142 Big Game Fishes 
rush of the fish that the nervous holder of the rod 
is sometimes stampeded. A fisherman is per- 
haps seized with “buck fever,” under its influence, 
and drops the rod utterly demoralized. Others 
cannot take in the fish, and lose fish, rod, and line. 
The yellowtail makes a number of desperate 
lunges, so vigorous that there is really nothing 
to do but to give line. If the angler can with- 
stand it, then the rod is too stiff for the code 
which holds and is most in favor. The line is 
kept taut and reeled when opportunity offers, but 
if the fish is a normal one and full of vigor the 
angler will find the latter impossible to reel in as 
one would a bass or lake-trout, and it is here that 
vertical or lateral “pumping” comes into play; 
and that it is absolutely necessary every one who 
has tried conclusions with the fish will acknowl- 
edge. I have seen a novice work upon a seven- 
teen-pound fish for nearly an hour attempting to 
reel it in out-of-hand. At the end of half an 
hour the man was weary, while the fish appeared 
to be gaining in vigor if the click was a true 
prophet. Pumping, it may be explained to the 
uninitiated, is the invention of some unknown 
patron of the sport, which enables one to lift a 
deep-sulking fish, accomplished in the following 
