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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 30, 1908. 
Catalina Light Tackle. 
Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, Cal., May 7.— 
Editor Forest and Stream: Just what it means 
to subdue and finally lead to gaff a plunging 
fish of from fifteen to thirty pounds fighting 
weight, with packthread and a frail wand of 
bamboo incapable of lifting a pound and a half, 
is not easily comprehended by the bass or trout 
angler, but the practicability of the outfit for 
such work has been proved by the fact that 
every angler who has attempted to qualify has 
landed his first fish in high-class style. Need¬ 
less to say, none but the experts have taken much 
interest in the newer light tackle, and it speaks 
volumes for their skill to say that as yet not a 
rod has been broken, nor has the promiscuous 
harvest of lines that was predicted come to pass. 
Best of all, the vast increase in the sport made 
possible by the refinement in tools has justified 
the contention that men would be well satisfied 
with a smaller catch. A by-effect has been to 
raise the yellowtail another notch in the scale 
of public estimation, and by the end of summer 
he undoubtedly will stand in the front rank as 
Catalina’s representative game fish, vice the 
blue tuna, temporarily out of the consideration. 
General lack of confidence in the tackle has 
caused the first fights to be rather long thus 
far, but anglers are learning that the tackle, 
when steady strain is applied, possesses sur¬ 
prising power. 
Dr. Van Bergin, of Buffalo, a veteran and en¬ 
thusiastic angler who has passed some three 
months at the island, had the good fortune to 
take the first card in the new club with a nine- 
teen-pound yellowtail. A 1 Carraher, of Avalon, 
got his off Seal Rocks, where several boats 
chummed up a small school of good-sized fish, 
and had strikes galore. Carraher’s rod is a 
little stouter than the Three-Six sticks av¬ 
erage, he having made over a little nine- 
ounce rod and lightened the butt, but it 
weighed in, and a six-thread line was em¬ 
ployed. If the rods are better stiffened a little, 
that is what the Three-Six experts want to know 
at once. Few think so, because the strength of 
the line is the final arbiter, and the rod must 
conform to it. Too much backbone will tear 
the lines up; the idea is to have a rod of just 
such power that it may be sprung to the elastic 
limit without prejudicing even a long line. 
Yet the fights have not been nearly as long as 
expected. The four minutes to a pound that 
was predicted, has proved an over-estimate, 
hardly any more time being required than most 
of the nine-ouncers wear out on their fish. 
There is something peculiar about a yellowtail, 
or any other big game fish. If he is crowded 
hard, he will fight back; but if the battle is 
conducted on more careful lines without any 
attempt to get the fish in quickly, the net re¬ 
sult is generally a quicker kill, with less exertion 
on the part of the angler. 
Several things have been learned in the past 
week that will be of interest to all who con¬ 
template using the Three-Six outfits. In the 
first place, most of the experts are fairly well 
convinced that no kind of a mechanical drag 
will do, although theoretically such, by saving 
wear on the line, ought to be desirable. The 
objection is that it is impossible to accurately 
gauge the strain one is putting on the line ex¬ 
cept by using the thumb, or at most, a thin kid 
or buckskin strap drag for emergencies. Not 
much pressure is needed; only a little more than 
enough to keep the reel from over-running. 
By using a 3/0 or 2/0 reel, the spool diameter 
is great enough, so that even the thumb exerts 
a considerable brake influence, the spool not 
turning fast enough to burn it except in unusual 
instances. Furthermore, a local angler has made 
a kind of line oil from the eucalyptus which has 
proved a great lubricator and saver of this part 
of the tackle, keeping salt water out, reducing 
friction against the guides and one’s thumb 
when used as a drag, and preserving the line 
materially. At first it was thought a new line 
would be needed every second day, but Com- 
modore Potter and I have taken over 500 
pounds of fish on one line- each, and the end is 
not yet. 
Hooking fish was thought likely to prove a 
serious obstacle at first, but it takes little prac¬ 
tice to acquire the trick. There is no use at¬ 
tempting to strike fish trolling; the rods are 
too limber to set the hook in the horny fore¬ 
jaw of a yellowtail with much certainty. It is 
in my opinion better to feed the bait back into 
the fish an instant, not offering any resistance 
as he is felt to grab it, and then, just as the 
sardine is well into his mouth, a short turn of 
the wrist generally will set the yellowtail a-danc- 
ing. Once the hook is well in, only enough 
pressure to keep the line taut is needed; the 
longer the run, the quicker the fish is done. 
One big advantage claimed for the new gear 
is the excellent sport made possible by it right 
in Avalon Bay; in fact, Commodore Potter and 
I nailed four good-sized yellowtail right around 
Sugar Loaf, fishing over the reef where most 
of the nine-threaders would not attempt to hook 
a yellowtail, but we had no difficulty in leading 
them out to sea. 
Just as an illustration of the power of the 
tackle, the only fish I have lost on Three-Six 
may be worth telling about. We were chum¬ 
ming over the reef of Sugar Loaf, when I felt 
a yellowtail grab the bait. He took it about 
like a whitefish, but the sensation of weight and 
loginess was there. We started to take him out 
to sea between the kelp on the reef and a big 
mooring that lay a hundred yards to the south, 
but were prevented long enough to let the fish 
bolt toward the kelp on the reef. We swung 
him short of most of it, but he took a turn 
around one big submarine tree, and just by way 
of seeing what the tackle would do in a pinch, 
I decided to stay with him and see if a little 
care, supplemented by some of Percy Neal’s 
skill in handling a launch might not turn the 
trick. So a little judicious sawing back an'd 
forth, with considerable steady strain was put 
on for five minutes without much apparent 
effect, when all at once the strain released and 
the fish began running in an abrupt, aimless 
fashion. Soon a huge mass of kelp appeared, 
and there at the corner of it was the fish, com¬ 
pletely spent by his persistent lugging against 
the slowly yielding mass. At the critical minute 
the magneto slipped and the engine coughed 
feebly, stopped, and the boat lost her steerage 
way. Percy then tried to bring the fish Jo gaff 
by leading it in hand over hand, which proved 
too much for the line, and the yellowtail, a six- 
teen-pounder, we thought, rolled over feebly 
and sunk to the bottom for repairs. 
Too many will attempt to break the record— 
and their lines also—for landing fish quickly on 
Three-Six tackle. This was not the purpose the 
combination was designed for, and those who 
are anxious to land the greatest number of fish 
possible in a given time had better stay in the 
two-by-four class, where they belong. Undoubt¬ 
edly there are occasional individual fish that 
can be crowded; Commodore Potter got his 
eighteen-pounder in eight minutes, but he 
possesses that intuitive faculty of knowing just 
how much he can crowd a fish safely, and which 
fish it is safe to try it on. Yellowtail may be 
“pumped” considerably on Three-Six tackle, 
but about three turns of the reel is all one 
should attempt to recover at one raise, and the 
thumb should be on the spool, not on the handle, 
when lifting with the rod. 
It is well for the beginner to remember that 
his chief aim is to land a big fish with the least 
possible strain that can be maintained constantly 
upon the mouth of his quarry. If he bears that 
in mind, and keeps his rod sprung to a quarter 
circle throughout, he will not get too much 
strain; what is particularly dangerous is lower¬ 
ing the tip and fighting from the reel. It is 
well for the angler to thread his rod and attach 
the far end of the line to something solid on 
the floor, experimenting with various pulls that 
may be exerted by changing the angle of the 
rod. A self-registering spring scale such as is 
used to test the strength of the lines is just 
right and will teach him many practical things 
about the sport that he cannot learn in the ex¬ 
citement attendant upon fishing. . 
The difficulty of hooking fish on Three-Six has 
been surmounted by a mixture of both the 
methods suggested in my last letter. One was 
by changing the old idea of letting the fish hook 
themselves on impact, and feeding the bait into 
them a couple of seconds, so they get the hook 
well down past their hard jaws; the other scheme 
was by using smaller hooks of finer wire and 
less barb, sharpened to needle points. The 7/0 
and 8/0 O’Shaughnessy have been used with suc¬ 
cess, although we cannot get quite the shape 
we want yet. What is wanted is a tinned hook 
with drilled needle eye, (horizontally, not 
flattened parallel to the curvature of the hook) 
with a particularly long, fine point and longer 
shank. 
The Tuna Club house is coming along in fine 
shape, and the institution will have a home 
worthy of itself in every sense. 
Heavy northwesters have prevailed at the 
island for a much longer time this year than 
usual; but the anglers believe that fair weather 
has set in now for good. The sardine crop is 
splendid; there is an immense number of the 
fish, but they are in widely scattered schools, 
not densely packed anywhere, so the sardine 
seiners cannot work much havoc with them at 
present. 
The white sea bass season thus far has been a 
good deal of a failure for some very plain rea¬ 
sons that will commend themselves to any, even 
non-anglers. 1 he weather has been distinctly 
unfavorable. Further, the seiners have been 
stretching nets along the coast illegally, setting 
them fast to anchors and buoys, and to each 
other, making chains of nets often thousands of 
yards long, according to eye witnesses. Now 
this is illegal, and the law is perfectly plain 
upon the point. The proper authorities have 
been informed, and evidence already is in hand 
