THE GAME FISHES OF THE WORLD 



and utter change has been brought about at this greatest of the 

 "world's angling centres. There is not a boatman at Avalon who 

 "will provide a patron with a hand-line. Such an appliance is not 

 -carried, and you must fish according to the fair and eminently 

 just rules of the Club or take a rowboat and row yourself. The 

 result is that the outfit of the men, the fine rods and reels, the 

 sportsmanlike lines, appeal to the novice and he tries for the 

 buttons or the various prizes, valued at several thousand dollars, 

 offered by the Club in all classes of angling. The result has 

 been, the Club has stopped the waste, inculcated a fine sports- 

 manlike feeling, and caused the adoption of a high standard, 

 that has been copied by aUied clubs and associations aU over 

 the country. The club considers this a step toward the con- 

 summation of the hoped-for conservation of the sea fishes, a 

 desideratum devoutedly needed aU over America. I trust the 

 reader will pardon this digression, which will suggest that the 

 anglers of America and England have the honour of the sport at 

 heart, and that a killing is not the only object in view. 



In fishing for yellowtail it is usual to use either a 6/° or 

 10/° hook when the fish run to but twenty-five pounds, and 

 sardine bait with a short-swivelled piano-wire leader. If the 

 fish are running up to forty pounds, as they frequently do at 

 San -Clemente, where Mr. Simpson took his sixty and one-half 

 pound fish, a larger hook is used, of the O'Shaughnessey type, 

 and the bait is a flying fish, which is about eighteen inches long, 

 weighing from a pound to a pound and a half. The line is 

 doubled for six or eight feet near the wire leader or trace. The 

 fish is gaffed, never netted, the gaff handle beiag five or eight 

 feet long and often fastened to the launch with a rope. 



Such a bait is paid out from the multiplying reel, which holds 

 six hundred feet of Une, until the eighty or one hundred feet is out ; 

 then the launch moves slowly alongshore, at times not one hundred 

 feet from it, following the line of kelp with which the islands here 

 are surrounded. The ground is in the lee, and while twenty or 

 forty miles offshore, the water is smooth as an inland lake, pro- 

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