Life in the Open 



way fishes weighing one hundred and fifty pounds have 

 been landed. 



This is out of the world and on the edge of a desert, 

 but the same fish comes in on the Californian coast in 

 April and affords a short season. All those I have 

 caught weighed over fifty pounds, this being about the 

 average size of vast schools of the splendid game. 

 Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands appear to be 

 in the line of migration of the schools, and they are 

 taken at Port Hartford and along the coast. They first 

 appear, so far as known, at the south end of the island, 

 and move slowly north, entering the bays and lying 

 under the schools of sardines and smelt that congregate 

 here. Thus large schools will enter Avalon Bay, Ca- 

 brillo, and others, and can be followed up as the fishes 

 pass north. 



I once ran into a large school at San Clemente 

 Island, which is about fifty miles offshore. We were 

 lying in a little bay when a ripple on the surface told of 

 a large school of fishes of some kind, and pushing off 

 we entered the largest school of bass I have ever seen. 

 They were fishes of the largest size, and were so tame 

 that they paid little or no attention to the boat. I could 

 easily have grained or speared them. 



We had some flying-fishes, and my oarsman hooking 

 one on, I cast into the school thirty feet away. Down 

 they dropped, then a whirl of flying water, a miniature 

 maelstrom, and a fish had it. Here mark the difference 

 between game of one kind and game of another. The 



