June 8 , 1907 .] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
899 
I 
heavy one except the fact that it did not make a 
n swift rush for the kelp immediately on being 
struck. The small yellowtail fight with light¬ 
ning-like rapidity, while the very large come 
along rather easy at first. They are heavy to 
lift and take time, but do not make the 'same 
nervous rushes. For over an hour we had that 
fish on. He moved along steadily and easily. 
At no time did he have out more than 150 ya'rds 
of line. The rod exerted a pressure of about 
to 2 pounds—that was the .limit of its lifting 
capacity—not much for a big fish, but enough to 
wear him out in the long run. Every once in a 
while Gray would look at me and mutter, "It 
j acts like a big one.” 
“If it is. Gray, I’ll throw you in the pond for 
having your hand on the rod.” 
"That comes of fishing with two rods,” he 
replied, shaking his head. We bad often debated 
the possibility,of losing a record in just that way. 
At the end of an hour we had worked down 
1 opposite Lion’s Head near the Isthmus, a mile 
or more from the bank. Peering over the side. 
Gray caught a-glimpse of the fish. “By ginger,” 
he exclaimed, "it’s gold button fish all right 
enough.” 
“Then let’s cut the line. We don't want to 
1 see him.” 
Inch by inch the big fellow yielded, stubbornly 
1 circling about on his side. Tired and played out 
he came to the surface, a superb yellowtail, so 
big and old his back was almost black. 
For a second we looked at the fish, then we 
looked at each other. For over a week we hard 
been after just that fish. Now we had him he 
did not count under the rules. There was the 
secretary of the club in bis launch watching us 
with eagle eye. There could be no nigging; the 
j boatman had touched the rod; there would be 
i no record. 
“We won’t kill him anyway,” I exclaimed; 
“lift him in carefully.” 
As I brought the fish alongside. Gray reached 
down and deftly grabbed it by the tail. There 
was a splash and a struggle, a good deal of salt 
water distributed over us and the fish was hauled 
aboard. The Isthmus was just ahead. We ran 
in to our anchorage, weighed the fish—4,3 pounds 
—tied a rope to its tail, put it in the water until 
all the boys had seen it, then turned it loose, 
apparently as sound and nearly as lively as if 
nothing had happened. 
I must confess a liking for fishing with two 
rods,, a fondness which no doubt dates back to 
the long bamboo pole stuck in the mud on the 
river’s bank, with a big cork floating lazily in 
the dead water of the pool in the bend. That was 
fishing. The long wait, the hot sun.- scarcely 
screened by tbe scant foliage of the old oak, the 
inclination to doze, the sudden start to -life as 
the cork disappeared, the frantic grab for the 
f pole, the landing of the sucker with a mighty 
lift which carried the luckless fish wellnigh into 
the treetop—yes, that was fishing. There is 
something singularly fascinating about watching 
i the set rod. It treats one to so many surprises, 
1 starts and false alarms without number. Then 
i the sudden whirr of the reel, a scramble, a quick 
| tug and -the fish is off, or on, as the case may be,' 
All the time the set rod is steadily exploring 
! the depths while you are experimenting with the 
J rod in hand. 
At Catalirta there is a choice of two baits, sar¬ 
dines and flying fish-, for white sea bass, yellow- 
1 tail and tuna. No man when he starts out in 
j the morning can tell which bait the fish will 
: take the better. It is an advantage to have both 
j out for a time at least. There are days when the 
fish take both indifferently. Again they take one 
[ in preference to tbe other. Even tuna will pass 
the flying fish again and again to strike the sar- 
j dine. It all depends upon what they happen -to 
i be feeding on. 
Down about Avalon the yellowtail take sar- 
; dines rather than flying fish. At the Isthmus, 
! only sixteen miles away, tbe same fish take fly¬ 
ing fish in preference to sardines, the reason 
t being, no doubt, that sardines abound at the 
! Avalon end of the island and flying fish at the 
other, though in season both baits are found 
all along the coast. 
] ' In trolling the launch is driven at from two to 
| six miles per hour, very slow for white sea bass. 
either slow or fast according to conditions for 
yellowtail, fast' as a rule for tuna and albacore. 
Yellowtail, when feeding voraciously—and they 
are good feeders—strike a very 'fast bait, but 
often they are lying in and about the kelp from 
ten to forty feet below the surface, and a slow 
bait sinks and at the same time invites them to 
rise. 
In trolling for large game fish with a set rod 
and a nine-thread line it is of vital importance 
that the line pay out easily, when the fish strikes. 
There are reels made with automatic tensions 
so light that they just hold the line against the 
motion of the launch. The slightest extra pull, 
even the strike of a rock ba-ss, serves to carry 
the line out very freely. These reels are con¬ 
venient, for the fish can run against the tension 
while the rod is being lifted out of the holder. 
To be sure, the fish will get out considerable 
line, and if near kelp, may get away before pres¬ 
sure can be put on the drag, but these chances 
lend to the excitement. Once in hand it is wiser 
for the angler to throw off the tension and fight 
his fish with the feel of thumb and fingers. 
If the reel is not equipped with tension a click 
will serve to keep the reel from overrunning, 
while a piece of soft yarn, or waste, passed about 
(he rod and line near the reel and tied or twisted 
lightly, will serve to hold the line against the 
headway of the boat while trolling and give way 
the moment a fish strikes. 
The advantage of two rods is the opportunity 
of definitely testing different baits and lures; 
also at what depth and with what length of line 
it is better to troll. Many questions can be set¬ 
tled which otherwise would be debated indefi¬ 
nitely after the manner of fishermen. 
Arthur Jerome Eddy. 
The Strength of Silkworm Gut. 
Philadei.phia, June 1. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: In salmon fishing the weakest part of 
the outfit is the trace or leader, and this prob¬ 
ably will always be the case. For trout fishing 
we can use a light top and in this way more or 
less equalize the strain,'but for salmon fishing 
where the streams are wide and the valleys 
broader and where the fishing is often done with¬ 
in a few miles of the sea, strong winds blowing 
up or down stream -are tbe rule and not the ex¬ 
ception. To fish under these conditions a fairly 
•heavy line is necessary. To control this the rod 
must have a moderately powerful top. 
Each year it seems to be harder to get good 
gut for salmon traces. Why this should be I 
do not know, but the fact remains that even at 
tbe highest prices the gut is far from satisfac¬ 
tory. 
The chief points to be remembered in select¬ 
ing gut should be its roundness, uniformity in 
diameter, length and color. . It is best to com¬ 
pare the gut which is under examination with 
some of known excellence. These points may 
help the prospective purchaser, but how to get 
the actual integrity of a trace? Many authors 
assert that to test with a spring balance spoils 
the gut in that it draws out the gut and thus 
narrows the diameter and consequently weakens 
the strand, and that the individual fibres, once 
subjected to a heavy strain, will never regain 
their original strength. The majority of tackle 
dealers also make this claim. Its fallacy seems ' 
plain on its face, for if this were true, to get 
a trace at its best, we could only use it once. 
Personally I always test my salmon leaders with 
a spring balance to from seven to .ten pounds 
according to the rod with which they are to be 
used. I have often found a leader break for 
the first time at six or six and a half pounds. 
and afterward quite regularly at eight or nine 
pounds, showing that this, first break was due 
to some local flaw in the gut or to an ill tied 
knot and that eight or nine pounds represented 
the real breaking strain of the cast. 
If the other theory were correct, the gut should 
first break at a high strain and at a lower strain 
at each successive trial, while the opposite is 
true. Another important point is that the leader 
should be soaked for twenty-four hours in cold 
water before'being tested, for that is the condi¬ 
tion it will be in when fished with. 
It is not, I think, generally known that gut 
loses 20 per cent, to 25 per cent.’of its strength 
by being soaked. The English Field, of Jan. 
26, 1907, quotes the followdng report from one 
of the English dealers, showing the, compara¬ 
tive strength of wet and dry gut: 
Breaking Strain 
Length , - K - N 
of Strand, Dry— Wet—• 
inches. pounds. pounds. 
SX . 12 4 2% 
Fina . 13 7% 5 
Regular . 13 9 7 
Padron . 12 1034 7% 
Murana .... 12 16% 12 % 
4/5 Marana . 11 19 16 
1/5 Imperial . 11% 19% 15 
2/5 Marana . 11 20% 16% 
It will be noticed that all these experiments 
were performed with a single strand of gut. 
To test these results, I to'ok six salmon 
leaders, whose breaking strain when soaked, had 
been above eight pounds when they were tied in 
1906, and tested them as follows. I should add 
that these were 9-foot single gut casts, of 
selected strands of medium sized, gut and tied 
with the ordinary professional’s knot and not 
the water knot or fisherman’s knot so. often 
recommended in angling books. 
Breaking Strain 
--A-v->, 
Dry— Wet— Dry— Wet— 
pounds. • pounds. pounds. pounds. 
No. 1 . 10 7% 11 8 % 
No. 2 . 10% 7% 10% 8 
No. 3 . 11% 8 % 12 8 % 
No. 4 ...;. 11% 8 % 12 8 % 
No. 5 . 9% 8 10 8 % 
No. 6 . 9% 8 10 8 % 
These tests were made twenty-four hours 
apart in order to thoroughly soak and dry the 
gut. A tested spring balance was used which 
was so arranged by waxing the scale of figures 
and bending tbe indicating needle that the maxi¬ 
mum weight was recorded. 
These tests, interesting as they may be, do not 
represent very well the .ordinary strain to which 
the trace is subjected during fishing. I believe 
that the average salmon is brought to gaff with¬ 
out the strain ever having exceeded four pounds. 
I once tested a fairly powerful fifteen foot green- 
heart rod. and in the ordinary position in which 
a rod is. held in playing-a fish was only able to 
pull the scale down to <\V 2 pounds, but by lower¬ 
ing the point of the rod somewhat and levering 
against the scale, what the English call “pump¬ 
ing,” as is sometimes done with a sulking fish, 
I was able to exert a strain of 7/2 pounds. If 
this is the greatest strain that can be exerted 
by a fairly powerful rod—and I am aware that 
it is considerably higher than that given by most 
writers—why is it that we so often have breaks 
in the gut and so rarely in our rod? The rea¬ 
son for this is, T think, found in the fact that 
in nine times out of ten when a break occurs 
it is due to a jerk, tbe fish getting leverage 
around a stone and jumping, or a slack line is 
suddenly tightened or a heavy fish takes a long 
run down and across the stream and then turns 
up stream and jumps, thus exerting a great and 
sudden strain on the “drowned”.line. I tried to 
simulate this in another series of experiments 
by using the same leaders, which were now re¬ 
duced to about seven feet, by making fast one 
end of the leader and with the spring balance 
arranged as before making a quick jerk on the 
other end. The following are the results ob¬ 
tained : 
Broke. 
m--^ 
Drv— Wet— Dry— Wet— 
pounds. pounds. pounds. pounds. 
No. 1 . 7 4 5 5 
N". 2 . 5 3 5% 4% 
No. 3 . 6 % 6 6 % 5% 
No. 4 . 7% 7 7% 7 
No. 5 . 6 4 6 4% 
No. 6 . 5% 3% 6 4% 
Of course this series is not as accurate as the 
preceding one, as it is hard to give exactly the 
same jerk each time. Silver Mttchel. 
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supply of Borden’s Eagle Brand Condensed Milk. 
With this in Camp, the most important food item 
is taken care of. Eagle Milk keeps indefinitely 
in any climate. The original and leading brand 
since 1857. Always uniform.— Adv. 
