III. THE TUNA, OR TUNNY 



By F. G. AFLALO 



^ ^» TT" TT'ITH those who have caught both, it will always be a 



^k ^k X i question whether the tarpon or the tuna is the better 



^k ^K / fish from the standpoint of sport. Considering their rival 



^k /^ / claims dispassionately, as one who has caught tarpon, 



^/ ^/ but has journeyed many thousands of miles after tuna, 



I ▼ ▼ and always in vain, I shall, even at the risk of being re- 



minded of the sour grapes out of reach of the one and only fox ever known 

 to seek such fare, vote for the tarpon, since its trick of jumping when 

 hooked puts it in the category of all the best game-fishes that do likewise. 

 If I have not had the fortune to hook a tuna, I have at any rate watched 

 J. K. L. Ross, of Montreal, pioneer of the sport in Canadian waters, and 

 recently host and guide of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, towed by one 

 up and down St Ann Bay, Cape Breton Island, for hours, and his boat 

 passed close enough to enable me to form a fairly correct idea of the sport. 

 In putting the tuna second, I do not lose sight of its immensely superior 

 size, weight and strength. Compared with such tunas as Ross fought 

 and beat in those northern waters, the longest and heaviest tarpon on 

 record is as a herring to a salmon. It is only by reason of its repeated 

 leaping when hooked that I give the- tarpon precedence. The tuna may 

 occasionally justify its name of ** leaping tuna " when chasing its prey 

 in the ordinary course (though I never saw it do so), but it rarely jumps 

 like the tarpon, when fighting for its life at the end of a rod, thereby losing 

 much of its charm for the fisherman. Once it may jump, as did the big 

 fish caught by Ross, but its main idea of fighting is to swim along in deep 

 water, and so tire out the man in the boat. 



Just as the tarpon is, broadly speaking, a giant herring, so the tuna is 

 an immense mackerel, growing to a length of ten feet or more, and a 

 weight exceeding a thousand pounds. Its range is far wider than that of 

 the tarpon, including at once the sunny seas of California and the ice-cold 

 waters of Cape Breton. It is plentiful in the deep waters of the Atlantic, 

 round Madeira, and it finds its way through the Mediterranean and as far 

 as the Black Sea. Like the sardine, on which it preys, it is a fish of uncer- 

 tain habits, here to-day and gone to-morrow, and just as the sardine 

 fishery has failed on the coast of Brittany and elsewhere, so the once 



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