The Leaping Tuna 67 



was killed with a delicate jointed greenheart rod, 

 built and intended for yellowtail. Even Walton 

 assumed an apologetic air when he approached 

 a big fish story. " Because you say you love 

 such discourses as these, of rivers, and fish, and 

 fishing, I love you the better, and love the more 

 to impart them to you. Nevertheless, scholar, 

 if I should begin to name the several sorts of 

 strange fish that run into the sea, I might beget 

 wonder in you, or unbelief, or both, and yet I 

 will venture to tell you a real truth." 



So with the leaping tuna. If I should relate 

 the experiences I have been witness to, I should 

 surely " beget wonder " in the reader, if not 

 " unbelief," so extraordinary are they, so seem- 

 ingly impossible; and it is perhaps fortunate for 

 this truthful history that there are forty or fifty 

 " blue button members " of the Tuna Club who 

 have survived their initiative, the taking of a 

 one-hundred-pound fish, all of whom have had 

 experiences equally remarkable, which make up 

 the chronicles of this organization devoted to 

 sea angling and the protection of game fishes. 



The tuna moves north and south, in or out, 

 with more or less regularity. It is due at Santa 

 Catalina from the i5th of May to the i5th of 



