18 Big Game Fishes 
end of an exciting day, explain why and how the 
fish got away. It is always ascribed to bad luck. 
One man played his fish three hours, when his 
heart gave out on account of a recent attack of 
grippe. The handle of a cheap reel came off. 
Ananias, the veteran gaffer, who perchance had 
never gaffed before, forgot to change the worn 
line. Another angler caught his line about a 
button at the end of four hours; and so on. 
Anglers “smiling at grief,” yet heaping agony 
upon the back of patient luck which brings them 
all their joys. 
I esteem myself a lucky fisherman because of 
one catch, a white sea-bass which I took one rosy 
morning at Santa Catalina with very light tackle 
and in very good company. It came about, as 
such things do, unexpectedly. We were lying on 
the sands of a little cove under the shadow of a 
ridge of Mount Black Jack; the launch was 
anchored near shore, the boat hauled up on the 
beach. The little bay was, that rare thing at this 
island, shallow, the bottom sinking gradually 
away five, ten, fifteen feet, until sixty or seventy 
feet from the shore it dropped into the channel. 
The water was as clear as crystal, the surface as 
smooth as a disk of steel. Not a breath came 
