June i, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
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their size there are no better or gamier fish in 
the world than the three last named, but to take 
them on heavy tuna and tarpon tackle is a 
slaughter scarce removed from hand lining. In 
fact, it is more difficult to land them with a hand 
line than with a stiff two pound rod, a 24-strand 
line, and a reel with automatic drag. The very 
fact that tourists, men, women and children, who 
had never fished before could go out and “catch 
a boat load,” as thousands of photographs attest, 
shows the unsportsmanlike character of the fish¬ 
ing. As compared with the use of light tackle 
the handling of heavy is clumsy in the extreme. 
Whether fishing from rowboat or launch the 
heavy tackle fisherman is seated in a chair fas¬ 
tened in the stern and facing aft. Fastened to 
the seat between his legs is a large leather 
socket in which he rests the butt of the heavy 
rod. To relieve the monotony he may carry the 
rod across his lap while trolling, but the moment 
he gets a strike the butt is placed in the socket, 
the left hand grasps the rod about two feet up, 
while the right hand manipulates the reel. A 
patent drag in reel or handle makes all things 
easy for even the novice. All he has to do is 
hang on, and follow the advice of the boatman, 
taking in line whenever the automatic drag is 
sufficient to overcome the pull of the fish. 
The rod is commonly held at an angle of about 
90 degrees to the surface of the water, being 
held higher if the fish makes a surface run, and 
lowered to nearly a horizontal position when the 
fish sounds under the boat. The sweep of the 
rod, up and down and from side to side is ob¬ 
viously limited by the position of the socket; too 
wide a sweep throws the butt out. Hence it is 
necessary for the boatman to keep boat or 
launch stern on to the fish. If the fish is allowed 
to get ahead, the heavy tackle fishermen is in 
trouble; he loses his purchase, and is thrown on 
his own resources for the moment, with a big 
fish at one end of the line and an unwieldy club 
at the other. 
At Catalina it is the practice of the boatmen 
on getting a strike from a big fish to shut down 
the engine and handle their launches with oars 
so as to keep the man with the rod facing the 
fish. They handle their launches with rare skill, 
doing more than their share toward the capture 
of the fish ; in fact, it is a question whether under 
such circumstances the boatman is not doing the 
fishing rather than the man in the chair who, if 
inexperienced, simply follows the advice of the 
boatman and hangs on. 
With light tackle held free or manipulated 
from a belt socket it is quite immaterial which 
way the fish goes. The angler stands or sits as 
he pleases, shifting his position from time to 
time to play his catch. With a large fish it may 
be necessary to follow the long runs with the 
launch, but head on under power instead of stern 
foremost with oars. 
It did not take long to demonstrate that a nine- 
thread line is amply strong for albacore, not¬ 
withstanding the fact they are caught as heavy 
as 45 pounds and more. It was simply a ques¬ 
tion of length rather than strength of line. Just 
to see how far an albacore would go before turn¬ 
ing, I let what proved to be a 31-pounder run 
with little or no pressure. It took out 75 o feet, 
then began fooling around aimlessly at a depth 
of probablv 400 feet, working deeper but taking 
no more line. As will be shown further on, 750 
feet of line presents a very considerable drag 
in the water. It is safe to say that every fish 
that swims has its turning point, its radius be¬ 
yond which it will not go in its rushes. It may 
work out long distances before landed ; a launch 
may be obliged to follow a tuna miles in the 
course of the struggle, but probably no fish will 
run any very large fraction of a mile in a straight 
away rush. 
The conditions limiting the runs or rushes of 
the fish may be summarized as follows: 
1. The strength of the fish. This is a material 
consideration in most fresh water and many salt 
water fish, especially in fish accustomed to hang 
about the shores and which are not great travel¬ 
ers. With the deep sea fish like the tuna it is 
not lack of strength which causes them to turn, 
for they frequently make several long runs in 
as many different directions. 
2. The manner in which the strength is used. 
The tarpon, for instance, exhausts himself with¬ 
in a very limited radius by leaping; the tuna 
husbands his strength; the albacore is still more 
chary of his forces, nearly always boring down 
at once and turning on his side. 
3. A place of refuge. If there is kelp or other 
place of refuge to which the fish is accustomed 
anywhere near, a rush will be made for it. Yel- 
lowtail will almost invariably make for the kelp, 
taking out anywhere from 100 to 300 or 400 feet 
of line to reach safety. As they are nearly always 
hooked near shore, or near bunches of kelp, it 
is not so easy to get them with light tackle, hence 
the extra allowance of 20 per cent, made in their 
favor by the club. If tuna are hooked in 700 
or 800 feet of water they will often go to the 
bottom and part the line at that depth. If hooked 
in much deeper water they are not so apt to 
sound, but make their fight within 300 or 400 
feet of the surface, sometimes at the surface. 
4. In addition to the considerations enumer¬ 
ated, it is altogether likely that the rush of a 
fish is limited by the ground covered by the 
school with which it is traveling. It will tend 
to come back to its mates, possibly to the single 
companion with which it was feeding. That 
would be human nature. No doubt the same in¬ 
stincts govern fish nature. Any large game fish 
may, in its fear, make a blind rush of 300 or 
400 feet, but before it goes much further is very 
apt to turn to one side or the other, and it is 
this turn which gives the light tackle angler his 
opportunity. Even with a much longer straight¬ 
away run it is possible to bring the launch about 
and so save line. 
All these conditions must be taken into con¬ 
sideration by the man who* uses light tackle. It 
is not a question of checking and landing the 
fish; it is a question of playing him until he 
is so exhausted he can be gently brought to the 
side of the boat and released unharmed. I have 
even weighed a 43-pound yellowtail, and then 
watched it swim away, tired, but injured. 
During that first winter at Catalina many ex¬ 
periments with light tackle were made to en¬ 
courage its use and I gave the Tuna Club a cup 
to* be competed for on the following conditions: 
“Open to rods (not metal) six feet and over, 
weighing not more than sixteen ounces (butt in¬ 
cluded), and nine-thread line of any standard 
make. For rod weighing less than sixteen ounces 
an allowance of ten per cent, added to the weight 
of fish will be made for each ounce under the 
sixteen ounces, so that a rod of twelve ounces, 
for instance, would be entitled to* an addition of 
forty per cent, to the weight of the catch, and 
so on.” 
This was the beginning of systematic light 
tackle fishing for large game salt water fish. 
The following year when the club was orga¬ 
nized the conditions were changed so as to allow 
only five per cent, for each ounce the rod weighed 
under sixteen, and the following provision added: 
“As it is not the desire to encourage the use 
of freak tackle, no additional allowance will be 
made for rods under nine ounces, but if used 
they will be weighed as nine ounces. No fish 
weighing less than twenty pounds will be weighed 
in.” 
Experience had shown that the allowance of 
ten per cent. • per ounce gave the heavier rods 
practically no chance against the lighter in com¬ 
petition for prizes and records, while no limit 
as to lightness encouraged the use of freak rods. 
Given a strong or long enough line almost any 
fish can be landed with any rod, even if the rod 
weighs but two or three ounces, provided all 
pressure be kept off the rod by holding it toward 
the fish, the line and the reel doing the work. 
A fair working rule is an ounce of rod to a 
strand of line, providing the rod be not less than 
six and a half or seven feet; that means a nine- 
ounce rod to a nine-strand line, and so on. It 
is needless to say the better the quality of rod 
the lighter it should be and vice versa. A fine 
split bamboo rod, ounce for ounce, is much stiffe'r 
in action than a greenheart or bethabara of same 
length. For a nine-thread line the former ought 
to be at least an ounce or an ounce and a half 
lighter. Arthur Jerome Eddy. 
Echoes from the Tournament. 
Previous to the tournament held by the 
Anglers’ Club of New York on Harlem Mere last 
week there was a great deal of speculation among 
the salt water anglers as to the distance the ex¬ 
perts could cast their 2'/ ounce weights in the 
surf-casting events. Somebody astonished those 
who were practicing for the event with the state¬ 
ment that the longest cast ever made was 420 
feet, which was absurd, but was nevertheless re¬ 
peated in one of the daily papers. Evidently the 
informant was mixed and the figures should have 
been transposed, making it 240. Among those 
who had practiced on the platform in the Pool 
in Central Park, no one who used the regulation 
surf-casting rods got as far as the 200 foot mark, 
but Messrs. Held, LaBranche and Frazer, using 
a bethabara rod made by the latter, scored 190 
to 210 feet in practice, causing them to believe 
they could cast much further with practice. This 
rod is 6 feet and $4 inch long and weighs 13 
ounces, it being somewhat lighter than the aver¬ 
age surf rod, and perhaps better adapted to a 
weight of the size used in the surf-casting event. 
The reel used is a 200-yard rubber-and-German- 
silver double multiplier, whereas most of the con¬ 
testants used free spool reels which call for very 
hard thumbing of the line and extreme care lest 
the spool overrun. The line is braided silk 
treated to protect it from the effect of salt water, 
and is about F size. It lifted the required dead 
weight of fifteen pounds and worked best when 
wet, whereas the twisted linen and flax lines 
swelled materially after use. Five of the club 
members used this rod, scoring 150 to 190 feet. 
Reuben Leonard, who was second, used a split 
bamboo rod about 6 l / 2 feet long and a 200 yard 
double multiplier with a nine-thread cuttyhunk 
linen line and cast 210 feet, while W. J. Moran, 
the winner, whose score was 212 feet, used a 
heavier rod and a free spool reel. So far as we 
have been able to ascertain, the best score made 
in an affair of this kind was that of W. H. 
Wood, who cast 260 feet 1 inch on the grass 
at the Polo Grounds in New York city in the 
surf-casting event held in May, 1887, by the Na¬ 
tional Rod and Reel Association, that event being 
a part of the tournament held that year. The 
conditions called for rods not over 9 feet in 
length, lines not smaller than twelve-thread, and 
2/2 ounce weights. Mr. Wood’s score follows: 
234 feet 6 inches, 240 feet 4 inches, 241 feet 7 
inches, 260 feet 1 inch, 255 feet 9 inches; average, 
246 feet 6 inches. 
Without doubt the next surf-casting event held 
by the club will be on land. Although the meas¬ 
uring line used in the water is accurately marked, 
it is uncomfortable if not actually dangerous for 
the judges to keep close enough to it in their 
boat to determine opposite which mark a weight 
falls, whereas on the grass the weight lies where 
it falls until the distance is measured carefully. 
Expert surf-casters can land their weights with¬ 
in a few feet of the Line every time, but with 
novices this is not possible. For example, dur¬ 
ing the practice before the surf-casting event was 
called, one contestant attempted to cast into the 
water in front of him, but instead his weight 
landed in a tree beyond a group of spectators and 
almost at right angles to the direction in which 
he intended to cast. 
With the aluminum half-ounce weights used in 
bait-casting there is no danger to the judges, as 
the plugs move slowly at the end of their flight, 
and the judges’ boat hovers within a few feet 
of the line and near the place where the previous 
weight fell. Indeed, there have been instances 
where a weight was stopped by a judge’s hand 
when it came too close, and no harm done. 
Furthermore, it can be seen in its flight, and a 
stroke of the oar takes the boat out of the way* 
so that the weight falls in the water. 
In the cast of 214 feet 7 inches, made by Reu¬ 
ben Leonard, and Charles Stepath’s 200-foot cast, 
the weights fell on the shore and there was no 
question about the accuracy of the measurements. 
On the last day of the tournament John R. 
Cushier, a veteran angler and an interested spec¬ 
tator at all the tournaments held on Harlem Mere 
in the last twenty-five years, brought with him a 
