Big Game at Sea 



pick up, but, seized with an insatiate lust for blood, 

 continues charging the school again and again, until 

 the water is filled with the dead and dying. 



The number of swordfishes observed in this local- 

 ity, and especially the appearance of a large school 

 of adults in the San Clemente channel last season, 

 aroused the question of their possible capture. One 

 fisherman procured a New England swordfish outfit, 

 and proposed going into the sport with the regula- 

 tion " lily iron "; but before an opportunity offered, 

 the report came from a boatman that one of his 

 patrons had hooked a swordfish, and for a few 

 moments had played it with a tuna rod and line a 

 statement which aroused no little interest among 

 those anglers who are essentially seekers after the big 

 game of the sea with rod and reel. This unheard-of 

 occurrence, in American waters, at least, of hooking 

 a swordfish took place near the great Sphinx Rock, 

 which constitutes the end of Santa Catalina Island to 

 the southwest. An angler was fishing for yellow- 

 tail a fish which runs up to forty pounds or more, 

 and was using a rod weighing about fourteen ounces 

 with a 2 1 -thread cuttyhunk line. He was trolling 

 near shore, not one hundred feet from the edge of 

 the kelp bed, when an unusual strike came; not 

 the ordinary tug and downward rush of the yel- 

 lowtail, but a fierce jerk, which sent the music of 

 the reel humming through the air, followed by a 

 marvelously quick rush almost around the boat. It 



