Oi.-r. 3, iBgS-] 
It seemed almost homicide to take these intelligent wig- 
waggers for bait. They were courageous too, and fought 
viciously with claws when a part of the wave was 
cornered against the sea Avail. It makes me tremble even 
now to think what might have happened if they had been 
as large as horses. But they were not- , 
There was sport in sitting under piers, perhaps for 
hours, with a can of fiddlers, dropping hooks with 
mechanical toss near piles, and striking an occasional 
fish that aroused one from lethargy. If minnows bit we 
ined not to lose our tempers; if large fish, we tried not 
to lose our heads. When we found a good place, we 
chained the boat there with an extra hitch. A number of 
large sheepshead flopping about the boat, their plump 
bodies clothed in convict colors, perhaps for the hooks 
they had stolen, made a handsome display. Their meat, 
too, when cooked, was white and delicious. But this 
was only a fortunate fact, as we were there for the 
sport, and often wished that more of them were needed 
for a meal. 
White drum were almost the only other variety of 
large fish we saw around the piers. Great schools of 
them, generally on afternoons, often swam by, feeding 
with heads down and tails whirling the surface, a sight 
to behold. Some of them must have weighed over 
40lbs. We tried often to catch these from the pavilion 
overhead, and lost hooks and line for our trouble. They 
were shy about biting. The best way to get a bite was 
to throw in a handful of fiddlers with our cast. Even 
then they frequently ejected bait after taking it. If one 
was hooked the reel screeched, became silent, screeched 
again, confusing eye and ear with its action, till finally 
a plunge against slack broke the line. The large ones 
were not for us; they were for boy r s with spears cTbt in 
boats, which caught a number of 30-pounders. The drum 
owe me for hundreds of feet of line, to which they are 
welcome. I hope the acquaintance whose outfit I used 
feels the same way about the matter. 
We began after awhile to look on these large fish with 
superstition. The ease with which they broke our lines 
was uncanny. Women say that they are not afraid of 
mice, but of the idea, whatever that means. John and I 
were victims of an idea. John nearly overcame this 
weakness about drum before leaving. A larger fish 
frightened him. He was alone, trying for sheepshead 
under a pier, when a tarpon, by his first account a 6- 
footer, by later ones much larger, dove at a pile near, and 
whirling the surface of the water with its tail, munched 
the barnacles on bottom. My chum spoke scarcely 
above a whisper in describing the way the line was then 
reeled in. While in a chained boat among piles he did 
not care to hook a large tarpon. 
We went out on the flats at low tide to catch stone 
crabs when we tired of fish diet. These hard shells, with 
rending claws, live down holes from which they are 
hooked with long pokers. After being robbed of their 
claws they are usually released to grow new ones, a fact 
we were ignorant of at the time. But we learned how to 
catch them. We raked each hole carefully at first. Then 
we found if one of us probed with a rapid piston-like mo- 
tion, and the other swept the entrance of the hole with 
his poker, going at innumerable strokes to the instant, 
we shot r a crab some yards across mud and grass to a 
spot suitable for capture. Our half-bushel baskets were 
quickly filled, and were then fields of carnage, such as 
one rarely sees, in which cast-iron shells shattered as if 
dried leaves, and "amputated claws flew in every direc- 
tion. The crabs, spuming foam from their mouths, in- 
sane in their unrighteous rage, w r ere devils incarnate. 
,And some hunters search the holes with hands! 
I went out to Little Pass when the weather moderated 
in August. The point of the key south of the pass de- 
flects the current rushing through and causes a still, deep 
pool, in which large fish of various kinds feed on small 
fry thrown there by the running tide. Groupers, pom- 
pano, blackbill, trout, sheepshead and many other 
varieties are caught from this eddy. I took from it sev- 
eral rovalion or large salt-water pike and skip jacks, that 
were in the air half the time while I played them. Sand- 
diggers, a variety of minnows marked with rings, made 
the best bait. They were easy to catch, either with meat 
on a fine hook, or with a seine, in the shoals about the 
pass. These minnows come about in schools when the 
mud is stirred. 
A canvas canoe, built after the Field plan, published try 
Forest and Stream, was just the craft for these trips 
to the point. It would make the trip with a fair wind 
in twenty minutes. Three boys I met out there caught 
all the bait Ave needed, and I carried the bucket. Some- 
times we went down the beach half a mile before we 
caught enough, and ran back with the boys yelling, sand 
and shells Hying, hats blowing off — races in which I al- 
Avays lost. 
We met out there one morning Avhen the chickens in 
town Avere croAving the sleep out of their eyes. The 
water was cold, the sand Avas ice, and the breeze a chilly 
bath. The boys had been unusually lucky a feAV days 
previous, and had left all except their redfish at the 
point for the hot sun, so the air was fragrant for awhile. 
Cleaning house purified it, but brought the sharks. Our 
surroundings, with the exception of the bad atmosphere 
at first, Avere pleasing. Immense skaits 4 and 5ft. across 
leaped from the water at times and hit again with cannon 
reports that startled Avith their suddenness. Masses 
of screaming gulls and pelicans covered the exposed sand 
fiats just inside the pass, and rose into the air every 
feAV minutes, for no apparent cause, with noisy flutter- 
ing. Tarpon shining like silver leaped from the bay, 
many of them close in, and played around half-sub- 
merged. Herds of porpoises came through the pass 
with the tide. Monster sharks 10 and 12ft. long went by 
in the clear water near shore. One of the boys plunged 
in to untangle a line from a snag a few minutes after a 
school of these large felloAvs passed, and another boy 
had his line snapped later as if web. About 9 o'clock 
the redfish began to bite. 
The bovs caught fish then for two hours. Their 
hooks fell exactly where large redfish waited with mouths 
open. Each of my companions danced on the tips of his 
ten small toes while hauling in these beauties, and 
met them in water knee deep. The first fish hooked 
each time Avas used to toll others near shore, sometimes 
where the school was seen, and tAVO more fish were 
caught bv trolling the other lines behind the first one. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The three lines plunked out then in quick cadence, to be 
hauled in almost immediately as before. The red beau- 
ties, as <they came in, swayed and shone a sight to be-r 
hold. For some reason my line caught nothing — a 
source of amusement to the others only. The shoals 
were soon alive with their tethered fish, each of the half 
a dozen bunches too heavy for a boy to carry. My com- 
panions left when they had caught more than 20olbs. 
They would leave me a few to practice with. I might 
catch one in time if I stayed by my work. They Avould 
take the "hoodoo" off. 
I set to Avork then with the bait they left. Luck 
changed at once. Fish at last found my bait. One after 
another they came ashore, such fine ones, to be met in 
shallow water and carried out Avith hands that trembled. 
They looked so much handsomer as they ayed and 
fought on a line that Avas mine. There wee d^lbs. of 
them before the boys reached town, the largest a high- 
ly-colored Q-pounder that was received by me with extra 
ceremony. When I arrived home about midday this 
large one was selected for baking, and serving afterward 
with draAvn butter, and slice egg and parsley over it. 
We had a cook whose art Avas witchcraft, and she did 
much for that beauty. And I did much for him afterward 
Avhen I seasoned delicious morsels of him here and there 
with Worcester sauce, and lingered loath to leave such 
food Avhile a scrap remained. There were many such 
days during the summer, and many such dinners. 
H. R. Stetofr. 
The Tuna's Supreme Place, 
New York, Nov. 27. — Editor Forest and Stream: In 
your issue of Nov. 26, page 429, I find in an article, 
"Tuna vs. Bass," that my friend Prof. C. F. Holder has 
been" good enough to defer to my opinion as to the 
merits of these two extraordinary fish in the following 
words: 
"The black sea bass (Stercolepis gigas) for half an 
hour or twenty minutes is perhaps the equal of. the 
tuna, but if he is fought vigorously for that time he is 
soon Avorn out; in a Avord, he has in no sense the 
staying or "fighting qualities or the strength of the tuna, 
in which expression I think Mr. Beard, yvhp took the 
first 20olb. black sea bass, will bear me out." 
Now, feeling duly honored by being thus specifically 
designated by so able an angler, naturalist and author 
as Prof. Holder, I beg to make the following remark or 
two: 
In the first place I thank Prof. Holder for the com- 
pliment he pays me. Then to be brief, I agree with 
him. I consider that he is entirely right in his dictum. 
I may be pardoned too, I hope, if I say in support of 
my opinion that I know thoroughly Avhat constitutes a 
game fish. Aside from quite extensive journeying in the 
delightful province of angling literature. I may lay claim 
to considerable actual practical experience Avith rod and 
reel. Not to mention years of angling elseAvhere, I have 
paid two visits to that Mecca of all good anglers, Santa 
Catalina Island, Avhere the superb game fish and the 
unequaled fishing cause the unaccustomed Eastern angler 
astonishment, wonder and admiration. I knoAV the fish- 
ing there as thoroughly probably as any man in the 
East to-day, and here at the risk of being accused of 
vaunting my oavii exploits I might say that I have killed 
Avith rod and reel at Catalina almost 7,ooolbs. of fish; 
that my best catch of yelloAV-tail {Sereola dorsalis), 
twenty fish, 3681bs., one. day, one rod, is still the Island 
record; and that the 200lb. jewfish Prof. Holder refers 
to was the Pacific Coast record for something like tAvo 
years. 
All this to prove that I know something about game- 
fish, and what good fishing really is. And yet in the 
face of all that, I count it as nothing alongside of Prof. 
Holder's single fish, the 1831b. tuna. As I said once 
before in Forest and Stream, that Avas an angling feat 
to be proud of. When I learned that such a fish had 
fallen to my friend's rod I was not only pleased, but I 
considered that, although my very game 2oolb. jewfish 
had probably outweighed his tuna by more than 2olbs., 
my fish was not to be mentioned in the same mouth 
with his on the score of gameness. In other words, I was 
ready to acknowledge from that hour that my record 
was hardly worth speaking of further, so vastly greater 
as a fighter do I consider the tuna Avhen compared with 
his sable rival. I used a rather light rod at Catalina. 
It was built for killing striped bass, and would pull, dead 
weight, not over 4^4lbs. At that tension it was bent 
as much as I dared to bend it, and yet with this rod, by 
constantly keeping a good arc on him and compelling 
him to "fight or come in," I have frequently taken a 
251b. yellow-tail in not over nine minutes, Harry Elms, 
my boatman; has often timed me in fighting these game 
fellows, whose average is about i81bs., and I think I 
am right in saying that I averaged about seven minutes 
of them day in and day out. This may mean nothing 
to one who does not know the fish, and yet I may say 
that frequently I have seen a 20-pounder give battle 
royal to and well nigh exhaust his would-be captor dur- 
ing a struggle of tAventy to thirty minutes, simply because 
the angler did not knoAV how to "force the fighting." 
I used this same rod on my jewfish, of which I took 
a number. I Avould have caught more, only I hated to do 
so, for I could make no use of the brave felloAvs after 
they had been brought in and admired. This almost 
destroyed the sport of catching them for me. I found 
the jewfish with this light tackle a dogged, stubborn and 
extremely strong fighter. Had I used a rod such as 
most men used at Catalina, a noAv tuna rod, which Avas 
capable of pulling at least 12 to i5lbs. of dead weight, 
I could have killed all my fish Avithin an hour readily. 
As it was, tAvo of them Avent over three hours of steady 
give and take before they were utterly fought to a finish 
as I Avanted them to be. My largest fish, the 200- 
pounder, was taken by lantern light, in the midst of a 
hard gale 'of wind, on a 15-thread line, after having 
towed the boat with three of us in it tor nearly four 
miles, and during three hours and thirty-five minutes 
of very hard fighting. 
To sum the whole matter up in a few words, I con- 
sider the black sea bass or jeAvfish as capable of putting 
up a A'ery interesting and prolonged fight when taken 
with light tackle, such as I used, He will give an angler, 
4 53 
and a good angler too, all the Avork he wants under suclt 
circumstances. Nevertheless he is as nothing when 
compared with the magnificent tuna. That fish is a 
wonder. Pie has unequaled speed and strength, un- 
rivaled pluck and cunning, but above all else and beyond 
all other fish that the angler knows of to-day he is 
remarkable for his tireless energy, Avhich renders him 
as well the terrible Nemesis of the swallow-SAvift flying 
fish as what I have long maintained him to be, the 
"greatest game fish in the world." 
Consequently, with nil due deference, to Mr. F. V. 
Rider, honorable secretary of the well-known California 
Tuna Club, Avhose very remarkable performance in catch- 
ing a 3271b. Jewfish on a 21-thread line is Avell Avorthy ni 
the praise and attention of anglers, I must confess that I 
do not value his achievement as I do that of the honor- 
able president of the club. Mr. Rider is outclassed just 
as certainly as 1 myself was outclassed under like cir- 
cumstances. To my mind the case does not admit of a 
moment's hesitation. Prof. 11 older is still unquestionably 
high heiok of the club, if not of the world as well. 
StUART-MeNTETH BE.AkO. 
"Red Water" in Narragansett Bay. 
The sudden and often unexplained epidemics which 
occasionally destroy fishes by Avholtsale are of great in- 
terest to the angler, and the following description of such 
an occurrence on the Ncav England coast last summer 
and autumn, contributed by Mr. A. D. Mead to Science, 
is Avorth bringing to the notice of all who devote any at- 
tention to fishes. Mr. Mead says: 
"During the last two months the inhabitants of Rhode 
Island Avitnessed the following remarkable phenomenon. 
The water of a considerable portion of the bay became 
thick and red, emitting an odor almost intolerable to 
those living near by. The situation became alarming 
when, on Sept. 9 and xo, thousands of dead fish, crabs 
and shrimp were found strewn along the shores or 
even piled up in AvindroAVS. 
"At the request of the Rhode Island Commission of 
Island Fisheries, an investigation was made to determine 
the cause and extent of the unusual color of the water 
and of the great mortality of the fish. The results of 
this investigation are briefly as folloAVS: 
"During the last of August, throughout September 
and a part of October streaks of red or 'chocolate' water 
were observed from near Quonset Point and Prudence 
Island, north to Providence, and on the flood tide up the 
Seekonk River, nearly to Pawtucket, a range of about 
fifteen miles. In other parts of the bay, as far as could 
be learned, the phenomenon had not been observed. 
On Sept. 8 and 9 the Avater became extremely red and 
thick in various localities from East Greeirwich to Provi 
dence, and the peculiar behavior of the marine animals 
attracted much attention. Myriads of shrimp and blue 
crabs, and vast numbers of eels, menhaden, tautog and 
flatfish came up to the surface and to the edge of the 
shore, as though struggling to get out of the noxious 
Avater. Indeed, the shrimp and crabs Avere observed 
actually to climb' out of the water upon stakes and buoys 
and even upon the iron cylinders Avhich support on'e of 
the bridges and which must have been very hot in the 
bright sun. In seA'eral instances, on these two days, 
hundreds of blue crabs Avere caught by a single individ 
ual in a few minutes' time, at the mouth of the Seekonk. 
"On the following day, Sept. 10. and -for several days 
afterward, hardly a live crab or shrimp could be found. 
Along the shores, however, in the same vicinity, cart- 
loads of dead shrimp Avere piled up in windroAVs, and 
among them Avere strewn great numbers of crabs and 
fish of A r arious kinds, especially menhaden and eels. 
This singular behavior and alarming mortality of marine 
animals AA'as reported from nearly every station at Avhich 
the red water occurred, and from no other station, W-htch 
indicates that the two phenomena are related as' cause and 
effect. 
'Tt Avas commonly believed that dye-stuffs or other 
refuse emptied into the rivers at the upper part of the 
bay gave to the water its color and unpleasant odor, but 
microscopic examination showed that the water Avas 
swarming with minute organisms, a species of Peridinium. 
The Peridiniiim is reddish broAvn in color, and occurred 
in such excessive abundance that it gave to the Avater its 
peculiar color and odor, besides making it so opaque 
that one could hardly see a white shell 6in. below the 
surface. 
"With regard to the systematic position of this organ- 
ism there is a difference of opinion. It is, in fact, ranked 
with the animals by some authors, and with the plants 
by others. I have not yet been able to determine tin- 
species of our Peridinium. * * * 
"After Sept. 9 and 10, Avhen the great mortality of fish 
occurred, the Peridinium became, for a feAV days, less 
abundant, and then increased again until the 23d. There 
was a heavy rain on the 23d, and on the following day 
the water was comparatively clear. Since this date it 
has been more or less in evidence up to the day of 
Avriting (Oct. 7). On Sept. 21 the number of Peridinium 
per cubic centimeter in the Seekonk River Avas estimated 
at 5,880. This was enough to give the water a very 
noticeable red color. Nevertheless the marine animals 
appear not to have been seriously affected since Sept. 10 
or 11, though the approach of a streak of red water 
has, in some instances, interrupted good fishing. 
"In the Seekonk River the shrimp and crabs gradually 
returned, and in about three Aveeks after the sudden mor- 
tality were nearly as numerous as before, though the 
water Avas at times distinctly colored. On the 23d some 
shrimp, oysters and small fish (Fundulus) were kept in 
the Avater Avhere the Peridinium Avere the thickest, and . 
suffered no apparent injury. In consideration of these 
facts, it has been doubted Avhether the Peridinium was. 
the immediate cause of the peculiar behavior and death 
of the fish Avhich occurred on Sept. 9 and 10, especially 
as the Aveather had been phenomenally hot for seA'eral 
weeks previous to that date. I believe, however, that the 
Pcridiniuiii was the cause of the trouble, and not the hot 
weather, nor manufacturers' Avaste, for the folloAving 
reasons : 
"On the two or three days in which the mortality took 
place the water was extremely red, 
