Oct. 8, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
581 
ply is necessarily limited, but Mr. Ross found 
me a gem at St. Ann’s, one Percy McCritchie, 
-who with a little practice should have a great 
future as a tuna man. Six shillings a day, con¬ 
sidering the work; is a moderate charge for his 
services, and if to this I add the four for the 
hire of my boat and expenses incidental to its 
fitting out, the total of half a sovereign a day 
will be found reasonable enough, and will en¬ 
dure until millionaires from the States come 
aiong and spoil the market. 
As this is strenuous work, entailing in some 
■cases a prolonged seance after dark, the intend¬ 
ing angler may be advised to provide himself 
with a miscellany of articles over and above his 
tackle and bait to meet every condition of rain 
and sunshine, fog, cold, hunger and so forth. 
The following list may look excessive, but it 
contains no item which may be considered super¬ 
fluous—first-aid case, pistol (for signaling), com¬ 
pass (in case of fog, which comes up very 
rapidly from Newfoundland), flask of brandy, 
tin of biscuits, bottle of drinking water, electric 
lamp, broad-brimmed hat, smoked goggles, cap, 
waterproof and sweater. To these may be added 
tobacco and matches, with a large stock 'of 
patience for reverses and a smaller ration of 
-humility in case of success, an, emergency ration 
that will in all probability not be required. 
The method of baiting is to hook the fish 
either through the lips or by a double turn in 
the throat, and in either case to sew up the lips 
with gut. This is less conspicuous than thread, 
an important consideration on days when, as 
sometimes happens, the tuna looks all round the 
bait before taking it. American anglers prefer 
to pass the hook through the lips only. Their 
theory is that the tuna invariably strikes at the 
eyes of the flying fish (the bait in general use 
at Catalina), and thus becomes hooked in the 
roof of the mouth, the most desirable spot. I 
am not sure whether in seas where there are 
no flying fish, the tuna would necessarily seize 
its prey in the same way. If it does not. then 
Mr. Ross’ method of passing the hook twice 
through the throat seems to me preferable. At 
the same time, his failure to tire out his fish 
niay possibly be attributable to the fact that 
owing to his different mode of baiting he does 
not hook them in the roof of the mouth. Un¬ 
less this be done, it is hopeless to endeavor to 
exhaust fish of such size, as, with the hook in 
the angle of the mouth, a tuna of that weight 
could probably tow your boat for two days with¬ 
out feeling much the worse. 
The fishing is all done by trolling, either in 
favorite coves on the chance of raising a fish, 
or in front of a school that has been marked 
down and headed off. For the latter purpose 
some sort of launch or motor boat is indispen¬ 
sable, as in their forays on the herring and other 
bait the tuna range over a hundred acres of 
water at top speed, and it would be very difficult 
to locate them in a rowing boat. They show 
themselves in two different ways at the surface, 
making the water boil when they are feeding on 
small fry, or merely cutting the surface with the 
dorsal fins after the manner of sharks. One 
afternoon, indeed, a large shark cruised between 
Mr. Ross’s boat and my own. and we were at 
first m doubt whether it might not be a tuna. 
It is important, once the fish are sighted, not 
to row right down on them. The proper plait 
is to head them off. and then, by bringing the 
boat round in a wide sweep, to trail the bait 
right across their path. 
I am the last of the old brigade. Mr. Ross 
and Mr. Conn left on Sunday, and I have stayed 
another week, with the bay to myself—a some¬ 
what depressing monopoly—in the hopeless en¬ 
deavor to get, at any rate, a run. Well, I have 
at least the consolation of letting the charitable 
assume that if a single tuna had taken my bait 
it would have died its one and only death. I 
fear that such an assumption will be anything 
but general, and once more 1 retire hurt from 
the pursuit of tuna, the only comfort being that 
I have spied out the ground, and even if I do 
not return with grapes and pomegranates I shall, 
at any rate, be able to give all the information 
needed by those who mean to do better next 
season. The diary of this year’s venture may 
meanwhile be brought down to date, though it 
is hardly an encouraging record. Still, the way 
of pioneers was never smooth, and one of these 
days no doubt, when many a Canadian tuna has 
been killed with rod and line, we shall have to 
hide our diminished heads. 
Despairing of seeing tuna in Mira Bay, I re¬ 
turned to St. Ann’s on Aug. 15 to find that dur¬ 
ing my absence both Messrs. Ross and Conn had 
held a fish for a short time, Mr. Conn’s having 
broken the double line above the wire, and Mr. 
Ross’s having got into a school, one of which 
cut the line with its fin. The finest fight of all 
was on the 16th, when I watched Mr. Ross give 
battle to a monster for several hours. The strug¬ 
gle lasted in all seven hours and a half—not, 
indeed, so long as his fight of nineteen hours last 
year, but it was hard fighting every inch of the 
way. That morning the tuna were on the move 
as usual just after low water. Mr. Conn and I, 
in another part of the bay, where in the thick of 
them, but they would not take our bait. Then 
we saw Mr. Ross careering across the bay in 
tow of a fish, with his yacht Adene II. standing 
by at a safe distance. I watched him being- 
towed and alternately recovering line for fully 
five hours, during which time his boat must have 
covered between twenty and thirty miles, going 
twice right out of the bay and again half way 
up the north shore. About 3 p. m. I left the 
scene, confident that he would kill his fish, but 
it seems that at 3:30 bis rod broke, and he ac¬ 
tually held the tuna for two hours longer—a 
fine performance in any case—until, just as he 
was working it to the shallows, ripe for the gaff, 
the line caught in the jagged edge of the broken 
top and parted. He fought gallantly the whole 
time, and his men rowed like heroes, one of them 
a native of the bay, the other a Cornishman from 
Port Isaac. 
For the next two or three days the weather 
was against fishing, but on the 20th we were 
among the schools again. I must have dragged 
my bait, a fresh gaspcreau, across the snouts of 
twenty monsters, and Mr. Ross tried a mackerel 
with the same result. It may be that the hooks 
showed too plainly in the bright sun and calm 
sea, for some gaspereaux thrown from the deck 
of the yacht were snapped up as they touched 
the water. Henceforth I was left alone in my 
glory, though the glory was the least part of it. 
I tried every expedient. I was out at different 
times of the tide—one morning, indeed, in full 
moonlight at 3:30 a. m.— but it was of no avail. 
I did not. in fact, get a single other calm day, 
the only condition under which the tuna can be 
seen so as to work the bait effectually. In other 
years, it may be, they have been so plentiful that 
a run could usually be reckoned on by trolling 
“blind,’,’ but in the present season, .when Mr. 
Ross only hooked four in a month (as against 
twenty-one in 1908 and eleven in five days’ fish¬ 
ing last year), such luck could not be reckoned 
on, and the fish had to be seen before they could 
be hooked. 
The last morning of all gave the final blow to 
my dwindling hopes. For two days' it had been 
impossible to get out, so high was the wind. 
Then came a day of perfect calm, with the inner 
harbor full of tuna. The fins showed right be¬ 
neath my window and past the little church on 
the beach. But the only bait I had was a mack¬ 
erel, which, already on the hook, was in the ice 
house. In spite of this precaution its charm had 
faded, and nothing would induce the tuna to 
take it. So we got away to the net, a mile or 
so down the bay. in the hope of finding a gas- 
pereau or two. What we did find was a shark 
eight feet long, wound about so that it was suf¬ 
focated, and with it were a hake and some other 
small fish. It took no little effort to get the 
monster, which must have weighed all of 400 
pounds, into the little boat, net and all, but we 
had no alternative, and that ended my fishing 
for the season. I never favor the attitude of 
those who grumble that the stars in their courses 
fight against them, but really this shock of find¬ 
ing a shark where I wanted bait, with the tuna 
all around, did seem typical of a series of dis¬ 
illusions. Two days later I turned my back on 
St. Ann’s, and, as I was the last to fish there 
this summer, the first Canadian tuna will not be 
killed on the rod until another is with us. 
Newark Bait- and Fly-Casting Club. 
Newark, N. J., Oct. 1 .--Editor Forest and 
Stream: The events postponed from Sept. 10 
were cast off to-day. The sun shone brightly 
most of the afternoon, but a gale of wind, with 
frequent hard squalls, made it difficult for the 
casters to maintain their footing at times. Need¬ 
less to say, their scores suffered, though Reuben 
Leonard bettered his Boston record of 13614 
feet by 18 inches in the salmon event. The latter 
event was a special one, all of the others being- 
postponed contests: 
Miss-and-out, half-ounce bait: 
Arthur T. Neu . 
1 
1 
1 
1—4 
P. J. Muldoon . 
1 
1 
1 
0—3 
Ralph Eichlen . 
i 
1 
0 
0—2 
A. T. Marsh. 
i 
0 
0 
0—1 
F. T. Mapes. 
0 
0 
0 
0—0 
Salmon fly-casting: 
Feet. 
Feet. 
Reuben Leonard .... 
.. 13 S 
A. T. Marsh... 
.. 112 
W . C. Metcalfe. 
.. 112 
Perry Frazer . 
,. 103 
Accuracy fly event 
T )emerits. 
Demerits. 
C. T. Champion. 
. 9 
Mr. Mercer .. 
37 
A. 1. Marsh. 
13 
Reuben Leonard 
3S 
"P. T. Muldoon. 
92 
A. T. Neu. 
40 
Perry Frazer . 
25 
W. C. Metcalfe.. 
45 
F. T. Mapes. 
30 
Dry fly, accuracy, five-ounce rods: 
Demerits. Demerits. 
A. T. Marsh. 18 Mr. Mercer . 24 
C. T. Champion. 23 P. J. Muldoon. 33 
Reuben Leonard .... 23 
Fred T. Mapes, Sec’y. 
All 'the fish lazvs of the United States and 
Canada r revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Lazos in Brief. See adv. 
