156 Big Game Fishes 
bluefish, and the next time we close-hauled the 
cat-boat, ran her into the very eye-teeth of the 
wind, against the current, and at the strike 
pushed her into the wind, and let the main-sheet 
run; and then I was initiated into the delights of 
real sport with the rod. No fish makes a better 
or more vigorous fight, pound for pound. Amid 
the clanking of boom, the tattoo of reefing points, 
the jangle of the block along the traveller, I 
played the bluefish. How it played and bore 
away! What mad rushes it made in and around! 
now far away at the surface, where the dark 
green waters rolled in silvery laughter; now 
plunging off, forcing the fight, and making the 
reel sob and cry. For ten minutes I played this 
gallant fish, and when at last it came in, I was 
forced around the mast and under the sheet sev- 
eral times to meet its circling; finally it came to 
gaff, fifteen pounds of vigor and unsuppressible 
animation. 
The bluefish is one of the gamiest of American 
fishes with a rod, but rods and a sail-boat rarely 
agree, and the strain on the nerves of the average 
angler, not to mention the skipper, who is ex- 
pected to luff at the right moment, is too great. 
With an eighteen- or twenty-foot four-horse-power 
