BIG TUNA 



somebody else, and my good intentions also turned 

 out to my misfortune. 



Then we ran back toward the schools of tuna. 

 On the way my brother hooked a Marlin swordfish 

 that leaped thirty-five times and got away. After 

 all those leaps he deserved to shake the hook. We 

 found the tuna milling and lolling around, slowly 

 drifting and heading toward the southeast. We 

 also found a very light breeze had begun to come 

 out of the west. Captain Dan wanted to try to 

 get the kite up, but I objected on the score that if 

 we could fly it at all it would only be to drag a bait 

 behind the boat. That would necessitate running 

 through the schools of tuna, and as I believed this 

 would put them down, I wanted to wait for enough 

 wind to drag a bait at right angles with the boat. 

 This is the proper procedure, because it enables an 

 angler to place his bait over a school of tuna at a 

 hundred yards or more from the boat. It certainly 

 is the most beautiful and thrillii^ way to get a 

 strike. 



So we waited. The boatman whose attention we 

 had attracted had now come up and was approach- 

 ing the schools of tuna some distance below us. 

 He put out a kite that just barely flew off the water 

 and it followed directly in the wake of his boat. 

 We watched this with disgust, but considerable in- 

 terest, and we were amazed to see one of the anglers 

 in that boat get a strike and hook a fish. 



That put us all in a blaze of excitement. Still we 

 thought the strike they got might just have been 

 lucky. In running down farther, so we could come 

 back against the light breeze, we ran pretty close 



229 



