394 Big Game Fishes 
wail. Did ever a salmon of the pool make so 
splendid a rush? Your line is melting like the 
snow on the distant Sierras in this: morning sun. 
You have been playing the fish for ten minutes, 
but the sport has just begun, and two hundred 
feet, perhaps three hundred, away, after a desper- 
ate leap, the chief of the chinooks is hammering 
away, dealing you lusty blows, and preparing to 
dive deep into the azure waters. Down it 
plunges. You feel the throbbing of the line, and 
reel and lift, making line slowly against this marvel 
of game fishes which, when again at the surface, 
alternately rushes and plunges, and sometimes 
—tell it not in Gath!—hurls the hook from 
its jaws, to eye you a second and slowly dis- 
appear. But you wear the talisman of good luck, 
and the gallant salmon comes in, fighting every 
inch, a splendid quarry, the type of all that is best 
in the angler’s score, a perfect game fish in play 
and edible quality. 
On such a day and in this very place, Mr. 
Whitney took twenty-seven salmon from daylight 
to five o’clock in the afternoon, weighing four 
hundred and eighty-two pounds, a record which 
if it has been exceeded in the beautiful bay of 
Carmel has not been recorded. I can conceive 
