308 Reminiscences of 



I saw enough to fire my hope and expectations, 

 and from the city I obtained two bamboo bass rods 

 of good strength, with large multiplying reels having 

 rubber thumb pads, with six hundred feet of twenty- 

 thread linen lines and suitable hooks. The bamboo 

 rods I soon smashed up, but they lasted with repairs 

 and lashings until I secured by telegraphing to New 

 York for several six-and-a-half -foot steel trolling rods 

 with agate line runners, weighing ten ounces. These 

 I found most appropriate, and capable with careful 

 handling for all the salmon I caught, and with one I 

 handled successfully a ninety-pound shark, which 

 after some time I brought to gaff. 



I engaged a good-sized fishing boat, applicable for 

 sailing, and two men, fishermen and old whalers, 

 and in the next three months I made forty fishing 

 trips, almost invariably leaving my lodgings before 

 the clear dawn, rising generally at four o'clock in the 

 morning ; and from my trips I secured over five thou- 

 sand pounds of salmon from trolling a record I can 

 never expect to duplicate (nor have any particular 

 desire to), as the season of 1892 for profusion of sal- 

 mon at Monterey Bay has never been equalled since, 

 and in a few of the intervening years only a moderate 

 number have been found there, with following good 

 years. 



I have followed the salmon trolling there moder- 

 ately during the years since, and expect to do so 

 again, but have only met with moderate success. 

 The feature shown there is comparatively unique, in 

 the finding of salmon which eagerly take fresh fish 

 bait in the open sea, not known of in other waters 

 than the Pacific, though very rarely salmon have 



