192 Big Game Fishes 
into a heavy-breaking sea farther out. We picked 
up a few small bass by casting up-stream, using 
pipe-sinkers, but in a marvellously short space of 
time the bait and sinker would pass the boat and 
lie at the surface. Several sharks followed up 
the mullet trail and afforded some sport. The 
shad fisherman, who had never seen a five-foot 
shark killed with a line of that size, confidentially 
informed me that “he’d have been dogged ef he’d 
’a’ bl’eved it, ef he hadn’t seen it.” 
Gradually the current slackened, and then sud- 
denly my reel gave tongue, and in a few seconds 
I was engaged in sport that was sufficiently excit- 
ing to satisfy the most exacting angler. Out into 
the midstream the fish went in a splendid run, 
having all its own way, the tackle being too light 
for any immediate protest, and it was two hundred 
feet distant before the thumb brake began its 
deadly work and I turned it. Then it shot across 
the water in the opposite direction, never slacking 
or giving up. Now the reel would gain twenty or 
thirty feet, and the gamy fish would spring forward 
and turn downward, sounding with an impetuosity , 
that was irresistible, making everything hum with 
the soul-stirring zip-zip-zip! of the reel, which so 
truly echoes the exact movement of the stricken 
