56 Big Game Fishes 



at once. Attempts have been made to take the 

 tunny in these waters with rod and reel, but so 

 far have failed. The game was found in great 

 abundance on the Italian coast, but for some 

 reason it would not bite. 



I first conceived the idea and fostered the hope 

 of catching a tuna with a rod when measuring a 

 giant specimen which hung in Fulton Market 

 some twenty years ago. It had been harpooned 

 in Massachusetts Bay, was about eleven feet 

 long, and weighed in the neighborhood of one 

 thousand pounds a type of all that is ponderous 

 and massive in the true fishes. The following 

 year I confided my ambition to a professional 

 fisherman, a man of great intelligence, with whom 

 I often fished at Ogunquit, Maine, and made 

 various trips to the offshore banks near Boon 

 Island Light in quest of the game which he 

 assured me was there ; but though I fished with 

 patience, trolling and anchored, tried all kinds of 

 bait from moss bunkers to live pollock, I could 

 never lure the Atlantic tuna, and indeed never 

 saw one, though my companion related tales of 

 monsters which came around his dory, feeding 

 almost from his hand, when fishing for dogfish. 

 In these waters the tuna never or rarely was seen, 



