HIGH HOOK AT AVALON 
What it Means to Be on Hand, with Skill and a Good Boatman, 
When a Sea Anglers’ ‘‘Beat’? Occurs — 
BY F. L. HARDING 
(Santa Catalina Island Tuna Club, California 
HE sun-painted ochre 
and tan of the ribbed 
and fcafioned hillsides 
«| which form the _half- 
“v/ moon harbor of Avalon, 
on Santa Catalina Is- 
land, off the balmy 
bs beaches of southern Cal- 
ifornia, were studded with emerald and 
gray-olive clumps of chaparral and scrub- 
oak. To the anglers, floating buoyantly 
upon the aquamarine disc of the bay—an 
exultant thrill, a modulated cry of the joy 
of living—the fresh note of the valley quail 
floated faintly down from the encompassing 
arena-walls of buff hillocks. It spoke of 
perennial youth, of spring, of the glad life 
of the wild folk and stirred the pulse un- 
consciously. 
Jarring harshly with this sweet vocal 
expression of the Maytide, was the stir 
of the ‘“Hermosa’s’’ departure, a jumbled 
medley of creaking pier-posts, clanking 
chains and Mexican ejaculations of the 
stevedores. Turning cautiously, she sailed 
to the northeast, just as the caravels of 
Cabrillo had done on that very spot four 
centuries before. Having duly performed 
a sacred rite of the locality, one not to be 
lightly violated—that of ‘watching the 
steamer leave’—the entire population 
leisurely dispersed from the beach to take 
up the business of the afternoon, it being 
in the neighborhood of three o’clock. 
The rippling, sun-reflecting water proved 
too enticing for a vigorous pair of Yankee 
youths, and they shouted to a boatman who 
was cleaning up his twenty-foot gasoline 
launch to get his rigs ready and they would 
come aboard to try a.turn for the yellow- 
tail. 
The sky stretched away in immaculate 

turquoise to the silver-streaked and mounted 
Sierra on the continent. No blur nor haze 
obscured the iridescence of the air; they 
loomed distinct, a crumpled, green-gold 
and bronze barrier. The breeze threw in 
one’s face the tang of salt, the zest born 
of the combing breaker. 
Dropping into the uncovered Lianch 
from the moss-green steps of the landing, 
the anglers rigged up the lighter tackle for 
yellowtail, laying aside for the occasion 
the weightier tuna outfits. The 4-horse- 
power engine was called upon only to take 
them a few hundred feet to an exquisite 
little bend, a rounded level beach gradually 
sloping through purely transparent waters. 
Its white continuation, subsurface, could 
be strangely seen through the shimmering 
green from quite a distance off the sands. 
This idyllic nook, nestling at the base of 
the sheltering rock-heights, was felicitously 
called ‘‘Lover’s Cove.” Its steady patron- 
age by the amorous ones of Avalon justified 
the name. 
Drifting in the currentless pool of the 
harbor was to be the plan of campaign, the 
lure a live sardine somewhat longer than 
one’s finger, secured by the vexatious 
operation termed ‘‘snagging.” Usually, the 
little fellows are capricious and nimbly 
evade the upward jerk of the chain of three 
snag-hooks*; though it seems to traverse 
a solid bed of them, none are impaled. 
Again, one or two are nipped by the rushing 
points and flicker upward, broadside on, 
little glittering strips of silver. These are 
unceremoniously popped into a_ bucket, 
wherein the water is changed frequently, 
keeping them alive, if not badly cut, for a 
reserve supply. 
This trying task fell to “Cap,” the 
~#A sk shank with three hooks turned out in different directions. 

