Aug., 13, 1910] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
257 
smoking and discussing plans for • the morrow 
until 9 o'clock, when we turned in on the rough 
wooden bunks to be lulled to sleep by the steady 
patter of the rain and the sound of the distant 
surf breaking on the outer beach. 
The morning broke cloudy and foggy, but Cap 
predicted clearing weather as he got sail on the 
sloop, and before sunrise we were picking a 
tortuous course across the shallow bay toward 
a certain channel where good catches had re¬ 
cently been made by chumming with mossbunk- 
ers. The tide was nearly low when we finally 
dropped anchor, but as the -fish would not begin 
to bite for half an hour or so after the turn, 
there was plenty of time to rig up the rods and 
prepare a supply of bait. For the latter purpose 
slices a couple of inches long were cut from 
the backs of the little ’bunkers, while the re¬ 
mains of the fish were ground up in the chum 
machine which Cap manipulated with great 
gusto as he hummed away at some tuneless ditty 
we finally gave up fishing and just lounged 
around the boat, smoking and watching the terns 
feeding on the larger pieces of our chum. It 
was very pretty to see one of these handsome 
birds hover nearly motionless for a moment, 
then drop almost to the water, and with grace¬ 
fully down-bent head and neck gather in the 
morsel, while he barely touched the surface with 
the tips of his outstretched feet in the daintiest 
way imaginable. 
Cap’s prophecy of clearing weather came true, 
for by mid-day the sun was shining brightly and 
the wind came out fresh from the westward. 
As we looked about and noted a bank of great 
blue black clouds in the northwest, Cap said: 
“There's wind in there, boys, and she’ll come 
a-peelin’ pretty soon. The fish won't bite any 
more on this tide, so we’d best pull up and get 
some sail on, for there’ll be fun present’y.” And 
“peel” she surely did, for in half an hour the 
whitecaps were racing across the bay, and with 
It was a wonderfully beautiful sight that met 
my eyes as I opened the cabin door the next 
morning and stepped out into the cool air of a 
perfect September dawn. It was about 5 o’clock 
and the whole eastern sky was radiant with the 
gold and orange of the sunrise, the colors grad¬ 
ually fading away ttpward the dull gray blue of 
the zenith. Not a breath of air was stirring, 
and the broad surface of the bay seemed a sec¬ 
ond inverted sky, the illusion, broken only by a 
few scattered boats lying peacefully at anchor 
in the deeper water off the mouth of our little 
creek. To the north and west the wide meadows 
stretched away mile after mile, a great sea of 
grass already bronze-tinted by the approaching 
autumn, and as I looked a big blue heron rose 
from some hidden pool and with trailing legs 
winged slowly away till he was swallowed up 
in the hazy distance. 
But there were other things, to do that morn¬ 
ing besides watching the splendor of the growing 
The Captain’s Shack. 
which seemed to have no ending, but, like the 
brook, to "flow on forever.” Numerous terns 
and a couple of the smaller varieties of gull 
were all about us, screaming and chasing each 
other through the air, while from away up in 
the gray sky came the occasional sweet whistle 
of yellowlegs on their way to some favorable 
feeding ground laid bare by the falling water. 
The first intimation we had of the change of 
the tide was when the boat began to swing slow¬ 
ly about on her anchor, and when she was once 
more straightened out before the growing power 
of the current, Billy and I took our places in 
the stern while Cap threw overboard several 
handfuls of chum. As the oily slick from this 
spread away down the channel, we cast into it, 
the idea being that the bluefish would follow up 
along the trail thus made till they came to our 
baits, and so be led to their undoing. For fif¬ 
teen minutes there was not a sign of a nibble, 
then Billy got a strike and quickly reeled in a 
small one, which was safely landed. Soon a 
larger fish of a pound and a half followed his 
relative into the big ice tub, and for an hour 
we had good sport. Then the seaweed, loosened 
by the storm from its moorings alongshore, began 
to come in with the flood tide, and we had such 
difficulty in keeping our hooks free from it that 
BLUEFISHING OFF FIRE ISLAND. 
two reefs in the big mainsail we started on the 
long beat to windward back to the shanty. 
What a sail that was! The little sloop was 
stout and seaworthy and she pounded into the 
head seas in a way that showered us with spray 
ai d made us glad at times of the protection of 
the half cabin. The wind increased steadily in 
force, and by the time we reached the dock it 
was blowing a full gale. Other boats that had 
further to go than we anchored and rode it out, 
and it was morning before some of them got in. 
The day in the open air had given us all hearty 
appetites, and soon after our return Cap started 
in to prepare what he termed a “real supper.” 
He had a lot of fresh clams in the shanty and 
a couple of dozen of them were taken out, 
steamed in a big iron kettle, and then opened 
and chopped up fine. Next a rather stiff batter 
was mixed, the clams stirred into it. salt added 
and the final result was ladled out into little 
mounds and fried over a hot fire. “Clam flit¬ 
ters” the baymen call them, and the memory of 
their exceeding goodness is with me yet. Of 
course we had other things to eat—broiled fresh 
bluefish, eggs, coffee, toast; and when the meal 
was over we stretched out on the bunks and lis¬ 
tened to Cap’s stories of his forty-odd years of 
knocking about the sea. 
Part of the Catch. 
day, for it had been planned to try the trolling 
down the inlet. So we busied ourselves getting 
breakfast, and just as the sun peeped above the 
horizon we boarded the sloop and headed down 
the channel toward the open sea. A light breeze 
had sprung up from the northwest, and with 
Cap at the stick we slipped easily along with the 
tide, while Billy and I got ready the trolling 
apparatus. To me, who was accustomed only 
to the light rod and small hooks of the fresh¬ 
water fisherman, that tackle was a source of 
wonderment not entirely unmixed with scorn, 
for it seemed heavy enough to hold Leviathan 
himself. In the first place, the lines were of 
the appearance of good heavy chalk line, and 
the five-inch metal squid which each bore was 
armed with a hook that reminded me not a little 
of the things the truckmen use in handling bales 
and boxes. Billy said that the squids had to be 
strong to stand the wear and tear of the work, 
but he did not seem to like it when 1 asked if 
they ever used one as an anchor. We were to 
use three lines, one over the stern and the other 
two fastened to a couple of stout poles which 
were lashed to the boat and projected six or 
eight feet on either side. To each of these side 
lines a shorter cord was fastened, so that when 
a fish struck, it was necessary only to haul in 
