THE ISLAND OF SAN CLEMENTE 143 



the work is done, he looks at his crystal bottle with 

 the glance of a connoisseur, regales himself with his 

 library, and laughs and laughs and laughs. 



It can be said that the Government has in this 

 island the finest sea-angling in the world, though in 

 1909 it fell far below the average of Santa Catalina, 

 which, but eighteen or twenty miles away, for some 

 reason had the best. Its forty or more miles of coast 

 is mainly of rock covered wdth an assortment of 

 seaweed, the abode of countless shells and mollusks, 

 hence the haunt of vast numbers of fishes. The water 

 about it is deep, very few shallows being found, and 

 the chief anchorage for anglers is on the slope of the 

 island mountain as it drops away into deep water, or 

 upon some minor peak which branches out from it. 

 This ensures a vast concourse of bottom-feeding fishes; 

 and as the island is well offshore, in the line of fish 

 migration, it abounds in roaming fishes, which come 

 in large numbers and spend the summer on the feeding 

 and spawning ground of their choice. 



Nothing is more uncertain than fishing. The 

 accounts in this volume are as I have found it nearly 

 every year; that is, the normal condition. Some ten 

 years ago the yellowtail fishing at Santa Catalina was 

 very poor; the fishes appeared to be sick. In 1909 

 in September there were no yellowtails at San Cle- 

 mente, where the year pre\dous we had found them 

 in such countless numbers that the very catching 

 became hard work. A party of five — Gifford Pin- 

 chot. Assistant Attorney-General (now Judge) Wood- 

 ruff, Senator Flint, Dr. Howe, of Boston, and myself 

 — would start out every morning at six or seven from 

 the big yacht we had anchored at Smugglers' Cove, 



