SPORT FISHING IN CALIFORNIA AND FLORIDA. 



By CHARLES F. HOLDER. 



It is not generally appreciated by the public that "sport" has economic value. 

 By the unthinking it is not taken into account in the evolution of a country, 

 being considered a waste of time, a mere amusement. Yet sport brings four or 

 five million dollars into the state of Maine every year, and sport, particularly 

 angling, brings quite as large a sum annually to California. 



Over 1 70,000 people visit the Channel Islands of California every year. They 

 make the attractive pilgrimage mainly to the shrine of Walton, for here, from 

 Coronado to Santa Barbara and particularly at Santa Catalina and San Clemente 

 (a United States Government island), is to be found the finest sea angling in 

 the world. 



Rod and reel fishing has been reduced to an exact science here, and this has 

 been accomplished through the Tuna Club, an organization which includes in its 

 membership most of the notable sportsmen of the country — as Ex- President 

 Roosevelt, Henry Van Dyke, Gifford Pinchot, Charles Halleck, Casper Whitney, 

 the late Ex-President Grover Cleveland, and many more. This club has 

 introduced light-tackle fishing as a sportsmanlike movement, also to prevent 

 the undue slaughter of fish, and thus accomplishes a most valuable work in con- 

 serving all the resources of the ocean. By this club's efforts business in fishing 

 tackle has been enhanced a thousand times; hundreds of people find direct 

 employment as boatsmen and employees in allied interests; large sums are 

 brought into the state from numerous parts of this country and Europe and 

 sport, or one feature of it, has been elevated and dignified as a state and national 

 asset of unquestionable importance. In the present paper some of the most 

 important of the great game fishes of southern California and Florida are 

 described. 



AT SANTA CATALINA ISLAND. 



The black sea bass of Santa Catalina is a game and food fish which attains 

 a weight of 800 pounds, averaging 250 pounds, and is very common in this 

 locality, living in and about the kelp or nereocystean forests that surround the 

 island. It appears in May in schools of six or seven, breaks up and is ready to 



