WHITE SEA BASS AND WEAKFISH 



As I trolled a flying fish by the spot I had a strike. I saw the 

 boiling water at the surface, the swirl, and sprang to my feet 

 and watched the subsequent proceeding. The bass had shot 

 up from below and seized the fish just forward of the tail. It 

 lay on the surface innocent of the hook or me, and worked the 

 bait about as a snake will a frog, trying to point it down its 

 throat head-first, Eully five minutes was required in this 

 operation. Meanwhile I stood ready and when the bait dis- 

 appeared and the bass started ahead, I reeled in the slack of 

 my line and struck, the little line humming in the sunshine like 

 the string of a lute. 



Back came a violent blow as the bass shot ahead, bearing 

 off hard, tearing the line from the reel to the brazen song of the 

 click. Twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred feet gone before I 

 could stop the fish, and then it was but to change its direction, 

 I was standing, resting the butt ia my leather belt, hence could 

 watch the play which was almost entirely on the surface. Several 

 times this fine fish completely circled the boat, and it was only 

 after a spirited contest of half an hour that I began to gain and 

 brought it alongside, to see it rush away one hundred feet or 

 more at sight of the gaff, and involve me again in the toils. 

 No fish could have made a finer fight, nor a more gallant play 

 for its life. When at last it came surging along the quarter on 

 short Hne, and I led it into the sphere of action of the gaffer, 

 who gaffed it cleverly directly under the mouth, held it for a 

 moment while it tossed the spray over the boat, I confess that 

 my triumph was tempered by more than a tinge of remorse. 



' The pleasantest angling is to see the fish 

 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream 

 And greedily devour the treacherous bait.' 



One cannot but regret that so gallant a fighter could not have 

 escaped ; at least it had every chance, a thread of a line, 

 that used for five-pound black bass in the streams of Canada. 



The white sea bass often enter the Bay of Avalon and lie 



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