I 



Adventures with the Biggest Bass 



spume over me, and gaffed it. One lift of its pon- 

 derous head, and it jerked the gaff from my hand, 

 repeating this several times. Finally I hauled it up, 

 held it, and announced that as my companion had 

 now seen the capture of a big sea bass I could cut it 

 away; but he rallied and insisted upon taking it in, to 

 show what " we " had caught. In a weak moment I 

 agreed to hold it while he rowed and towed it in. 

 The wind picked up and nearly swamped us as we 

 went around a point, but two hours later we had the 

 monster in smooth water, where we hailed some fish- 

 ermen and got the bass aboard. It comfortably filled 

 the boat; in fact I had to sit on it, and the skiff's 

 gunwale was just at the edge of the water; a slight 

 wave would have filled her, so we hired the fishermen 

 to convoy us, one on each side, and in two hours or 

 more entered port with our fish, which weighed be- 

 tween three hundred and four hundred pounds. 



This bass attains a weight of eight hundred or a 

 thousand pounds. I know of an eight-hundred 

 pounder taken in the Gulf of California. A remark- 

 able contest was that of Mr. T. S. Manning with a 

 huge fish weighing three hundred and ninety pounds. 

 It towed him several miles off shore and into rough 

 water, when the boat was prevented from filling by 

 oil which his boatman poured around the boat. This 

 was a rod catch, and a notable one. Since then many 

 bass have been taken with the rod and the 21 -strand 

 line. 



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