244 TACKLE— CURIOUS METHODS— 5/Lt/i? [75— EELS 



contest takes place between tlie monster and the yoked animals ; 

 for the creature, foster-child of the Ister, draws downward with 

 all his might, while the yoked animals pull the rope in an 

 opposite direction. The fish can make no headway. Beaten 

 by the united efforts of the team, he gives in, and is hauled on 

 to the bank." 



Siluri, according to common report, have been caught 

 weighing over 400 lbs. and of more than twelve feet in length. 



There is good ground for us moderns patting ourselves on the 

 back, when we realise that owing to the many improvements 

 effected in our tackle, and not least in the Rod, an angler off 

 Catalina has often landed a heavier fish than a yoke of oxen 

 on the banks of the Ister, e.g. Mr. A. N. Howard (in 1916) 

 caught the record Black Sea Bass in Californian waters, weighing 

 493 lbs. 



Even this big fellow is quite a dwarf beside the Tuna of 710 

 lbs. taken in Canadian waters by Mr. Laurence Mitchell, ^ which 

 still holds, I believe, the record of the world as the very largest 

 fish ever taken on a rod. 



I myself have seen a sword fish of over 300 lbs. killed on a 

 rod off Santa Catalina. When in 1909 out for Tarpon in 

 Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, I had the good luck to secure after 

 a fight of two and a half hours, and after being towed almost 

 down to Port Royal and back, a distance of some five miles, 

 a shark weighing 116 lbs., with a rod only 8 foot long, with a 

 light salmon line, with a No. 4 hook, and with a bit of piano 

 wiie.fauie de mieux, attached to prevent erosion. 2 



From the time of the earliest authors the identification of 

 the Silurus has been a vexed question. 



Aristotle writing of the Giants, a large fresh-water fish (his 

 only account of actual fishing, it may be remembered, is a fight 



^ See Forest and Stream, Nov. 7, 1914. 



- The shark finds great favour among the negroes ; " you can swallow 

 him in de dark," is a commendation based on the absence of small tricky bones, 

 such as the shad's. But to the best black gourmets, the fish only attains its 

 highest perfection in soup, after being buried for two weeks 1 The cook of 

 the friend with whom I was staying in Jamaica only consented to cutting up my 

 shark, on condition that if a gold watch was found in its belly, that was to be 

 her perquisite — a condition postulated, I eventually discovered, because on a 

 similar occasion one hundred years before, her grandmother did discover a 

 gold watch. Alas for her ! two ship-bolts of iron were her only treasure-trove. 



