54 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNL^ 



The tuna is a pelagic fish, a free lance, an ocean 

 rover, a sort of swaggering musketeer of the sea, the 

 largest of what may be termed the game or bony 

 fishes, attaining a maximum weight of nearly two thou- 

 sand pounds, and an approximate length of fourteen 

 feet or more. Such a fish is very exceptional, though 

 specimens weighing fifteen hundred pounds have been 

 taken on the New England coast. I once entered a 

 school of such tunas in the Santa Catalina Channel in 

 a big launch. The school divided to port and star- 

 board as we passed through it, and I had a view of 

 one or two fishes that appeared to be more than half 

 as long as the boat. These fishes spend the winter 

 in warm latitudes, and migrate north as far as the 

 mouth of the St. Lawrence. They are found in the 

 Mediterranean, and north to the Loffoden Islands; 

 yet so far, the efforts of anglers, except at Santa Cata- 

 lina, have failed to take them with the rod. Even 

 here there is a stretch of but eight miles or so where 

 they can be satisfactorily played and taken with rod 

 and reel. This region lies on the north side of Santa 

 Catalina, from Avalon to Long Point, and to the east 

 as many more, facing the north, and generally smooth 

 — more like a Scottish loch than a fishing-ground 

 twenty miles out to sea. 



The tuna comes often in May, but for some unknown 

 reason can usually be counted on only from the middle 

 of June to the middle of August,* and even then is 

 the most capricious and uncertain of fishes. I have 

 had strikes before getting out of Avalon Bay; again 

 have trolled around large schools of tunas that passed 

 the boat in full sight, utterly ignoring m.e, not a glance 



* In 1909 tunas were taken in October. 



