168 Big Game Fishes 
moving. Chief notified me that the jacks were 
in the channel, which ran so near the key that 
one could almost dive into the blue water. From 
the sandy beach I cast, having baited with a 
three-inch sardine, dropping the line, a number 
twelve, with its slender copper-wire leader, 
seventy or eighty feet from shore, then reeling 
quickly in. Hardly had the reel gained ten 
feet of the line when a jack shot along the 
surface taking it deftly, then rushed away throw- 
ing the water bravely, seemingly in search of 
others of the school; then it felt the line, and 
a reserve fifty feet went spinning off so rapidly 
that I was nearly forced into the water in my 
efforts to save something. I had not ten feet 
of line left on the reel when I stopped the rush 
of the valiant fish. No sulker he, but a con- 
stant fair fighter, a rush directly away, asking 
no favors, giving none; now up partly into the 
air with vigorous shake, now surging along the 
surface, to turn with a lateral rush, a very 
volley of tricks and stratagems hurled at the 
angler with a rapidity that could not fail to 
confuse the most phlegmatic veteran of the rod. 
The angler’s poet, the late Isaac McLellan, 
writes : — 
