THE GAME PISHES OF THE WOELD 



bxtffalo ; and the leaping tuna of one hundred and eighty or two 

 hundred pounds is not only in this class, but ahead of them, so 

 far as the physical exertion is concerned in taking them. I have 

 an acquaintance who wears what he calls his ' three-thousand 

 dollar button.' It is the blue button of the Tuna Club given 

 members who take a one-hundred-pound tuna. Its real value 

 was not over two or three dollars, but it really cost him three 

 thousand dollars. Another angler has, according to his own 

 estimate, spent ten thousand dollars and has not landed a oue- 

 hundred-pounder yet. Izabu is not with him. Others have 

 taken one or two tunas on the first trial. If the tuna could be 

 taken at any time and always found when wanted, it would be 

 no honour to catch one. It is the uncertainty, the fickleness, 

 the cleverness in not biting, that places trout, sahnon and other 

 great game fish in the front rank. It is nothing for some men to 

 kUl a few salmon that cost them over one thousand dollars for a 

 few a year, and so it is with the leaping tuna. The cleverest 

 angler knows nothing about the tuna. He knows that it is due 

 in June and that it may disappear some time in August, or it 

 may stay until October in some years. It will carry off everything 

 — ^Unes, tackle, towing boats ; playing men almost to their 

 death in bouts from sixteen to twenty hours ; setting men with 

 red blood in their veins wild — ^to suddenly disappear for a year, 

 becoming coy for several years, to come in some day imheralded 

 out of the unknown, to play havoc with patient anglers. It is 

 this uncertainty, this impossibleness, that fascinates anglers, 

 and always will, which brings them year after year from England 

 and France and almost every European country. Hence, 

 when xmdergoing such inroads on purse and patience, it would 

 seem that the ' tunakite or plane,' to imitate the leap of the 

 stricken flying fish, should not be objected to, nor shall I per- 

 sonally object some day to see an airship come along, lift a launch 

 and shoot up into the air for a bird's-eye view of the game. It is 

 well in these days not to be surprised at anything, and to cultivate 

 the so-called stoicism of the American Indian. 

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