FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 

 that spring, but was foredoomed to fail, not only because the natural 

 conditions were, and still are, against success, but also because the native 

 fishermen purposely put me off the track, for fear, as they afterwards 

 admitted, that my success might attract too many fishermen to compete 

 on their grounds. As a matter of fact, however, the deep water and rough 

 seas present great difficulties, and even a resident sportsman like 

 Mr Charles Cossart, with daily opportunities of fishing all through the 

 year, and considerable experience of the work, wrote to me recently 

 that the prospects were no more hopeful than seven years earlier. 



" I have had no luck with the rod since you were here. I caught two 

 small tunny (T. pelamys), each about twelve pounds, but it was poor 

 fun; and I had a much larger fish (estimated by my boatman at 

 180 lbs.) on for an hour and a quarter. I got the fish alongside, but 

 the gaff did not hold, and the fish, diving beneath the boat, broke 

 the line on the bilge keel. I hooked it on the top of the water, after 

 which it made one slight run. Then I turned it, and it simply bored 

 straight down, taking out nearly all the line. There could not, in fact, 

 have been twenty feet left on the reel. Its next move was to swim 

 away for some time, with the boat in tow, and then I managed to start 

 bringing it up, ' pumping ' it American fashion, till I got it close 

 to the boat. It was very tiring work, and not particularly amusing. 

 I have been out many times, but never again touched one with the 

 rod, though I had some luck with the handline. Last June, a tunny 

 weighing just short of a thousand pounds was caught here, and it 

 took four men about five or six hours getting it in. I fear the water 

 hereabouts is too deep for the rod. The fish has to be hooked right 

 at the surface, as, if it should take the bait in from sixty to ninety 

 fathoms of water, there would not be enough line left on the reel 

 to play it afterwards, as it only knows one trick, that of diving head- 

 long as far as it can go." 

 The Portuguese fishermen, who go after tunny in large, deep boats, 

 bait the hook with a large mackerel, the bait being kept alive in a barrel, 

 into which the boat's boy is continually pouring water. Sometimes the 

 mackerel is blinded, a cruel performance, supposed to make its erratic 

 movements peculiarly attractive to the tunny, but one that is not in- 

 variably adopted. They pass the hook through its back and let it swim 

 about fifty fathoms down. As Mr Cossart points out in his letter, the great 

 depth of water is all against angling , since , whereas the Atlantic is 1 ,800 feet 

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