. A fisherman will have his fun seeing and photographing the wonderful leaps, and conquering the fish, and when all this is over it would be sportsman-like to let him go. Marlin are not food fish, and they are thrown to the sharks. During 1918, however, many were sold as food fish. It seems a pity to treat this royal, fighting, wonderful, purple-colored fish in this way. But the boatmen will not free them. My boatman claimed that his reputation depended upon the swordfish he caught; and that in Avalon no one would believe fish were caught unless brought to the dock. It was his bread and butter. His reputation brought him new fishermen, and so he could not afford to lose it. Nevertheless, he was persuaded to do it in 1918. The fault, then, does not lie with the boatman.
The Japs are the greatest market fishermen in the world. And some five hundred boats put out of San Pedro every day, to scour the ocean for “the chicken of the sea,” as albacore are advertised to the millions of people who are always hungry. It must be said that the Japs mostly fish square. They use a hook, and a barbless hook at that. Usually four Japs constitute the crew of one of these fast eighty-horse-power motor-boats. They roam the sea with sharp eyes ever alert for that thin white line on the horizon, the feeding albacore. Their method of fishing is unique and picturesque. When they sight albacore they run up on the school and slow down.
In the stern of the boat stands a huge tank, usually painted red. I have become used to seeing dots of red all over the ocean. This tank is kept full of fresh sea-water by a pump connected with the engine, and it is used to keep live bait—no other than the little anchovies. One Jap, using a little net, dips up live bait and throws them overboard to the albacore. Another Jap beats on the water with long bamboo poles, making splashes. The other two Japs have short, stiff poles with a wire attached and the barbless hook at the end. They put on a live bait and toss it over. Instantly they jerk hard, and two big white albacore, from fifteen to thirty pounds, come wiggling up on to the stern of the boat. Down goes the pole and whack! goes a club. It is all done with swift mechanical precision. It used to amaze me and fill me with sadness. If the Japs could hold the school of albacore they would very soon load the boat. But usually a school of albacore cannot be held long.
You cannot fish in the channel any more without encountering these Jap boats. Once at one time in 1917 I saw one hundred and thirty-two boats. Most of them were fishing! They ran to and fro over the ocean, chasing every white splash, and they make an angler’s pleasure taste bitter.
Fortunately the Japs had let the tuna alone, for the simple and good reason that they had not found a way to catch the wise blue-fins. But they will find a way! Yet they drove the schools down, and that was almost as bad. As far as swordfish are concerned, it is easy to see what will happen, now that the albacore have become scarce. Broadbill swordfish are the finest food fish in the sea. They can be easily harpooned by these skilful Japs. And so eventually they will be killed and driven away. This misfortune may not come at once, but it will come.
In this connection it is interesting to note that I tried to photograph one of the Austrian crews in action. But Captain Dan would not let me get near enough to take a picture. There is bad blood between Avalon boatmen and these foreign market fishermen. Shots had been exchanged more than once. Captain Dan kept a rifle on board. This news sort of stirred me. And I said: “Run close to that bunch, Cap. Maybe they’ll take a peg at me!” But he refused to comply, and I lost a chance to serve my country!
The Japs, however, are square fishermen, mostly, and I rather admire those albacore-chasers, who at least give the fish a chance. Some of them use nets, and against them and the Austrian round-haul netters I am exceedingly bitter. These round-haul nets, some of them, must be a mile long, and they sink two hundred feet in the water. What chance has a school of fish against that? They surround a school and there is no escape.
Clemente Island, the sister island to Catalina, was once a paradise for fish, especially the beautiful, gamy yellowtail. But
there are no more fish there, except Marlin swordfish in August and September. The great, boiling schools of yellowtail are gone. Clemente Island has no three-mile law protecting it, as has Catalina. But that Catalina law has become a farce. It is violated often in broad daylight, and probably all night long. One Austrian round-haul netter took seven tons of white sea-bass in one haul. Seven tons! Did you ever look at a white sea-bass? He is the most beautiful of bass—slender, graceful, thoroughbred, exquisitely colored like a paling opal, and a fighter if there ever was one.
What becomes of these seven tons of white sea-bass and all the other tons and tons of yellowtail and albacore? That is a question. It needs to be answered. During the year 1917 one heard many things. The fish-canneries were working day and night, and every can of fish—the whole output had been bought by the government for the soldiers. Very good. We are a nation at war. Our soldiers must be properly fed and so must our allies. If it takes all the fish in the sea and all the meat on the land, we must and will win this war.
But real patriotism is one thing and misstatement is another. If there were not so much deceit and greed in connection with this war it would be easier to stomach.
As a matter of cold fact, that round-haul netter’s seven tons of beautiful white sea-bass did not go into cans for our good soldiers or for our fighting allies. Those seven tons of splendid white sea-bass went into the fertilizer-plant, where many and many a ton had gone before!
It is not hard to comprehend. When they work for the fertilizer-plants they do not need ice—they do not need to hurry to the port to save spoiling—they can stay out till the boat is packed full. So often a greater part of the magnificent schools of white sea-bass, albacore, and yellowtail—splendid food fish—go into the fertilizer-plants to make a few foreign-born hogs rich. Hundreds of aliens, many of them hostile to the United States, are making big money, which is sent abroad.
I believe that the great kelp-beds round Catalina are the 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.