102 2 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 26, 1908. 
Fishing in the Mediterranean. 
London, England, Dec. 12. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: The sun-kissed Mediterranean is a sea 
of many charms. Its color (in calm weather) 
is of the deepest azure; the coast scenery is, in 
many places, singularly beautiful, and the coun¬ 
try boats which are to be met with in the neigh¬ 
borhood of Genoa, Naples, Smyrna, Port Said, 
Alexandria, Malta and Gibraltar, are exceed¬ 
ingly picturesque. Equally picturesque are the 
mariners who form the crews. But to the fisher¬ 
man, and especially to those who make a living 
by scouring the sea in search of fish, the Medi¬ 
terranean appeals only from the business or 
sporting point of view. 
Although the professional element, which 
fishes by means of the unsportsmanlike but 
necessary net, is in the majority, there are a 
certain number of persons who angle with the 
time-honored rod and line. Along the coast of 
the Riviera many a Frenchman is to be seen 
awaiting a bite from the succulent sole, the less 
appetizing whiting or merlan as this particular 
fish is known locally, and 'the maquerau. The 
maquerau (mackerel) is much esteemed by the 
gourmet, and if Monsieur brings home a well 
filled basket of the dainty in question, Madame 
will not fail to be all smiles. At Monte Carlo, 
people are too busy winning or losing five franc 
pieces to indulge in the healthier pastime of 
fishing. But at Hyeres, Cannes, Nice, Mentone 
and elsewhere on the Cote d’Azur, the landed 
proprietor, the well-to-do retired tradesman and 
even the humble agriculturists are devotees of 
the sport. The bait usually consists of sand 
worms or shell fish, which are found in great 
variety. If, however, the peasant is too poor 
to afford the price of a wriggling worm, he con¬ 
tents himself with an infinitesimal fraction of 
dough and prays to his patron saint for success. 
Sometimes a shred of red flannal is substituted 
for dough, but in either case the fellow waxes 
prayerful. 
Equally keen are the Italian fishermen. Many 
of those who inhabit pleasant villas between 
Genoa and Naples and Brindisi, fish for an hour 
or two before partaking of the midday meal, 
while the inhabitants of the Grecian and Turkish 
coast villages are adepts at wielding the rod. 
The English officers who are quartered in Cyprus 
pass much of their spare time in fishing from the 
shores of the island, and the soldiers who are 
quartered at Alexandria, Malta and Gibraltar 
devote their leisure to the same agreeable pur¬ 
pose. Deep sea fishing also is extremely popular 
with the British sportsman whose stomach is 
tempered to the treacherous waves of the Medi¬ 
terranean. Hiring a country craft, he sets sail 
for the fishing ground, and his ill luck must be 
particularly bad if he does not fill the bottom 
of the boat with fish before setting sail for home. 
Nor is the sport an expensive one. Whether 
the boat be hired at Nice, Naples, Smyrna, Alex¬ 
andria or Malta, the owner usually can be in¬ 
duced to accept the equivalent of a dollar for 
a morning’s work, and a buksheesh of a few 
coppers is all that the members of the crew ex¬ 
pect. Indeed, to the sportsman of moderate 
means the Mediterranean is a veritable happy 
hunting ground. 
The reader who is sufficiently entranced by 
this article to undertake a fishing tour round the 
Mediterranean coast would be well advised to 
remember that the glare from the water is ex¬ 
ceedingly trying to the eyes and, for that mat¬ 
ter, to the head. Even when fishing off the 
French and Italian shores, the sun is strong, 
while off Port Said and Cairo it is positively 
dangerous. Fortunately for the fisherman who 
hails from Northern climes, the use of smoked 
glasses enables him to fish in comparative com¬ 
fort. George Cecil. 
Mexican Sea Bass are Whales. 
Los Angeles, Cal., Dec. 15. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: Judging from a letter received by 
“Uncle Tom” Manning, Congressman Conn is 
having a delightful budget of experiences on his 
trip down the Mexican coast in the Comfort. 
Conn provisioned the boat, which is a good sized 
schooner-rigged yacht with an engine in her, and 
made all preparations for a three months’ stay. 
He then asked L. G. Murphy, the veteran tarpon 
and black sea bass angler, and Gilmour Sharp, 
of Avalon, to accompany him, which they did 
after laying in a supply of shooting and fishing 
gear sufficient to stock a sporting goods em¬ 
porium. 
Just what this trio of enthusiasts would find 
in the unexplored fishing fields of Lower Cali¬ 
fornia and the Gulf has been quite a popular 
topic of discussion in the places where anglers 
foregather, and the first authentic news has been 
received with a lively interest. Nor has it been 
disappointing. For years rumors of immense 
game fish of known and unknown varieties have 
Deen reported. Some unbelievable tales have 
been circulated, and as a voyage of discovery 
the Comfort’s cruise was looked for to afford 
material for a most readable book. 
Such information as has come to hand thus 
far indicates that such of the local varieties of 
fish as frequent the Mexican waters attain a 
much greater size there than here. Although 
the anglers and their navigators, George Farns¬ 
worth and George Johnson, whom they took 
from Avalon where the men operate fishing 
launches, all seem to have been too busy with 
the yachting features of the journey to do a 
great deal of rod and reel work as yet, they have 
learned that white sea bass, which around Cata¬ 
lina are seldom if ever known to exceed eighty 
pounds, attain nearly twice that weight in Mexi¬ 
can waters. 
Mr. Conn’s niece joined the party at Guaymas. 
Edwin L. Hedderly. 
Fishing Around San Francisco. 
San Francisco, Cal., Dec. 15. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: The feature of interest in local 
fishing circles at the present time is the splendid 
catches of striped bass that are being made all 
around the bay. This fishing is furnishing as 
much sport as anglers could wish for, though, 
of course, a run of steelhead trout to the Rus¬ 
sian River and its tributaries would be hailed 
with delight. However, with steelhead fishing 
out of the question at the present time, fishermen 
are content with hooking the bass, and many 
good catches are reported. A week ago Charles 
Bridenstein fished at Wingo, near Shellville, and 
landed three big fish, the smallest weighing 26 
pounds and the largest a fraction over 36 pounds. 
This remarkable catch was made while fishing 
off the bank with clam for bait, and the largest 
fish was landed with a nine-ounce rod. The 
story of his success has been responsible for the 
crowds of enthusiasts that have been making 
the trip to Wingo since then, notwithstanding 
the unsettled condition of the weather. 
It has been reported to the fish commission 
that striped bass and steelhead trout are being 
killed with explosives in the lagoon back of 
Point Bonita. Some fishermen claim to have 
seen the dead fish in the lagoon and reported the 
matter to the authorities, who, however, were 
unable to take any action on account of a lack 
of evidence. The lagoon runs through a part 
of the Government reservation in that vicinity 
and a sharp lookout is being kept for offenders. 
Fishermen who have been searching for clams 
in the vicinity of Richardson’s Bay, where the 
bivalves used to thrive, bring the news that 
there are none to be found there now. The 
beach and flats are full of dead clams and 
mussels, they say, but there are no live ones. 
Crude oil is oozing from the defective stopcocks 
of the Standard oil tanks at Point Richmond, 
and the entire eastern side of the bay shore is 
covered with this substance, killing the clams 
and the fish in this locality. A. P. B. 
Fishes of (he Philippines. 
The Bureau of Fisheries has issued, as a part 
of Volume XXVII., of its Bulletin, 1907, an in¬ 
teresting paper on, “Fishes from Islands of the 
Philippine Archipelago,” by David Starr Jordan 
and Robert Earl Richardson. This paper is the 
result of a study of a large collection made in 
outlying islands of the Philippine group by Rich¬ 
ard Crittenden McGregor, a naturalist, employed 
by the Government of the Philippine Islands. 
Mr. McGregor was unable to work up the col¬ 
lection himself as he had intended and present 
it to the Museum of Stanford University. The 
collection contains a great number of specimens, 
representing 295 species, of which twelve are 
believed to be new to science. Localities repre¬ 
sented in the collection are Calayan, Ticao, 
Lubang, Mindoro, Sibuyan, Romblon and Cuyo; 
Aparri Cagayancillo and Manila on the Island 
of Luzon and Iloilo on the Island of Mindanao. 
A series of the specimens has been presented by 
the Bureau of Fisheries to the United States 
National Museum. 
The Latest Wrinkle. 
Anglers are a conservative lot, and very slow 
to avail themselves of the latest developments of 
science, says Dragnet, in the Fishing Gazette. 
The mechanical live bait which swam round and 
round like a submarine was a dead failure, and 
the numerous inventions for giving fish an elec¬ 
tric shock the moment they seize the bait never 
seem to have come into general use. Now, Le 
Pecheur tells a story of a man who was found 
sitting by the waterside with a swagger rod and 
the latest thing in landing nets. The rod was 
held in the usual fashion adopted by float fisher¬ 
men, but of line there was no vestige to be seen. 
Someone came up and asked him what he was 
doing. “Fishing!” was the answer. “But you 
haven’t got a line.” “Well, what of it? I sup¬ 
pose you’ve heard of wireless telegraphy? Well, 
this is the same principle applied to fishing. In 
fact, lineless angling.” “Yes, I see. But how 
do you find it answer? Do you catch more fish 
than you did in the old way?” “Well—not ex¬ 
actly more— but quite as many!” 
