THE GAME PISHES OP THE WORLD 



perhaps half a mile. They did it very cleverly, and it reminded 

 me of the time in 1900 I had in perfectly smooth water when, 

 with a two-handed cast, I dropped my bait in front of the leader of 

 a school and hooked it. N'othing is more enticing to the average 

 tuna than this. If anything is the matter with a fish, it seems 

 to madden all predatory fishes and the wounded victim is at 

 once seized. 



But all the skill and cleverness of the Tuna Club experts, 

 Mr. Hooper and Mr. Murphy, did not, at least that day, induce 

 the tunas to bite. 



The tuna kite or tunaplane, was devised later by Captain George 

 Parnsworth to meet this situation, and to reUeve the angler from 

 the exercise of jerking a bait eighteen inches long and weighing 

 over a pound from wave to wave. The method of using the 

 tunaplane is well illustrated in the accompanying Eeyes pictures. 

 When the launch reaches the ground, the angler, who sits in a 

 comfortable chair faciug the stern, takes up his sixteen-oimce, 

 seven-foot rod, and the boatman, who has run the twenty-one 

 thread of strand line through the agate guides, slips the line 

 through a ring in the tunaplane or kite. An abxmdanee of line 

 is pulled through, then it is fastened to a leader, or trace, of piano 

 wire about seven feet long, connected by several swivels ; the 

 hook, a number ten, is baited with a flying fish at least eighteen 

 inches long and weighing possibly a pound and a quarter. This 

 is the natural or most common prey of the tuna, and it is hooked 

 in the jaw, or up through the body and lashed or sewed so that it 

 will tow naturally. This accomplished, the boatman starts his 

 engine, the launch moves ahead and the boatman gradually pays 

 out line and gets his tunaplane up into the air as shown. As it 

 rises, the angler unreels, or slacks away, and soon the machine is 

 forty or fifty feet in air and astern. If the launch is going 

 against the wind, the boatman can now either hold the tunaMte 

 or make the line fast while the angler takes his seat and waits 

 for the strike, the launch running along slow or fast, according 

 to the desire of the skipper. The game is one of trolling or 



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