214 Fish Stories 



dina, and countless shore birds, who seemed to rise at every 

 step. 



From a sloping beach I cast one day, and after a short 

 wait, had a strike. I was standing in water midway be- 

 tween knee and waist, dodging the big waves, taking some 

 full in the face, as it was hot, then backing in to dry and 

 evaporate. What it was I hooked I cannot be sure of, but 

 I was confident that it was a channel bass from the flitting 

 glimpses I had of it. It took four hundred feet of line in 

 a splendid rush away full into the waves, and every now and 

 then I could see something gleam on the face of a green 

 roller. I had waded out and out until a big wave threw me 

 and I went in on it. I gained my feet to find the line slack, 

 and believed that I had lost the fish in my capsize; so I 

 reeled slowly and sorrowfully in. 



I had reeled about fifty feet when the line came taut with 

 a jerk that tore away twenty feet to the buzzing of the reel, 

 and looking up, I saw my fish dashing up the beach, its fin 

 out of water, and directly behind it a shark gaining like a 

 hound on the trail. If I reeled and stopped my game the 

 shark would get it, so backing into shallow water, I ran down 

 the sands, reeling as I could, racing with the shark and the 

 unknown. 



Every sea angler has had the experience of losing a fish 

 by sharks. I have had a tarpon literally cut in two by a 

 monster shark, which shot out of water with the gleaming 

 victim in its jaws and more than once tunas have been seized 

 as they came in. One peculiarly provoking experience 

 occurred to a friend. He was anxious to catch a one- 

 hundred-pound tuna to receive a certain button of the Tuna 

 Club. He played his fish two hours and knew it was a large 

 one, at least a one hundred and fifty-pounder. Just as he 

 was landing it, a big hammer-head dashed up and bit the 

 fish fairly in two ; the part he saved weighed just eighty-five 

 pounds. A fighting fish offers a strong inducement to a 

 shark, which the angler can tell at once by the strange 



