368 Big Game Fishes 
the boat, and as suddenly plunge down to sulk 
in angry protest and apparently present its broad 
surface against the rod, making the turning of 
the reel almost an impossibility. 
Slowly the boatman rowed out of the surf, and 
if this fish could have been played in water as 
shallow as that familiar to the salmon angler, 
where its rushes would have been off instead of 
down, it would have commended itself to the 
ardent lover of purely game fishes. For fifteen 
minutes it fought me, and until I brought it 
within eyesight, my boatman insisted that it was a 
yellowtail— one of the most powerful and hard- 
est fighting of all fishes; but it was a halibut, one 
of the despised flounder tribe which appeal to 
the digestion but not to an appetite whetted for 
sport. This gamy creature redoubled its fighting 
as it saw the boat, repeatedly broke away, and 
when gaffed was making a flying rush around the 
boat after various attempts to hold it; and when 
finally held, its white belly blazing in the sun- 
light, beat the water with powerful blows, and 
literally hurled watery defiance in our faces, 
When the boatman held the fish up, that I might 
observe its fine proportions, it was evident that it 
was built for such work and was an animated 
