052 
FOREST AND STREAM 
that from ten feet to five miles off-shore one 
often has the clear smooth water of a trout 
stream depending upon the time of day. Again, 
there is almost constant cool and delightful 
weather. The season, from May to November, 
as stormless, rainless, a strange and attractive 
•condition almost unbelievable, and when it is 
added that you are but three and a half hours 
from Los Angeles, a city of 500,000, and that the 
island has all the facilities for comfort—a town 
of 5,000 in summer, good hotels, cottages and 
tents, any and all accomodations; when the 
angler realizes that that great essential, comfort, 
is within his grasp, the real charm of this region 
can be understood. 
Again, it may be said to belong to the people, 
as San Clemente, one of the three islands which 
make up the group of the Santa Catalina chan¬ 
nel, is government property, and here the angling 
differs. The island is about twenty miles in 
length and has peaks a quarter of mile in height. 
It is interesting from its wild character and the 
fact that it once supported a large native popu¬ 
lation. Not only this, the fishes taken here are 
for some reason much larger than elsewhere; 
as stated previously, the record yellow-tail was 
taken here. The line was of but nine strands, 
each breaking at a strain of two pounds. In 
other words, a pressure of over eighteen pounds 
on the line would break it, by which some idea 
of the care and skill required to land a sixty- 
one pounder may be imagined. 
The yellowtail appears to range from Santa 
Catalina down to Mazatlan, Mexico in numbers; 
and at times it strays north to Monterey, over 
three hundred miles from Santa Catalina; but 
even at the Santa Barabara Islands, one hun¬ 
dred miles north, it is not over common. Santa 
Catalina and San Clemente appear to be the 
locations where the largest number are found 
To illustrate how they run, on June 21, 1915, 1 
quote from the Tuna Club report of this week, 
it being remarked that all the fishes of good size 
are reported to the Club, and the catches re¬ 
corded, the Tuna Club awarding prizes for the 
largest fish in its tournaments. 
BUTTON FISH. 
TUNA. 
W. C. Boschen, New York, 7% Farnsworth, 
Captain. YELLOWTAIL. 
George Blumenschien, Chicago, 3 ll A< Fisher. 
W. A. Forman, Brooklyn, N. Y„ 25, Goulding. 
J P. Gilmer, Los Angeles, Cal., 33%. Gray. 
C. A. Ritchie, Topeka, Kan., 22/2, French. 
J W. Robertson, San Francisco, 32)4 Wilborn. 
Mr. Fleming, Los Angeles, Cal., 20/2, ttai- 
St j ad F. Mason, Portland, Ore., 31, Halstead. 
Wm. Mason, 20 y 2 . „ . . , 
C. H. Sharp, Los Angeles, Cal., 30, Halstead. 
E D. Ulrich, Los Angeles, Cal., 25, Halstead. 
Mrs. L. Baker, Los Angeles, Cal., 21, Hal- 
St fL Givens, San Francisco, 22, McKay. 
Milt. Sandfelder, Chicago, 20, Neale. 
ALBAGORE. 
Nate LeVene, San Francisco, 21 y 2 , Warren. 
BLACK SEA BASS. 
J. A. Wilborn, Avalon, Cab, 192, on 9-9. Wil- 
b °The yellowtail has been known to spend the 
winter at Santa Catalina. I have taken it in 
Avalon Bay every month in the year; but it is 
a migratory fish and lives from December on, 
off-shore and the south, coming again in April 
in detached or compact schools. I believe the 
fish spawns in the open sea along the islands 
in summer, at least I have found the fish in 
spawn at that time; but 1 have never seen a 
young yellowtail or a fish under three or five 
pounds. In fact the breeding habits of the 
fishes here are little understood; but migratory 
fishes found with spawn are supposed to de¬ 
posit their eggs at the end of their migration, 
as birds in migrating nest at the terminus of 
their migration. 
But some bands of fish are not spawning; 
others are, and only records covering a series of 
years can be depended upon. In the winter, yel¬ 
lowtail are fund on the coast of Mexico, yet the 
winter at Santa Catalina is comparable to Octo¬ 
ber in the East, so far as cold is concerned. 
So established is the yellowtail or amber Jack 
as a game fish that it has effected the evolution 
of boats, and what is known as a Santa Catalina 
angling launch has materialized suited to the sit¬ 
uation. It is eighteen or twenty feet in length, 
broad, heavy, large enough to stand heavy sea. 
To illustrate, I once ran from San Clemente in 
half a gale in a sixty-ton yacht, and my boatman 
followed in his little launch. I repeatedly saw this 
boat thrown bodily by the big waves, but she 
landed right side up, nor did she ship many seas 
through under power and sail. 
The boats cost from $800 to $1,000; have a six 
or eight-horse power gasolene engine amidships. 
They are open and will hold six or seven persons, 
but three are a full completement. This means two 
anglers and the boatman who is steersman, gaffer 
and engineer. The anglers sit side by side in 
comfortable chairs facing the stern; one with 
rod to the right, one to the left. At the strike 
the boatman stops the engine and takes his gaff, 
after the fish has been brought alongside. 
These boats run alongshore in water mostly 
perfectly smooth, but they are well equipped to 
go off into rough water. The tackle of the yel¬ 
lowtail angler is interesting. He has several 
rods. One is eight or nine feet in length and 
weighs sixteen ounces. This is for swordfish 
and big tunas. Another weighs nine ounces; is 
seven feet long and has a line known as No. 9 
Still another is of six ounces and has a line of 
six strands. The last two are yellowtail rods, 
and are the result of many experiments of T. 
Daniel Potter, Mr. Arthur Jerome Eddy and 
others, and roughly, are the sort of rods and 
tackle used for black bass in the East not many 
years ago. Now the same tackle is employed on 
a thirty- or forty-pound fish. I have stood on the 
beaches of Santa Catalina and cast into the clear 
waters, played my game and reeled it in upon the 
singing sands of Cabrillo or Avalon while the 
east was tinted with encarnadine, and have seen 
some remarkable plays. 
One catch in many stands out clear and dis¬ 
tinct, a beetle in amber. I was fishing with Gif¬ 
ford Pinchot, Steward Edward White and Gov¬ 
ernor Pardee of California. We were trolling up 
and down the extreme southeastern point of 
San Clemente where a great mass like the Giants 
Causeway looks into the sea. There was so much 
to see that I was paying but little attention to my 
rod when my boatman, Mexican Joe, told me to 
look at a school of fish inshore. We turned in and 
I soon saw that it was made up of yellowtails, 
thirty, forty and perhaps fifty pounders, which, 
with dorsal fin out of water and jocund air, were 
sailing down this Rialto of the sea, all in the 
shadow of the rocky cliffs that rose sheer from 
the blue waters at this point. 
There must have been several hundred in the 
school, and they were swimming slowly along as 
one walks in the shade on a hot summer day. 
We ran slowly in, and as Joe pulled his wheel 
to starboard, he placed them on the quarter not 
fifty feet distant. I reeled my sardine bait to 
the tip, and with an overhand cast, dropped the 
silvery lure about five feet in front of the school. 
It was a mean heartless trick as the guileless 
yellowtail thought it a gift of the gods; thought 
that some other enemy had frightened the sar¬ 
dine and it had leaped and leaped again, landing 
perchance directly in his line of progress. 
I am assuming that you have never caught a 
yellowtail, hence may like to know how the fish 
strikes and what this particular yellowtail did to 
me. The rod I was using was a “3-6”; in the 
angling language of the “Channel Islands,” a 
rod of six ounces and so pliable that to strike 
with it hard was out of the question, and as the 
line would withstand a strain of but twelve 
pounds, attention had to be paid to that. What 
happened was this: The moment or second the 
bait dropped, a yellowtail of thirty pounds or so, 
shot ahead and seized it. I gave a whirl on the 
watch-like reel taking up the slack; then gave the 
butt, softly, gently, and with sufficient circum¬ 
spection to keep within the twelve-pound limit. 
At once, not suddenly, but with a deep deter¬ 
mined strain, the rod bent to its limit. The yel¬ 
lowtail had seized the lure, his powerful jaws 
had closed over it and nothing could induce him 
to give it up. A few seconds of strain, then the 
big sharp O’Shaughnessy hook pricked him and 
with a blare of sea music from the reel he was 
away. 
Ah, the joy of this rush! How can you de¬ 
scribe it? The virile magnetic thrill up the rod, 
the quivering line and singing reel, the quick 
turn of the boat and the tense whisper of the 
boatman, “You got him!” The one regret, if I ( 
may call it a regret, in yellowtail angling is that 
in nine times out of ten you hook your fish in 
deep water but near the rocks, and he has the 
time of hifc life sulking as no salmon ever sulked. 
He points his head down (as I have often seen 
him when lying fiat on deck and peering through 
a water-glass) ; and there he stands, his big tail 
working in a cork-screw-like motion most et- 
fective. 
In this divertisement the fish may have four 
hundred feet of line out; in fact certain wise 
fish have been known to take so much line, say 
five or six hundred feet, that in a savage rush 
the weight of the water would break it. Here 
was an opportunity to play a big fish with light 
tackle—3-6—on the surface. I sprang to my feet 
as soon as the idea took possession of me, told 
the boatman to put on full speed, and away we 
went not one hundred and fifty feet from the 
splendid rocky cliffs in hot chase. 
The yellowtail has taken about three hundred 
feet and was going down the coast at the top of 
its speed while the school spread out. We could 
see them under the boat and everywhere, a most 
extraordinary spectacle, not to say disconcerting. 
As we ploughed along I stood and literally bent 
to the reel, eating up the line so that in a few mo¬ 
ments I had it taut and almost out of water for 
its entire length. Try as I would then, I could 
not take in an inch of line, though the launch 
was going at the top of her speed over the lux¬ 
uriant gardens of the sea. Nothing could have 
been more exciting, or beautiful, than this an- 
