The Log of a Sea Angler. 
Thiie Sea Bass — A Brace of F»fty Pounders — Tfie Leap- 
ing Shark — Digging Among the Ancients, 
BY CHAS. F. HOLDER. 
San Nicholas was a purple blur on the horizon; we 
ad run out of the wind and were rising Santa Barbara 
ock to the east under power when the yacht ran into a 
lost remarkable sea. It was a dead calm, and the sea, 
n intense blue, looked as though it had been oiled, so 
lean was the surface, then the yacht rose on a heavy 
round swell that seemed to come from nowhere, and a 
loment later we were riding the kind of swells I read 
bout as a boy, seen rounding the horn by the famous 
avigator of the day. If I am not mistaken I have seen 
■ater over the topsailyard of a full-rigged Ship when she 
itched in a certain hurricane we were riding out, yet 
lese waves did not impress me as did the big, smooth 
allers that came silently along, lifting us like a chip, 
ren sliding away to make way for another. If one of 
lose seas had broken it would have been a sad day for 
s ; but they did not break, and for twenty minutes we 
:eamed over them, and to see one or two at regular dis- 
inces coming up behind was appalling. We ran out of 
lem as we passed the rock of Santa Barbara, twenty-five 
lies from Santa Catalina, and were soon on a smooth sea 
-a sea of turquoise. I believe if anyone should take the 
ouble to compare articles or chapters which I have writ- 
:n on the color of the ocean and its beauties it will be 
)und that each one is the most beautiful, each possesses 
16- most intense blue. This is an amiable weakness and 
pplies to fishing. I often find that the last fish is the 
atniest, puts up the best fight, and is the finest 'fish in 
le world. I once wrote an article on angling, and when 
[gave it a final reading I found I had given each separate 
5h the credit for being the hardest fighter; and I really 
lotight SO' at the time. I believe all enthusiastic anglers 
ive a failing of this kind; it is only another kind of 
ptimism and the indulgence does no harm. 
This leads rne to say that in these southern California 
•aters the white sea bass is the game of game. If you 
O' not know him picture in your mind’s eye a plump, well 
mditioned weakfish ; lengthen him out to five feet, ex- 
and him_ to the proportions that are suggestive of 50 
ounds, give him the general appearance of a salmon but 
■ith a pinkish gray back, a silvery white belly, throw in 
Dme peacock blue about the head in flashes, patches and 
flntillations ; impart to this fish a certain gravity and 
ignity that will make five or six hundred come slowly 
|long, divide at the boat so that you can almost hit them 
nth an oar, and you have the fish that I saw in Cabrillo 
larbor as we dropped anchor. 
There was a large school of sardines there and the 
ass were lying partly under them. Taking the dinghy I 
/as presently in their midst. I rigged a light yellow-tail 
od, using a No. 16 line, with a 7-0 hook, and cast into 
He school. As the line sank and disappeared I jerked it, 
•nd impaled a sardine that at once became -a very lively 
ajt. There was not much time to discuss the cruelty of 
lis method of baiting a hook, nor did the sardine suffer 
mg; the_ line straightened out, the reel sang loudly, 
e-e-e-e high and low, now a. baccarole, now a ragadoon, 
jr.nd Johnny Daly, the sharker, who was my bait man, 
|/hirled the boat around to place me face to the fish that 
i/^s off somewhere in the south seas reeling off my line. 
I “Dy’e hear that music?” whispered Johnny behind my 
'^ar. “By the powers, it’s the smartest thing; list!” 
Ze-e-e I Ze-e-e-e ! sang the reel, and as I played on the 
pther pad brake it made the kind of music that starts 
he blood and sends it whirling through the veins. 
By this time T had stopped the fish, and Johnny de- 
lared that it had three hundred feet, and it was towing 
vs slowly by the thread straight out into the little bay 
vith its white patches of chalk cliffs, its grim head's of 
tone to the north, its white island, and always the ten- 
ler, splendid blue of the ocean over which on the distant 
dge of the world the white caps of the Sierras were 
ringed against the sky. 
Perhaps you and I do not fish alike. I belonged to the 
Daly school of angling, which I cannot exactly explain; 
>ut the philosophy of it was that Johnny Daly, to quote 
I iim literally, “did not care a tinker’s dam whether he 
ver caught a fish or not.” 
“It isn’t _ for fish .that ye go a-fishin’,” said Johnny. 
'Divil a bit. It’s the hopin’, the anticipatin’, the ixpicta- 
in. the longin’ and the waitin’. Sure if ye had a fish on 
.11 the time ye’d want to be paid, and there’s where 
nglin’ becomes fishin’.” 
You can twist this Daly philosophy around to suit all 
finds of situations, and I believe Daly and I must have 
>een born under the same crab, as fishing or the catch 
las- always been but a single factor at the game, and in 
his splendid sea there is always something to catch The 
The water is the blue you know so w^ell, and in it float 
housands of gems of the sea. There is a little crab-like 
:reature so like_ a ,gem that some naturalist has named it 
-appharina; it is blue, red, yellow, gold and every pos- 
lible color, as though some one had sprinkled the ocean 
|vith a handful of rubies, diamonds, emeralds and 
slj^apphires, and they were drifting wfith the tide. Then 
Ihere are fairy-like forms of jellies never seen in the 
'^East, the blazing pyrosoma—a column of light at night, 
li phantom by day, and the line cuts into a veritable comet', 
|ir the dazzling physophora darts away — a radiant jellyfish 
fivith the gift of rapid motion. , 
i That graceful form floating on the. surface is the argo- 
|:iaut, and in the kelp bed hard by there are a score of 
■‘■formsy-fishes, crabs and others — that, mimic their sur- 
roundings and evade the sharpest-eyed enemy. 
i But all this time the fish is towing the boat, and ever 
and anon comes the ze-e-e, ze-e-e-e as the reel gives 
tongue, like some old and melodious hound you have 
known. _ The game tow-ed is partly across the little ba>, 
then thinking of my thread of a line I began to reel, and 
away he went — ze-e-e, ze-e-e-e — always off and away, the 
water being too shallow for sucking, and all this towing 
and hauling was to reach deeper water. I began to reel 
and slowly brought him in, but not without many a rush, 
and many a struggle for supremacy. Once he dashed en- 
tirely about the boat, like a tarpon, and as I pushed the 
fighting he came to the surface a hundred feet away and 
lashed the water into foam — a sort of wild defiance — and 
all the time I was worn by conflicting emotions; I wanted, 
him, yet disliked to kill so fair a fighter. But we needed 
food; I convinced myself of that when I saw his fair pro- 
portions. _ and in he came, fighting every turn of the reel, 
a splendid creature, that made a rush half around the 
boat; then I brought him up sharply and Johnny tried to 
break my line with his gaff. Failing in that he gaffed and 
I held him at the rail a moment, then lifted him in, hold- 
ing him up that I might see his beauties. 
Surely no^fish is so beautiful, so massive, so- all satis- 
fying as the' white sea bass when taken on light tackle, 
clearing your conscience of any suspicion of unfairness. 
One morning I took five such bass, each of which 
weighed over 50 pounds; and it is a singular fact that 
nearly all the white sea bass .caught here weigh over so 
pounds. 
This fish is by no means a common catch. Some years 
they appear in vast numbers and will not bite ; again but 
few are seen and many are caught. When they are around 
the angler had better follow them up, as the .school is 
always moving. The season may be said to begin in May 
and to last all summer, but very few are caught, and 1 
doubt if one hundred are taken any one year with the rod 
at Avalon. 
The bait for them is a live sardine, and when a school 
enters the bay of Avalon the small boy can go out and 
catch live bait for the anglers. I have taken them by 
casting with heavy flying fish, and with sardines and 
smelt, and doubtless a spoon could be used to advantage. 
We took the big bass in shore and Johnny prepared him 
for cremation; as. become such game a large hole was 
lined with flat rocks which were heated, and in this the 
game was placed and baked, then served on a plank by 
the light of the moon. 
Johnny Daly was a professional sharker. He caught a 
small oil shark and sold the oil to one firm and the fins 
to the Chinese. Nearly all his catch was made at the head 
of Catalina Harbor, where the small oil sharks came in 
to breed,^ and where their fins could be seen moving about 
at this time above the surface. 
Johnny told me that his sharks \vere game, sO' I deter- 
mined to test it, and one morning found myself with rod 
on the back, Johnny on hand as chummer. He baited my 
hook with about 6 pounds of fish, then taking it out about 
one hundred feet dropped it overboard while I sat down 
upon the sands to wait. Very soon the reel began to 
click, when about ten feet of line had gone out I gave the 
shark the butt, and up into the air went a long, slender 
creature, marked like a tiger and about five feet in length. 
It did not fling itself about, as I had seen the leaping 
shark of Texas, but it made a fair jump which was re- 
peated several times, then it made a savage rush up the 
beach, taking my line and forcing me to run along the 
sands, Johnny Daly prancing after me, brandishing a long 
and angular gaff and calling on all the saints to witness 
its speed and gallant play. 
With some difficulty I turned the fish, and back up the 
beach we went, Daly up to his knees, now dashing back 
filled with excitement, enthusiasm and certain artificial 
energies which belong- to the calling. Up the beach we 
went, the fish bearing off hard, now almost taking me 
into the water, or making a dash for deeper water ; but in 
half an hour I conquered him with the thread of a line, 
and Johnny gaffed him in gallant style and came out of 
the water a red faced sea dog, towing the beautifully 
marked gam.e that was four feet long and weighed 63 
pounds. 
There is a prejudice against sharks, but if we could 
have called this fiish a gray tarpon or a striped bonito it 
would have passed as very fair game and its good points 
made much of. 
If the angler cares to test tackle and enjoys beach fish- 
ing where there is no necessity for wading, and where 
the gam.e is played up and down the beach, Catalina Har- 
bor is an excellent place. It is a miniature fjiord, almost 
land-locked, surrounded by hills, its entrance guarded by 
a mountain which I named Torquemada in honor of the 
padra of old, the first one of his cloth to land on the isle 
of Summer. In the center of the harbor is a peculiar 
sand spit, a miniature Cape Cod that reaches out into the 
bay and has the appearance of being artificial. In former 
years a large herd of sea elephants lived here; but Scam- 
mond killed the last in 1850 or thereabouts. 
In the afternoon we bore away down the coast, run- 
ning in for water at the Torqua Spring. That is one of 
the standard jokes to try on a tenderfoot. I recall the 
light just out of Norfolk, that rises directly out of the 
water with no land about it. We always Told the new- 
comer along those ducklined shores that the lightkeeper. 
as isolated as he was, raised all his own vegetables, as he 
did, with block and tackle ; and so at Santa Catalina the 
skipper will ask if you would, like to sample the Torqua 
Spring and will slow up at a buoy a hundred or more 
feet off shore in deep blue water. Here he will fish up 
a hose that leads to the Torqua Spring, unscrew the cap 
and present it to you, and. you drink to the memory of 
Torqua, who in the_ legendary lore of the place, is sup- 
posed to be an Indian who .made a desperate effort for 
freedom against the Spaniards in the long ago. 
With Mexican Joe I made a few days ago an organized 
effort tg determine the age of the large graveyard at this 
town of Cabrillo. When I first saw it it was a black 
patch in the landscape, a mass of burnt sand, shells and 
debris, and has, in all probability, produced more Indian 
objects in stone, bone and wood than any deposit on the 
island, and I have mapped them all. There was a large 
Indian town where Avalon stands to-day, and every 
canon had its village or camp site. We made a trench 
into the old kitchen window from the beach, and it was 
evident that the natives had lived and cooked over the 
spot for ages, sO' blackening the sand that it was a land 
mark out to sea. In a short time we struck the layers of 
graves and found five here before hardpan was reached; 
in the section which Joe worked out with the care of a 
sculptor, the exact position of the bodies could be seen. 
Around it had been placed mortars, pestles, fishhooks, 
beads and various household goods. The lower level con- 
tained nothing but implements of shell, stone and wood; 
but the upper ones had metal bell clappers, Venetian 
beads, old knives, pieces of copper wire and more bell 
clappers,^ showing that the lower, deposit dated back prior 
to the time of the Spanish invasion and may , have been 
four hundred or four thousands years old. 
While we were at work some tourists came ashore and 
began to help themselves to the beads, which were scat- 
tered on the sands. I was thinking what I could say that 
would induce them to stop robbing us, when one of the 
women .who had caved in an ancient Santa Catalinan al- . 
most on my head, suddenly asked : “Mister, what did all 
these skeletons die of?” I assumed my most mysterious 
air and said : “Madam, this is confidential. I don’t wish 
to alarm these people, but are you immune?” “No, I’m 
Mrs. John Daly, of ITackensack,” replied the lady. “I 
mean are you proof against contagion?” “Where is it?” 
replied Mrs. Daly, growing a shade paler and almost slid- 
ing into the pit. “Do you see that dark man working at 
that brown skeleton? He’s the professor. He’s hunting 
for germs. All these people died of black cholera.” Mrs. 
Daly (her name was not Daly) tossed the beads she had 
taken into the trench, and a few moments later the entire 
party left us in peace. 
How long ago this island was inhabited it would be 
difficult to say, but I believe it was the home of tribes 
similar to those on the main land many thousands of 
years ago, and I base my opinion on a single find. It 
happened I was in the center of the island in a heavy rain 
during' which a wash w'as formed on the slope of one of 
Ihe mountains and a section made thirty feet in height, 
I am not a geologist nor am I an archieologist, I only see 
things and form my opinons from the evidence at hand, 
and I was convinced that this mountain side had not been 
moved for thousands of years, yet in the bottom of the 
section amid the gravel of the ages, I found a nest of 
abalone shells, one four inches long, then others, packed 
in and selected by some child, possibly ages ago. Of all 
the curious things I found on this island this impressed 
me the most; it was the toy of a little child. 
Bass Fishing on the Ocean Pier. 
The principal amrsement of the tourists at Long 
Beach — a coast resort on the Pacific twenty miles south 
of Los’ Angeles, Cal.— is fishing on the Long Pier, which 
extends several hundred feet into the Father of Oceans. 
A great variety of fish are caught — sardines, young 
mackerel, bass, yellow-tail, halibut and jewfish — one of 
the latter caught this -winter weighing 377 pounds. A 
correspondent writing from there sketches the following 
characteristic incident ; 
She was a peach, a vision in a picture hat and a ma- 
gTnta-colored skirt of some light, fluffy material that no 
mere man may be -expected to' know the name of, and not 
only the young men but every grizzled old fisherman on 
the pier turned to take a look at her as she passed. She 
w/as squired by a dapper young fellow in a raincoat and 
bigffihecked trousers ; from a lancewood pole carried by 
each it was plain they were on fishing benf. . 
He bought twent\'--five cents worth of bait of “Buck” 
Dolger. “Buck” usually sells by the nickel’s worth — and 
they sat down on a string piece to enjoy the sport. 
“Reginald Kip Osterhaus !” she exclaimed at once, 
“you are not putting a dear little fish on that hook alive?” 
“That’s what I am doing. Pet,” replied Reginald. 
“You cruel, cruel thing,” she said, and pouted. 
“Now, Gladys, do be reasonable. We want a big fish 
to tell about back East, and this is the only way to catch 
’em.” 
“O, Reggie, what funny brown bird is that diving after 
the bait?” 
“That’s a diver — hell diver we call ’em when they steal 
our bait,” volunteered a redheaded urchin whose bare 
legs dangled over the edge while he watched a cotton 
line and clam-baited hook at the end of it, “Gee, he’s 
got yours already.” 
“What shall I do, what shall I do?” screamed the girl, 
dancing round on her high-heeled boots. 
“Play him for a sucker,” said the boy, “Let him swaller 
it hard an’ fast. There, now, reel in. Jiminy, you’ll have 
roast duck for dinner.” 
A battle royal now commenced between the girl and 
the duck — the latter known locally to some five hundred 
victims as “Billy." The duck had the fish and hook down 
his throat and paddled desperately against the force 
which was robbing him of his dinner. 
“Yellow-tail, yellow-tail!" some one screamed at this 
juncture, and in a moment the girl had an audience of 
about five hundred eager to see the sport. 
She wound, and wound, obeying instructions of her boy 
mentor to the letter, and by and by it seemed' as if the 
hook would hold this time and “Bill-” be landed sure 
enough, but just as the duck was being lifted from the 
water it threw back its head, coughed up the tid-bit, and 
paddled off serene as a summer morning. 
