176 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
([March 4, TiiPS. 
composition had taken place they were rinsed in water 
until the dead animal matter was all removed, this opera- 
tion being repeated several times for a week; then the 
specimens were placed in the hot sun and soon bleached 
a pure white. 
Some of the "heads" I found must have weighed 
several tons, and these it was impossible to remove. Each 
coral had a habit and environment peculiarly its own. 
One which we called rose coral, a Caryophyllia, I found 
only in deep water and got it by diving. Others grew 
among weeds in the shallows, some on the side of the 
channel. But the most remarkable growth was found in 
the hull of an old ship. How long ago this vessel had 
been wrecked no one knew. She was built like a frigate 
of the old class, and evidently had been driven in by a 
southeast hurricane, carried far over into the lagOon and 
dropped in the branch coral plantation. 
At very low tide I could just wade around her. Her 
liuU was a mass of teredo shells, nearly all the wood- 
work having disappeared; but where the hold had been 
was the most luxuriant growth of branch coral I had ever 
seen, calling to mind weeds or plants that grow always 
rank and tall in the shade. The entire hull had doubtless 
been filled with coral, so the old ship's cargo was now 
alive. 
About an eighth of a mile from here, in poling over the 
reef I noted in about ten feet of water a long, narrow 
outline, and diving down found it was a cannon. By suc- 
cessive dives I scraped the sand and mud away and dis- 
closed its entire length, later getting it up. This was ac- 
complished by continuous diving. We remained down as 
long as possible and dug out the sand beneath it, finally 
passing a rope under the gun. A flat scow was then 
brought out, a derrick rigged, and we took ashore an 
old Spanish gun of the seventeenth century bearing the 
arms of Spain still plainly to be seen. How so large a 
gun had gotten into such shallow water was something of 
a mystery, but it was possibly a gun of the old ship which 
the crew may have tried to take ashore and failed. 
To lie on the sloping deck of the old vessel and look, 
unsuspected, into this living cargo was one of the delights 
of the reef, as here could be found nearly every fish of the 
region. Near here the floor of the lagoon in five feet of 
water abounded in conchs, and long worm-like trepangs, 
the holothuria of the Chinese, that are caught and dried 
off the Malay peninsula and shipped to China, where they 
are eaten. To impale one on the grains meant an hour's 
work to take it off, so tough were these creatures, and I 
often wondered what portion, the Chinese eat, and how 
much beating and boiling is required. 
The "tenderfoot" wonders how the so-called Conchs eat 
conch, the animal being as tough as rubber; but the secret 
is to pound them with a club or rock and break the tissue, 
then conch is possible. This is the secret of cooking 
abalone. I knew an epicure who delighted with abalone 
chowder, attempted to boil the shellfish, and at the end 
of two days gave it up. To cook abalone it should be 
placed in a bag and pounded with a stone until it is per- 
fectly soft, then it is a delicacy indeed. 
These are "gulfs enchanted," yet life is not always a 
dream. Yesterday Bob and I went out into deep water 
after kingfish, and we had the sport of kings, trolling 
up and down the long fringing reef that made music in its 
Toar. There had been a storm to the eastward somewhere 
for several days, reaching us as a heavy swell that piled 
in upon the long line of dead coral rock, making this a 
cheveaiix de frise for its full length. 
We went out through the main channel, kept on to the 
south, and had made a good catch when Bob pointed out 
a black spot to the east. It did not look larger than 
a closed hand, but grew under my gaze like a living thing, 
growing wider and higher. It was a black squall and had 
already killed the wind, our sail hanging motionless. 
Bob looked around a moment, then expressed the 
opinion that we were in a hole. It was impossible to 
reach the channel to get into the lagoon, and to cross 
the line of surf looked like the worst hurdle I had ever 
faced on sea or land. Bob quickly decided it; he took 
down the sprit and made a leg-o'-mutton out of our big 
sail, made everything fast in the dinghy, then kicked off 
his shoes — a suggestive move which I followed. 
"There's a chance of our getting over, boss," he said, 
"but I reckon in the wind that's coming we're liable to 
miss it; but if she misses and goes over, ies' keep right 
through the surf. There's so many doggon sharks here 
that's it's onpleasant." 
Briefly, Bob was going to try to jump the mass of foam 
— take the ocean hurdle— and I learned afterward there 
was a small "five-foot channel" pilots used in calm 
weather through which a dinghy could, by a special dis- 
pensation, pass. By this time the air looked as though the 
end of the world had come. The sky was copper colored, 
a deep red, the water a disk of steel, the whole heavens 
presenting a weird and gruesome appearance. I have 
never seen a change come on so rapidly. It was appalling, 
and I pulled off my coat, tied the sleeves around the seat, 
and as Bob took the oar to steer, I grasped the sheet in 
very light swimming costume. Out from the red cloud 
came a long, attenuated finger of pearly cloud, apparently 
not two hundred feet from the water, and beneath it the 
glassy sea was now cut in every direction by currents of 
wind' like gashes of a knife, and far behind I could see 
a wall of white. 
A strange sound, weird, moaning, became apparent, and 
then, as though a gun had been fired, a blast of wind 
struck the rag of a sail and almost lifted the dinghy out 
of the water, and I saw Bob's scheme. He was going to 
take the one chance of riding over the reef before the 
squall. The furies were behind us, and we certainly raced 
with them. I never sailed quite so fast as I did lying on 
my back holding to the slack of the sheet that had a turn 
about the seat. We fairly flew and quickly hit the outer 
swell annd were in the heart of the breakers where the 
full force of the black squall struck us. 
I thought the mast would go, but Bob shouted, / Hang 
on!" I can see him now crouching, red-faced, his gray 
hair flying, his bloodshot eyes gazing at the maelstrom 
ahead, his hairy chest exposed to the storm, his big fists 
gripping the oar, weighing the chances. 
Every moment a great sea came rolling in, and we rose 
•with it; and if being shot out of a gun is any more excit- 
ing, I shall hope to be spared. But as fast as we went, 
the'sea slipped away from us and broke. For a moment 
% $m the bare, iagge4' roeks on si4es, heard the gri;i4' 
ing wall of rocks sawing one upon another, then a great 
mass of foam struck us and in darkness that could be 
ocmpared only to night, and in a pandemonium of sounds, 
we seemed to be crushed out of existence. 
Exactly what Jnappened I never knew, but I found my- 
self standing in the water about waist-deep in the lagoon, 
with the wind tearing the water out of its basin and liter- 
ally hurling it into the air, and not far away the dinghy 
full and Bob trying to hold the painter. We towed her 
further in, wading before the squall, and when it had 
passed, as it did very rapidly, I saw that we had accom- 
plished the impossible — had by sheer good luck taken the 
hurdle of the reef before a virtual hurricane. Bob never 
explained it, but I believe I was never quite so near that 
shipmate Davy Jones before or since. There really is 
something m fisherman's luck, as our. string of kingfish 
was still in the boat where they had been lashed. 
If the kingfish was a fresh-water fish and could be 
taken along some lake or stream, the ouananiche or sal- 
mon would be retired, as no more splendid fighter or 
better general can be found when played with a rod; in- 
deed, half the tropical fishes are known only from report, 
and these are taken on the hand-line, which, being "a 
dead sure thing," does not develop their true game 
qualities. 
On one side of the key the water shoaled very gradually, 
and six hundred feet from shore it was not six feet deep. 
This was the home of the mullet and sardine, and here 
lurked the barracuda — to my mind one of the most gamy 
and intelligent of all fishes. To wade along the shallow 
edge of this lagoon and cast in front of this fish was one 
of the angling joys of the reef. Here the sand, made up 
of ground shell and the limy secretions of a certain sea 
weed, was a very light gray, and the three-foot barracuda 
assumed the tint so exactly that for a long time I dis- 
tinguished them with great difficulty. ■ Poising, almost in- 
visible, they crept like cats upon the stupid mullet, and 
half the pleasure of the fishing was to watch this con- 
tinued warfare and its success. Crouching close to the 
bottom, head on, the fish moved by the most delicate and 
almost imperceptible motion of its fins. A mere auto- 
maton it appeared, only the fierce black eyes telling the 
story. 
I would wade out and often stand for half an hour 
motionless trying to fool one of these barracudas, casting 
my small sardine bait beyond and endeavoring to simulate 
life in it so that the fish would strike. 
Twenty times I would bring the sharp-nosed game to 
the very point. Twenty times I have known it to break, 
back off, after contemptuously nosing it, and then when 
I was in despair at my luck, skill, or whatever you may 
call it, the fish would dash ahead and seize it like a tiger. 
It had the taste and smell of blood ; everything looked red 
to it, and it rose determinedly to the surface and bolted 
the big bait, all the time eyeing me with defiant look. 
Here indeed was a game that was game, and how he 
fought ! How he drew me on and on, reaching for the 
channel, and had I not been in need of barracuda, having 
passed my word to a certain red-faced ex-topgallant mast 
that I would provide just such a barracuda for supper, 
why, he would have escaped in some miraculous manner. 
As it was, I fought him along the shining sands just as 
the sun sank into vermilion clouds and great rays went 
streaming upward ; fought him so far that I could 
almost imagine I heard the syncopated melodies of some 
yellow friends far down the reef on the next key. 
After all, angling is not the killing alone, but what you 
see, feel and hear while you are endeavoring to land the 
game, and this came home every day in and about this 
camp on the reef in what some people would doubtless 
consider the most God-forsaken spot on the globe. Sand 
and water everywhere. 
The island was directly in the line of bird migration, 
and after every gale hundreds of birds would be seen 
driven in, rails and gallinules so tame that I frequently 
caught them — beautiful, radiant-eyed creatures, eyes of 
innocence if expression goes for anything. The bush at 
these times would be filled with warblers, flocks of 
coccoos, bluebirds, and others, and before long they would 
start, having before them a flight of at least three hun- 
dred miles over water. Later in going from here to the 
Pass Christian, two hundred and fifty or three hundred 
miles, many birds joined us in mid-gulf, and a wood- 
pecker (flicker) did me the honor to share my stateroom 
one night. 
Early the next morning I smelt land, and imparting 
this information to my guest, opened the door, when, 
without even a "Gracias, senor," it darted away in the 
direction of that land smell, and followed up the trail out 
of sight. An hour later I saw smoke and then land. 
Many birds are blown off the Texan coast at night and 
make the ocean flight from the Guineas to Louisiana, rest- 
ing at Cuba, the Florida islands, from there making the 
flight across the Gulf. This is to some extent true of the 
tarpon, whose migrations take it from all along the Cen- 
tral American coast up to Florida, Texas, and even to 
Long Island at times — as marked a migration as that of 
the birds. 
Chief said Bob was not much to look at, but he was 
great on broiled barracuda, and when John blew the 
conch, that has a tone like nothing on earth or under it, 
there was my barracuda broiled whole with a hard-boiled 
gull's egg in its mouth in default of lemon that was one 
hundred varas away. John was a wag in his way, and the 
morning after he had been struck on the head by a gull's 
egg he turned to Bob and said, "Bob, if you see any eggs 
fall, jest catch 'em on the fly, will you? I want one to 
settle this yer coffee." At this moment the air was filled 
with terns, altogether the most remarkable sight in the 
way of birds I had ever seen, while the noise was an in- 
describable roar, caused by the fact that Chief was some- 
where crossing the island from the north beach loaded 
with the best parts of a green turtle. 
One of the late Prof. Huxley's best stories is of an 
Irish painter who was observed covering the side of a 
house with a fresh coat of green, applied at a furious 
rate of speed. A passerby, noticing the workman's evi- 
dent haste, inquired the cause of his hurry. 
"Sure," replied the Irishman, glancing uneasily at his 
half-empty bucket, "Oi'm trying to finish me worrk on 
this wall before the paint runs out."— IJarper's Weekly. 
Striped Bass of the Pacific Coast. 
Sacramento, Cal., Feb. 20. — If striped bass increase in 
the same ratio on the California coast during the ensuing 
ten years as they have within the past nine, these waters 
will be so overrun that there will be no room for other 
game fishes. The bass was brought from the east and 
placed in these waters about half a score of years ago. 
Prof. David Starr Jordan predicted that he would obey 
the Biblical inj unction to "be fruitful and multiply," and 
Prof. Jordan is not a false prophet ; neither does he wear 
the beard of a false prophet; neither is he without honor 
save in his own country. To-day there is scarcely a north 
Pacific coast river or estuary that does not teem with 
thousands of this gamy fighter and most toothsome deli- 
cacy. Already he has penetrated far beyond tidewater 
up the Sacramento and other rivers, and residents of this 
pretty little city are already polishing up their tackle for 
the time when the Sacramento recedes to normal and the 
waters clarify. 
Taking striped bass with light tackle is truly exhilarat- 
ing sport, and I hope to see the time when no Pacific 
coast angler will go forth with an outfit which affords 
this graceful fighter no chance whatever once he is 
hooked. Superficially it looks to the writer as though 
the average troller was bent on making the sport a "sure 
thing" — as though he were reducing it to the same "sys- 
tem" with which he relentlessly pursues "business" in 
order to insure success. For some take away that ele- 
ment of uncertainty which ought to characterize the play- 
ing of a gamy antagonist, and all zest is gone. Anchor 
a stout hook in the maw of a poor bass, attach an un- 
breakable line to a sufficiently capable derrick, and there 
is no doubt about the result. Substitute for these condi- 
tions a light rod whose factor of safety is limited save in 
careful hands, and other similar conditions, and a lover of 
the sport has something to^ whet his zest. 
A dozen Or more years ago it was my almost weekly 
pleasure, in company with Mr. George Moulton, Mr. 
Timothy Flynn, Mr. Jonathan Steele, or other of that 
coterie of rare sportsmen, to hie us to the roaring waters 
of Hell Gate and put in a day of unexcelled pleasure 
in pursuit of the gamy striped bass who eked his living, 
and something more, from these churning waters, luring 
him to battle from off Hog's Back, where currents leap 
and crash like a millrace, or from the silent and great 
depths of The Willows, or athwart the upper end of for- 
bidding old Blackwell. Such excursions were sure- 
enough all-day aft'airs, beginning at 4 A. M. and extending 
far into the night, for our bass is a night feeder, and 
often can be taken only with the aid of moonlight. Rare, 
indeed, was the sport one sometimes enjoyed when gamy 
old silversides was out after the juicy white worm. On 
one such occasion Mr. Moulton (with my assistance) 
captured upward of 100 pounds of bass, ranging from 
three to twelve pounds weight. And on many another 
occasion we trolled, and trolled, and trolled again, till 
both varieties of bait — canned and bottled— were ex- 
hausted, and the cusps of the new moon — clean and bright 
as a hound's "tushes"— shone high in the starry zenith, 
yet we fared home without so much as a single scale. 
Thanks to Mr. Rockefeller's "business enterprise," so 
much Standard oil came to mingle with the waters of this 
channel that the bass finally betook themselves to other 
feeding grounds, and the anglers of New York lost one of 
their best outing places. Later someone discovered fine 
bass fishing on the Susquehanna, where the Baltimore 
and Ohio and Pennsylvania railroads cross, and we 
turned to that far-away region for sport. 
For the "real thing" in bass fishing, however, one must 
try these western waters. I have no particular place to 
recommend ; almost any place will do. The average size 
of the California striped bass is seven pounds — so I am 
informed on good authority — and I can readily belieye the 
statement from the specimens I have landed myself and 
seen in such profusion in the market places. Some have 
been taken as large as forty pounds. The law limits the 
size to three pounds; it is open season the year round. 
Formerly it was legal to take one-pounders, and june was 
the only close season. In eastern waters trolling \s the 
really killing method. Trolling is the favorite method 
here, also, though still-fishing is pursued with consider- 
able success. The details of the eastern and western 
methods differ materially. The striped bass seems to have 
become a much less dainty feeder since his transplanta- 
tion to these waters. Perhaps as he grows wiser and 
warier he will require more tempting bait to take him. 
Imagine, if you can, taking a right-minded bass in Hell 
Gate with a big "gob" of clam stuck on a hook so 
obviously that it would not fool a cross-eyed crab. 
Understand, I do not mean to say it could not have been 
done; perhaps it has been done, but I never knew of it. 
A fair type of the tackle used by the eastern bass fisher 
of my acquaintance consisted of _ a four or six-ounce 
trout rod, a Leonard or other reliable make, preferably 
8 or 8^/2 feet long, a double action reel carrying 150 feet 
of light line, and the best twisted gut leader to 'fend 
against the serrated rocks encountered so frequently. 
Two three-foot leaders were preferable. Leader No. i 
we attached to the line with a brass swivel. The second 
leader was attached in like manner to the first, and to the 
end of this by means of swivel was attached a small spin- 
ner of the propeller-screw type. The blades of this spin- 
ner were kept brightly polished in order to attract from a 
distance. To the swiveled end of this spinner was at- 
tached the hook, preferably a 4/0 or 5/0 of some of the 
popular hand-forged patterns. We used the longest snell 
obtainable — three or four strands twisted and made 
specially to order, though this was perhaps_ unnecessary. 
White worms were the bait par excellence ; it was a mat- 
ter of utmost importance to secure in advance an 
abundance of big juicy fellows, 12 to 15 inches long, de- 
livered in sea moss fresh from the sands the day before. 
Two or three worms were required for a single bait; 
they were threaded right through the body from head 
to tail, then shoved up the hook to the loop of the snell. 
Rather expensive bait this, for if a bass struck he gen- 
erally "skmned the hook good and plenty." The hook 
was covered clean down to the very point, not a particle 
of the snell showed— only the silver spinner and the 
dangly, squirmy moutjiful of bait. A few shavings of thin 
lead rolled round the end of the line served to hold the 
battery bgi^eatft the swift current. Thus equipped, Dail: 
