28 Big Game Fishes 



ing their position beneath them, a huge fish 

 being occasionally seen by the angler down 

 through a funnel of sardines as the line sinks. 

 In May or the latter part of April one or 

 two large schools of sardines enter the bay of 

 Avalon to spawn, and their numbers are so vast 

 and so closely do they lie, that they form an 

 almost solid mass. Into this I cast an empty 

 hook, and when it is out of sight a slight jerk 

 is sufficient to impale a sardine, which becomes 

 the most active of lures. The sardines do not 

 appear to notice the hook, but the struggles 

 of the live bait alarm them so that they form 

 a solid ring about it. Down it sinks until it 

 reaches the lower stratum of the school, when 

 it will be seized by the watchful bass that 

 apparently cannot resist the struggling fish. 



The white sea-bass at Santa Catalina average 

 about forty or fifty pounds, small ones being 

 more or less rare. Specimens weighing eighty 

 pounds have been caught with cast or hand 

 lines; the rod record is fifty-six pounds. In 

 the San Francisco market bass weighing sixty, 

 seventy, and eighty pounds are not uncommon, 

 and doubtless the fish attains a maximum weight 

 of one hundred or more pounds. 



