Wing Shots at Sea 



It was at this season that foraging and stealing 

 became, in a sense, synonymous. An enthusiastic 

 angler, when informed by his boatman that he had 

 stolen the bait on a certain morning, replied sternly, 

 " Foraged for it, you mean. If a man takes another's 

 bait simply to improve on his own, that is stealing; 

 but when the case is desperate, when you or I have no 

 bait at all, when we must have it, why, the act of 

 securing it becomes foraging." 



The corner on bait was fast reaching an acute stage 

 when suddenly the market was broken by a boatman 

 who remembered that on the previous season a tax- 

 idermist preserved in formalin dozens of flying-fishes, 

 intending to mount them at his leisure. The fishes 

 had merely hardened, and like the mammoth in the 

 Siberian tundras, buried for a million years, was 

 the image of life. This bait, a year old, broke the 

 market. It was sold at twenty-five cents a fish, and 

 proved a fortunate discovery, as the fliers were so 

 well preserved that they could be used over and over 

 again. It was with such bait that I caught the first 

 tuna of the season of 1899, carrying off the prizes, 

 and my boatman others. 



But it is not of the tuna that I write, though the 

 subject offers fresh and alluring material, but of the 

 flying-fish as game. This suggestion may bring a 

 smile to the face of the angler who is familiar with 

 the beautiful species of the Atlantic and the Gulf 

 of Mexico, which dart from wave to wave like bril- 



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