Adventures with the Biggest Bass 



not by any stretch of the imagination be supposed 

 to rush up to the surface in deep water like a bass, 

 and I soon found that the jewfish of California was 

 an entirely different fish. The Florida fish looks like 

 a giant overgrown grouper, a fellow who will lie in 

 a mud hole and engulf everything that comes along. 

 On the other hand, the California giant is a fish, 

 called Stereolepis gigas, of the bass type, never living 

 in holes or on the bottom, but lurking in the halls 

 and nooks of the great forest of Nereocystis which 

 surrounds the California islands, floating gardens of 

 the sea, whose beauties compare with those of the 

 land. 



" Mexican Joe," who was in those days the arbiter 

 piscatorium, the oldest inhabitant, and the best-posted 

 man on the island, smiled when I suggested that the 

 big fish could be taken with a rod. But Joe no longer 

 smiles, as he has seen hundreds of them taken in this 

 sportsmanlike way, and his jewfish is now the black 

 sea bass of fame and sport. Joe had taken many of 

 them with a hand-line, and one day with a party 

 of friends he rowed us to Pebble Beach, where we 

 anchored over a mysterious rock, supposed to be 

 haunted by bass, and not one hundred feet from the 

 shining sands five of us served to amuse a big sea 

 bass. Joe baited the big cod-line with a live white- 

 fish, and, as the originator of the expedition, I was 

 awarded the honor of the first trial. 



It was a charming place in which to test one's 

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