


FOREST AND STREAM. 





SEA AND RIVER FISHING 



Game Fishes of the Pacific. 
BY CHARLES F. HOLDER. 
[Read at the Anglers’ Conference in New York.] 
In a conference of this kind, when the pur- 
pose is avowedly to discuss ways and means 
of reform along the lines of greatest resist- 
ance, it may not seem out of place to glance at 
one of the successful efforts which have been 
made on the Pacific Coast to establish a high 
| standard of sport, and to stop the unnecessary 
destruction of the splendid game fishes, which 
| have made the Government islands of San 
Clements, Coronado, and Santa Catalina, Santa 
Cruz, and the Bay of Monterey famous the 
world over. In attempting this, [ may be par- 
doned for referring to the work of a single 
organization, the Tuna Club, which was 
founded a decade or more ago, as I am -best 
informed as to its methods and development. 
It may seem absurd to the layman to be told 
that the Tuna Angiing Club had as its prime: 
motive—its fundamental principle—not the 
catching of tuna and other game fishes, not 
sport, but rather the conservation of the re- 
sources of this portion of the ocean. To the 
uninformed public, the Tuna’ Club has been 
an organization for the enhancement of sport; 
‘ts beautiful prizes and trophies have been 
apparently designed to encourage anglers to 
fish, first, last and all the time, and to catch 
and land the largest and seemingly the great- 
est number of fishes. But the fundamental 
principle which has underlaid the Tuna Club 
has been entirely and absolutely the reverse, 
its object has been to restrict the catch, to 
throw every obstacle in the way of the angler, 
and to make the attainment of his desires as 
difficult as possible. 
This can, possibly, best be illustrated by giv- 
ing a brief outline of the actual current of 
events which led to the founding of this ex- 
periment in piscatorial philanthropy. Some 
twenty years or more ago. I visited the island 
of Santa Catalina, which the Smithsonian In- 
stitution had recently exploited in an archzeo- 
logical sense, and being an angler, I was duly 
impressed by seeing yellowtails ranging from 
eighteen to forty pounds taken from the beach, 
not one or two, but dozens. I became an 
habitué of this sea angler’s paradise, and as 
time went on, it became known as the best sea 
angling locality on the coast; indeed, attained 
an international reputation for its big game 
fishes, photographs of some of which I hope 
can be shown you this evening. Personally I 
used a rod from the beginning, but for some 
years the majority of pleasure seekers here, to 
facilitate the slaughter, used hand-lines of a 
large and menacing caliber, and it was not 
unusual in the early days to see a launch go 
out equipped with from four to six of these 
engines of war and return with a load of 
yellowtajls, white sea bass, albacore and bonito 
splendid fishes, ranging up to fifty pounds— 
hard fighters, well deserving a better tate: 
The standard of sport appeared to be based 
on the theory of catching the most fish in the 
shortest time, and the man who could boast 
that he had killed the maximum number of 
fishes in a day posed as the lion of the hour. 
One of these piscatorial Neros informed me in 
a burst of confidence that in one day he had 
taken one thousand trout from a little stream, 
the San Gabriel, and Dr. Jordan will tell you 
that he saw a heap of several hundred of the 
rare golden trout lying on the banks of a 
stream in the high sierras, evidence that some 
of the unmentionable tribe had been trying to 
attain merit by seeing how many they could 
catch in a given time. . 
Finally convinced that it was a waste of 

time to argue, and that the “game shoat” was 
determined to remain one, I decided to aban- 
don him to his fate, or resort to some other 
method. The opportunity came one day when 
by mere good luck, the real “fsherman’s luck” 
which we all know so well, I took after a four 
hours’ struggle a tuna which towed me ten 
miles before it was brought to gaff. The fish 
was taken.with a 16-ounce rod, and what is 
known as a 2I-thread line. The catch created a 
sensation, the details being telegraphed far and 
wide, as the greatest feat with a rod ever per- 
petrated upon an unoffending and helpless pub- 
lic. The interest this catch aroused became 
the inspiration of the Tuna Club and the idea 
was conceived, that if a number of gentlemen 
would band together and agree to use rods 
and the light 21-thread line for all these big 
game fishes, wholesale slaughter could be 
shamed out of existence. 
So the Tuna Club took form in a guileless 
sort of fashion, and its constitution and by- 
laws were much the same as those of many 
clubs designed for the attainment of sport, the 
social amenities, and a big killing. But this 
club was bound to the use of light rods and 
lines, and hand-lines were referred to as “un- 
sportsmanlike and detrimental to the public 
interest.” In brief, the club rules established 
at one move, a high standard of: sport and fair 
play, and every man who joined the organiza- 
tion agreed to stand by it and promote its 
interests in every way. 
The club, which grew rapidly, had three 
classes of membership—those who landed a 
too-pound tuna according to club rules were 
called active members, as they certainly had 
to be very active to qualify, and they had the 
right to vote; there are but sixty-seven in the 
club to-day; then came the associate mem- 
bers, who were skilled anglers, in spiritual 
accord with the object of the movement, and 
the club has a membership of over three hun- 
dred of these; finally came the honorary mem- 
bers, gentlemen who had in some signal man- 
ner aided in the cause of the protection of 
game fishes. This membership included some 
of the most distinguished anglers in this coun- 
try and in England, whose names stood for all 
that is honorable in sport. Among them were 
Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, Henry 
Van Dyke, David Starr Jordan, Gifford 
Pinchot, Charles Hallock. Joseph Jefferson, 
the president of the British Sea Anglers’ As- 
sociation, and others. 
One of the first official acts of the club was 
to organize an angling tournament, or, as a 
cynical paper said, “offer a premium on slaugh- 
ter.’ The club offered prizes—gold medals, 
cups, rods, cash to anglers and boatmen—for 
the largest fish in the various classes. These 
prizes, at least the cups and medals, were to 
remain the property of the cluh, and to be 
imperishable monuments to the prowess of 
the angler. The club made a special point of 
offering prizes to the boatmen of successful 
anglers, and on the first of May, 1895, the first 
Tuna Club tournament opened and continued 
until October, when the prizes were given out. 
I had the pleasure at the annual banquet of 
the club of reporting the outcome. 
The first result was that boatmen refused 
to allow hand-lines in their boats, as their use 
disqualified anglers for club prizes, rewards 
and records. Then they all equipped them- 
selves with rods and lines of the club’s re- 
quired size, and at once victory was in sight. 
The hand-liner who could kill a fifty-pound fish 
in two minutes disappeared from the waters of 
Santa Catalina (a marvel, when it is considered 
that at least one hundred thousand persons 
visit this island annually), and every one be- 
came a rod fisherman. What was the result? 
It was manifestly impossible for any one to 
land an eighteen or twenty-pound fish with 
light rod and a 21-thread line in less than ten 
or twenty minutes, and half the fish hooked 
parted the lines if the anglers did not play 
them carefully. The use of the rods of course 
enhanced the sport seventy-five per cent., and 
the catch was reduced to a normal humane 
number. This confession, by the very ex- 
igencies of the situation, is of course strictly 
confidential, as I doubt if any of the thou- 
sands thus converted suspected that they wer¢ 
being tricked into fishing like gentlemen, and 
taught the lesson of a square deal to even a 
fish. 
Every year this tournament is given and new 
ideas introduced, new prizes awarded, and 
every year the catch is reduced until to-day. 
with the aid of other and younger clubs—the 
Light Tackle, Rod and Reel, Striped Bass, 
Coronado Rod and Reel, Aransas Pass Tarpon 
Club, Asbury Park Angling Club, and others, 
the spectacle of scores of splendid game fishes 
being towed out to sea and thrown away, is, at 
least at Avalon, but a memory. The boatmen 
of Avalon have, it is estimated, one hundred 
thousand dollars invested in fine rods, ree's, 
cleverly equipped launches and boats of vari- 
ous kinds, and I venture the assertion that 
nowhere in the world does a higher standard 
of sport prevail, and as twenty-five per cent. 
of the anglers are from without the State, the 
good work and example still goes on among 
the heathen® who are always with us. , 
While this work has been pre-eminentlv suc- 
cessful, so far as it goes, and in one locality, I 
submit to the anglers of this convention that 
the proper way to carry on such a reform 
movement is to make the fight in the public 
schools. Every normal boy is a future angler 
or hunter, and the place to reach him is in the 
public schools, where he is “tutored in the rudi- 
ments of many desperate studies.” I consider 
the splendid lecture system of the American 
Museum, established by Professor Albert S. 
Bickmore, as one of the most far-reaching and 
valuable educational factors of the past three 
decades, but one of the lectures should be on 
sport; its standards, its limitations and legiti- 
mate field—a lecture to be repeated in every 
public or private school in the land. This 
would be followed by the elimination from our 
common language of those more than offensive 
terms “pot-hunter” and “game hog.” Sport is 
degraded because the average hunter or angler 
obeys the instinct to hurt, and has not been 
told that there are high standards to be lived 
up to, and I can conceive no more important 
result of this notable assemblage of honest 
anglers than that it procure for schools, pub- 
lic and private, university and college, the 
giving of a lecture or lectures bearing on the 
subject of standards in sport, the rights of 
fishes, birds and all animals to humane con- 
sideration from sportsman or angler. 
The oceanic fishes of California are remark- 
able for their size and fighting qualities. At 
the head stands the tuna, the record rod catch 
of the Tuna Club being 251 pounds. This fish 
has fought an angler from one to fourteen 
hours and then escaped. Then comes the yel- 
low fin tuna, a splendid allied visitant, rang- 
ing up to 75 pounds, a fine game fish, as un- 
certain in its coming and going as the larger 
fish, yet in 1906 five hundred yellow-fin tunas 

were taken at Avalon with the six-ounce rods 
and o-thread lines, introduced by President 
Arthur Jerome Eddy, of the Light Tackle 
Club. 
Next is the albacore, or long-finned tuna, a 
hard and vigorous fighter, ranging up to sixty 
pounds; the bonito, twenty; the yellowtail 
(Seriola), seyenteen to sixty pounds. In the 

