FISHING THE PACIFIC 



pulling the line and testing the drag on the reel) he struck. 

 I threw off the drag and hooked him and after a fine active 

 fight he jumped twenty-five or thirty times. I had him near 

 the boat in forty minutes but again had the bad luck to 

 break the foot rest off the chair and had to substitute life 

 preservers. Finally, after an hour's fight, I got him across the 

 stern where Bates gaffed him beautifully. This series of 

 events, which indicate how vital a part luck plays, was the 

 curtain-raiser for what was to happen that afternoon. 



We ran back to port with my fish and got a foot bracing 

 off another boat which Louis Talavera adjusted to the chair 

 in a jiffy. While he was at work I took pictures of the fish. 

 He was next to the smallest caught at Cabo Blanco up to that 

 time, weighing only 555 pounds. 



We did not get out to the grounds again until two o'clock 

 that afternoon and then ran north with the wind. Around 

 3:30 the crew on lookout thought they saw a tail. I didn't 

 agree, but at 3: 50 I sighted one from the cockpit a good half 

 a mile away. It appeared so large that at first I thought the 

 fish was a ray, of which there are a great many in these 

 waters. In fact there are more manta rays or giant devil fish 

 in these waters than anywhere else I've ever been— also more 

 whales and various types of sea Hfe. 



I had put the Sierra mackerel bait out the regulation dis- 

 tance—some 200 feet— when this fine black marlin came up 

 and grabbed it. I could not even hazard a guess as to his size 

 at the moment. I hooked him with the same method I had 

 hooked the others and he went off on a grand and glorious 

 run and began jumping about a thousand feet ahead. After 

 a thirty-five minute spell of greyhounding, tail walking and 



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