342 CHANNEL ISLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 



anything one can find anywhere else, and the moral is 

 that the angler must take luck as he finds it. In 1908 

 big twenty-five, thirty-five, and forty-pound yellow- 

 tails bit so fiercely at San Clemente at the east end 

 and all along the coast, that I was very weary after 

 a day's fishing, though I rarely took more than five 

 or six, more often three or four. We fished with the 

 lightest tackle, and the combats — that is the only 

 word to use — were often over an hour or an hour 

 and a half in duration. 



This brings us to a definition of a morning's fishing. 

 Doubtless the reader will not agree with me, but I 

 believe that three yellowtails taken with a three-six 

 rod and line, each of which plays from half an hour 

 to an hour, is enough to constitute a good morning's 

 sport; the fish to weigh from seventeen to twenty-five 

 pounds. Of course one often takes many more than 

 this. I should also mention that the fish not needed 

 by the boatmen are released so they will be on hand 

 again in a day or so, reminding one of the old English 

 sportsman who had fine shooting all summer at 

 one snipe which he never could hit. I think the 

 angler will agree with me that the angling at the 

 islands is not all in the fish caught. It is a delight- 

 ful diversion to sail up and down the coast twenty 

 miles out to sea, in perfectly smooth water; there is 

 so much to see, the air is so pure and delicious, the 

 radiant animals of the ocean so strange, the ocean so 

 blue. 



I have suggested the tackle, and as we move out of 

 the bay with Tad Gray, Mexican Joe, Chris Ringsen, 

 or some one of the many excellent boatmen at the 

 wheel, you reel off sixty or one hundred feet of line. 



