Show = 01 CUiNG tftWIftW kN LING FOR MARINE MONSTERS IN SAN DIEGO BAY h1 I Process u of the Progressive KincX Tto Part Toothpicks Play Tho Run With a Uej Jlembers of the Bass FAmily That Weigh Hundreds Pounds Dont talk to a man from southern California about black bass fishing or bo will make your best bass story a feeble fee-ble pitiful thing He will tell you of black bass that could swallow the biggest big-gest days catch you ever made and take in your creel for dessert without as much as gulping Voice a doubt and the man from San Diego will pull from his fishing traps something that looks like a one flaked ships anchor That is what he fishes with for the strange monstrous black bass in the bays and about the islands of the southern California Cali-fornia coast They dont call them black bass down there though the fish commissioners com-missioners ray they arc and the naturalists natu-ralists have identified them by fins and bones and form with the gamy two and three pounders that make men fickle oven to trout The men who catch these fish that sometimes weigh 1000 pounds call them jewfish a corruption of junofish The last is a traislation of one of their Mexican Mex-ican names Probably they were called junefish from the fact that they are plentiful altrag the shores in the late spring and early summer No matter how he got his name the jewfish isa wonder He looks like a fishermans nightmare when they get him out of the water Every fin and mark is there magnified out of all proportion His scales are as big as half dollars hif mouth is a gaping chasm and the spikes of his dorsal fin are bigger than tenpen ny nails I i The process of catching a jewfish is a progressive and interesting one The fishers begin at the beginning Wib bent pins or dip nets they look for minnows min-nows or sirdelles The quarry secured it promptly becomes bait and the concourse con-course is treated to smelt fishing Then comes the smelts turn in the succes ion He is impaled and the fish rmnn with a heavier rod and a larger hook goes to the other side of the wharf fti a halibut or a sea bass When the bait dead or alive is read > t the stoutest armed man on the wharf picks up the line Ho swings the two or three pounds of bait around his head like an Indian does the bolas and hurls it seaward The great line as thick asa as-a lead pencil coils out after the hook and that is nearly all until the fish comes along Incidentally toothpicks play quite apart a-part in the fishing Each fisherman takes handful with him when he leaves the breakfast table They stick one in a crack at the top of a pile and loosely loon the line around it The shore part of the line is coiled on the wharf and tho end is fast to an empty powder keR or some such thing that will float welL I On the toothpick is stuck a bit of white rag and as half a dozen or a dozen lines are used at once there is a string of these little signal flags all along the dock The fisherman has nothing more to do for awhile than watch the flags When yno goes down it means that something has taken tho bait After gathering in the barracouda eads or the impaled halibut the jewfish starts away like the locomotive on a fast express ex-press Down goes the signal flap Everybody around runs for the line They know they cant hold the fish but the resistance makes it harder for him and helps them to tire him outthe ul timate object The great fish does not struggle at first but moves steadily seaward sea-ward pulling the line through the mens hands Occasionally when the fish weighs less than 200 ponuds they can tire him out without paying out all of the line but usuallyit all goes and presently the straggle is transferred to the water The empty powder keg bounces over the water most erratically erratical-ly the men chase it in a boat and when they catch it hold on Then the real fun of jewfishing begins It is just sport for a fish of any size to tow a Whitehall around the bay and it is pretty pret-ty t rough sailing in his wake As soon as he realizes that there is a fight on the jewfish j seems to forget that ho is a staid bottom fish All the steam of his black bass ancestors gets riley and ho plunges and turns twists and strikes Somewhere Some-where down in the cavern of his gullet he has an arrangement of bone like a couple of millstones and when ho discovers dis-covers ho cannot spit out tho hook he tries to swallow it and grind the line apart so the slack has to be carefully attended to There are some tremendous fish in San Diego bay and though the hooks are made of hand forged tool steel they have snapped many of them If everything goes well if the hook holds and the fish does not grind the line if he steers away from submerged bnoy chains and docks the fight must end in the death of the fish Sometimes he tows the boat for three hours before his strength is gone and he is hauled to the surface The death struggle is worst of all The fish is dragged to the top and lies there apparently all but dead Their they drive a harpoon into him ind the sting of the steel starts all his life again The harpoon line holds him near the surface and ho makes a great raM for a little while but oi course it cannot last At the end the fish is towed back to the dock and there the floating population of San Diego is assembled Everybody gets hold of a ropo ard hoists the giant fish upon the dock and there the tired monster flounders floun-ders its mouth gaping like a tunnel and its eyes big as baseballs starting from their sockets San Francisco E miner |