104 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNU 



this day is the giant black sea bass, which attains a 

 weight of four hundred pounds, and which lives in 

 the great kelp beds that shut in the island from the 

 outer sea. The bait is not aesthetic; it is an eight- 

 pound whitefish or a piece of albacore weighing six or 

 seven pounds. 



Arriving on the grounds near the kelp the boatman 

 drops anchor, rigs a buoy which he can toss over at a 

 moment's notice, then in water forty or fifty feet deep 

 the bait is cast, and the waiting, a part and parcel of 

 all angling, begins. Sometimes I have had a strike 

 from these giant bass in five or ten minutes; some- 

 times they have taken my bait as soon as it went 

 over; again, moments blended into hours before a 

 strike came; or it did not come at all, and it is then 

 that the angler solaces himself with the reflection that 

 if fishes bit all the time it would soon become a weary- 

 ing affair at best. On this occasion Mr. Beebe waited 

 fifteen or twenty minutes. A shark or two carried 

 off the bait — a melancholy sign, of ominous import; 

 then what he supposed was another shark took the 

 bait; the reel slowly and deliberately gave tongue — 

 click, click, click! and then, by that prescience or intui- 

 tion which is an inherent possession of anglers, he 

 knew it was the game he was after. He paid out 

 line slowly, as the big bass is a queer fellow, dainty 

 in a way and deliberate as Solon himself; and as the 

 angler over-reeled and gave line, the boatman cast off 

 his buoy. Then the angler allowed the line to come 

 taut for a moment and, with a firm sway on the resili- 

 ent rod, hooked the game. 



Perhaps you have seen, in the tropics, a squall come 

 on so quickly that it appeared to strike you a blow 



