ALBACORA 107 



can rejoin his school and some other year, perhaps, when 

 he is still bigger and tougher, there will be another 

 chance for me to catch him. I write that here as I thought 

 it on my balcony in Iquique. I cannot honestly report 

 that these thoughts cross my mind in the painful mo- 

 ments just after a fish has fought his way to freedom. 

 All my thoughts then come down to a single word: 

 "Damn!" 



Four years before our big expedition Lou and I had 

 decided we wanted to land some big fish on light tackle. 

 We fished off the coast of Mexico, off Panama, off 

 Talara in Peru, and all in all we hooked about thirty- 

 five striped marlin on three-thread line and some fifty 

 on six-thread line. We boated only eight of the thirty- 

 five and twenty-nine of the fifty. We had not started 

 fishing for science then, but all the frustration we en- 

 dured with all those fish escaping may well have planted 

 the thought of fishing for a purpose. 



One aspect of fish life that few anglers have had much 

 time to study is sex. In school we have all been told 

 about salmons fighting their way up waterfalls, driven 

 by the primal urge to reach the spawning grounds. Then, 

 there is the poetry of fish romance. Ogden Nash has 

 written : 



The chastest of the vertebrates. 

 He hardly ever sees his mates. 

 But when they've finished, he appears 

 And O.K,'s all their bright ideas. 



