156 Big Game Fishes 



bluefish, and the next time we close-hauled the 

 cat-boat, ran her into the very eye-teeth of the 

 wind, against the current, and at the strike 

 pushed her into the wind, and let the main-sheet 

 run ; and then I was initiated into the delights of 

 real sport with the rod. No fish makes a better 

 or more vigorous fight, pound for pound. Amid 

 the clanking of boom, the tattoo of reefing points, 

 the jangle of the block along the traveller, I 

 played the bluefish. How it played and bore 

 away ! What mad rushes it made in and around ! 

 now far away at the surface, where the dark 

 green waters rolled in silvery laughter; now 

 plunging off, forcing the fight, and making the 

 reel sob and cry. For ten minutes I played this 

 gallant fish, and when at last it came in, I was 

 forced around the mast and under the sheet sev- 

 eral times to meet its circling ; finally it came to 

 gaff, fifteen pounds of vigor and unsuppressible 

 animation. 



The bluefish is one of the gamiest of American 

 fishes with a rod, but rods and a sail-boat rarely 

 agree, and the strain on the nerves of the average 

 angler, not to mention the skipper, who is ex- 

 pected to luff at the right moment, is too great. 

 With an eighteen- or twenty-foot four-horse-power 



