FISHING THE PACIFIC 



as if thoroughly frightened— but if we keep on putting it to 

 them they finally get curious and start to follow it like a 

 marlin does. There is more of this sort of pursuit of the bait 

 by little fish off Peru than I've ever seen elsewhere. They 

 start snatching at it and grabbing for it. It is not the regulation 

 strike that one gets from the big swordfish in Chile. They 

 are most difficult to hook, these little fellows off Cabo Blanco. 



The fact that swordfish will rarely hit a skipping bait being 

 trolled was forcibly brought home to me when trying 

 to catch them off outriggers. When the outrigger first be- 

 came popular I, along with a lot of others, was of the opin- 

 ion that it would revolutionize swordfishing— that you would 

 be able to get many more strikes with this device which has 

 raised so many marlin and sailfish in other places. I soon 

 found out, however, that I was wrong. True, I did catch my 

 first one on an outrigger but I have since decided it was 

 by a stroke of sheer good luck. Many times since I have 

 tried without success to make a fish strike by putting the bait 

 in the outrigger after he had refused to strike it in the water 

 —and this, to my mind, is the only excuse an angler has for 

 trying to bait swordfish from an outrigger. There is no need 

 for the contraption in Chile since the great majority of striped 

 marlin are also seen on the surface tailing. If you keep trolling 

 baits in Chile you'll have so many marlin after them on most 

 days that you won't have a chance to look for swordfish. 



It may happen, as it has with me, that putting the bait on 

 the outrigger will make the swordfish swish his tail and sud- 

 denly start for it. In that event I pull the line out of the 

 outrigger, thus allowing the bait to drop below the surface, 

 and then attempt to hook him in the orthodox way. And 



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