Big Game at Sea 



made. In the East, a ten-pound weakfish is a large 

 fish. It is found on the Pacific Slope up to eighty 

 pounds, though a different species, and averages fifty 

 pounds at Catalina and Monterey Bay, affording 

 famous sport. The bluefish is represented by a 

 cousin, the yellowtail, which runs up to sixty pounds, 

 averaging twenty-five pounds. The blackfish of the 

 East, a common catch as tautog, runs occasionally 

 to ten pounds or more, and the fish of the nearest 

 habit on the Pacific Coast is the great black sea bass, 

 though not a near ally. 



My first glimpse of this great fish was at Santa 

 Catalina. I was fishing for small game and was 

 hauling in a whitefish when I observed a monster 

 fish following my catch. I hauled the faster and 

 drew my whitefish literally out of the frying pan 

 into the fire, as the big fish, over six feet long and 

 doubtless weighing three hundred pounds, shot to the 

 surface, making the water boil not two feet from my 

 face, darting away with the speed of a sardine as it 

 saw me. 



It was a vision to make the blood run, and I soon 

 interviewed the only boatman on the island, as this 

 was twenty years ago, before Santa Catalina had 

 really been discovered as an angling paradise, and 

 Joe told me that it was a jewfish. I had caught a 

 three-hundred-pound jewfish in the Gulf of Mexico; 

 a miserable sulker, an overgrown creature, and knew 

 that a real jewfish, that is, of the Florida type, could 



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