ll the others dove pellmell after
him. The line, of course, made a white streak in the water. Perhaps the
tuna bit it off. Perhaps they crowded it off. However they did it, the
fact was that they cut the line. Probably it would have been impossible
to catch one of those large tuna on the Tuna Club tackle. I hated to
think of breaking off hooks in fish, but, after it was too late, I
remembered with many a thrill the size and beauty and tremendous
striking energy of those tuna, the wide, white, foamy, furious boils on
the surface, the lunges when hooked, and the runs swift as bullets.

That experience would never come to me again. It was like watching for
the rare transformations of nature that must be waited for and which
come so seldom.

* * * * *

But, such is the persistence of mankind in general and the doggedness of
fishermen in particular, Captain Dan and I kept on roaming the seas in
search of tuna. Nothing more was seen or heard of the great drifting
schools. They had gone down the channel toward Mexico, down with the
mysterious currents of the sea, fulfilling their mission in life.
However, different anglers reported good-sized tuna off Seal Rocks and
Silver Canon. Several fish were hooked. Mr. Reed brought in a
one-hundred-and-forty-one-pound tuna that took five hours to land. It
made a dogged, desperate resistance and was almost unbeatable. Mr. Reed
is a heavy, powerful man, and he said this tuna gave him the hardest
task he ever attempted. I wondered what I would have done with one of
those two-or three-hundred-pounders. There is a difference between
Pacific and Atlantic tuna. The latter are seacows compared to these blue
pluggers of the West. I have hooked several very large tuna along the
Seabright coast, and, though these fish got away, they did not give me
the battle I have had with small tuna of the Pacific. Mr. Wortheim,
fishing with my old boatman, Horse-mackerel Sam, landed a
two-hundred-and-sixty-two-pound Atlantic tuna in less than two hours.
Sam said the fish made a loggy, rolling, easy fight. Crowninshield, also
fishing with Sam, caught one weighing three hundred pounds in rather
short order. This sort of feat cannot be done out here in the Pacific.
The deep water here may have something to do with it, but the tuna are
different, if not in species, then in disposition.

My lucky day came after no tuna had been reported for a week. Captain
Dan and I ran out off Si