482 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Giant Bass of the California Coast 
He Is a Nightmare of a Bass, a Replica of the Black Bass — If You Can Imagine a Bass Six 
or Seven Feet Long and Weighing 600 or 700 Pounds 
HERE are a number of very 
funny fake photographs on the 
market depicting the adven¬ 
tures of various anglers with 
pickerel ten ' or fifteen feet 
long and black bass as big as 
a man. If you should send 
one of the latter to a Santa 
Catalina angler about this time of the year— 
August, September or October—he would see 
nothing funny in it, as just exactly such a bass, 
so far as size is concerned, is brought into Avalon 
every day. 
In Florida everyone knows the jewfish, the 
big, clumsy, hole-lover. It is called the June- 
fish, because it was originally taken in June at 
first. It is a fish that grows and grows until a 
very mature fish may weigh one thousand 
pounds. The June-fish is a socialistic fellow; he 
believes that all the world should divide with 
him, and he would swallow the world, too, if he 
could get at it. 
In California we have a June-fish, better 
known as the black sea bass, and supposed by 
some to be the same fish; but the one resem¬ 
blance is in point of size; both fishes at their 
largest size weigh one thousand pounds or over. 
But the Florida fish is a clumsy grouper, while 
the California fish is a bass in shape, form and 
appearance; gigantic, but trim and bass-like. 
The black sea bass is a nightmare of a bass, a 
replica of a black bass, if you can imagine a 
bass six or seven feet long and weighing six or 
seven hundred pounds. 'When it comes in, the 
fortunate or unfortunate angler looks almost 
exactly like the man in the funny picture as he 
is landing a bass twice as heavy as himself with 
a rod whose appearance is preposterous. 
As these lines are written the season for these 
fishes is at its height and they are being brought 
in every day—two, three, or four. 
The Tuna Club, to prevent the slaughter of 
this guileless creature, some years ago conferred 
the dictum of a game fish on this colossus; de¬ 
signed the rod and line appropriate and fair for 
it, and to-day, mirabile dictu, it is caught on the 
same kind of tackle I have seen in use on the 
bt. Lawrence in landing the king of game fishes 
—the black bass of two, three, or four pounds; 
the fish that Henshall calls “pound for pound, 
the finest of all game fishes,” a hypothesis with 
which I agree. The black sea bass fishing of 
Santa Catalina or San Clemente is to angling 
what hippopotamus hunting is to hunting. 
It has been my very good fortune to have 
caught many of these big fishes and to have 
had the opportunity to watch them in their na¬ 
tive haunts in the forests of kelp where they 
poise and live. No fish has a more beautiful 
home than the king of the bass, and to observe 
By Charles Frederick Holder. 
it we should sail around Santa Catalina Island 
to what is known as Church Rock and then fol¬ 
low up the coast along the fringing kelp for¬ 
est, gazing down into the clear waters which 
are like crystal. The bottom here is a clean 
gray sand and from it grows the great kelpian 
forest; a mass of gigantic vines, each attached 
to a stone and rising to a surface in huge leaves 
of fronds twenty feet in length; the entire vine, 
often a hundred or two feet long and so strong 
and stout that, as in the case of the Machocystis, 
which grows farther to the south, vessels have 
but to take it aboard to use as an anchor. 
The Santa Catalina vine is large enough to 
anchor a small yacht. The leaves are broad and 
huge, tinted with all the shades of amber, and 
dotted with lime-secreting animals which have 
the appearance of silver. These huge leaves, 
when the tide is not running, hang in listless, 
beautiful shapes—portieres, loops, arches and 
colonnades, through which the sun filters, con¬ 
stituting a scene of the greatest beauty, which 
appeals to the fancy and imagination. The tidal 
currents here are very erratic—now in abeyance, 
again flowing up the coast to stop, and run the 
opposite direction. All the great leaves follow 
the currents, and when the time is strong, look 
like strange and monster fishes undulating and 
coiling. These vines have the appearance of 
trees, and a kelpian forest rises in the sea in 
which the giant bass lives. To see him in this 
splendid environment is well worth while. Cer¬ 
tain places are particularly affected by these 
fishes, the most famous one being what is known 
as “the fence,” back of the town of Avalon. 
Here I have had many a tussle with the giants 
and have seen many a man, including myself, 
out-classed and out-fought by these fish. 
The ordinary method of fishing is to anchor 
in water about forty feet and buoy the anchor 
rope so that it can be tossed off in a moment. 
But I have hooked this fish when trolling and 
they can be taken in various ways. The surest 
plan is to anchor about one hundred and fifty or 
two hundred feet from the shore, according to 
locality, and on the edge or near one of the 
kelp forests; but you must be far enough away 
from them to prevent the bass from going into 
them, which will be fatal to the line. The tackle 
is what is generally used for tuna—a i6-ounce 
rod, seven or so feet long, a 21-thread linen line 
to which you attach a five- or seven-foot piano- 
wire leader. The leader, theoretically, should be 
longer than the fish, as if the fine and delicate 
line is used alone, it will soon fray off against 
the fins of the fighting fish. I generally use a 
five or six-foot leader connected by several 
swivels, and a ten hook, about the size used for 
tarpon or tuna. 
The black sea bass you are after you hope 
will weigh five hundred pounds. An tight hun¬ 
dred pounder was once taken at Santa Barbara, 
and a thousand pounder has been seen in the Gulf 
of California. The chances are that you will 
take nothing less than one hundred- and fifty 
pounds and probably a two hundred and fifty 
pounder. Such a fish is not fastidious, he will 
require a bounteous lure, so on the advice of 
your boatman, perhaps, you put on five or six 
pounds of albacore or half a barracuda, or you 
may try a live white fish; all are good. You need 
a small sinker to take it down, and slacking off 
sixty or so feet of line you wait until your bait 
strikes bottom, then pull it up so that it is about 
three or four feet from the bottom, though this 
is not essential. All is ready. The sea is like 
glass, the richly colored cliffs which rise from a 
little rim of beach here reflect myriad tints— 
green, red, blue, white and many more. The 
Pacific is as blue as indigo and filled with count¬ 
less jelly fishes of high and low degree; some 
like gems; others resembling comets ten or 
twenty feet in length and at night ablaze with 
light. It is a good place to wait in, as if you do 
not get a strike, nature regales you with a sump¬ 
tuous feast, a passing throng, adrift on the tidal 
currents which seem to swing back and forth, 
to and fro. 
Naturally you might think that so big a fish 
would seize the line with a rush, but not so. The 
giant is a nibbler. I have had them follow my 
bait to the surface when I was pulling it rap¬ 
idly in, exactly as will a black bass; but when 
the bait is on the bottom, or suspended, the bass, 
the Goliath of its kind, will affect a coyness, a 
gingerly attitude that is apparently the apotheo¬ 
sis of associated cautions. I know, because I 
have seen this very thing, watched the approach 
of the big fish through the forest, seen it turn 
and examine the bait from every side, seem¬ 
ingly out of the corner of its eye, seen it take 
it in its mouth or lips, release it, take it again, 
and repeat the act a dozen times, then leaving 
it to return—a most interesting, fascinating, yet 
exasperating spectacle. 
So, when the light line leading overboard be¬ 
gins to run over the side and the click to sound 
very slowly, and at intervals stopping, to start 
again, everyone who has caught a black bass 
knows that the “strike” has come. All is ex¬ 
citement. You may have been waiting for this 
for three hours, or it may have been ten min¬ 
utes. You pick up the rod, while the boatman 
casts off the buoy, and in three or four minutes 
it is running out very regularly, but slowly, the 
reel buzzing faster and faster, and you know, 
or think you know, that a monster sea bass of 
the shining blue eye has swallowed it, or has 
a firm grip on it. You wait until ten or fifteen 
feet of line have disappeared, then allow it to 
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