Show t PATCHING JEWISH ANGLING FOR MARINE MONSTERS IN SAN DIEGO BAY ths Process Is of the Progressive Kind Tho 1jirt Toothpicks Play Tho Run With a Keg Members of the Bass Family That Veieh Hundreds of Pounds Dont talk to a man from southern California about black bass fishing oho o-ho will make your best bass story a fee blo pitiful thing Ho 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 fluked 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 say they are and the naturalists natu-ralists have identified them by fins and bones and form with the gamy two and three pounders that make men finirle even to trout The men who catch these fish that sometimes weigh 1000 pounds call them jowfish a corruption of junefish The last is a translation of one of their Mexican Mex-ican names Probably they were called juuefish from the fact that they are plentiful along the shores in the late spring and early summer No matter how he got his name the jewfish is a wonder He looks like a bass fishermans nightmare when they get him out of the water Every fin and mark is thero magnified out of all proportion Hla scales are 03 big as half dollars hi mouth is a gaping chasm and the spikes of his dorsal fin are bigger than tenpen ny nails The process of catching a jewfish is a progressive and interesting one lVie fishers begin at the beginning With bent pins or dip nets they look for mm news or sardelles The quarry secured it promptly becomes bait and the concourse con-course is treated to smelt fishing Then comes the smelts turn in the succession succes-sion He is impaled and the fisherman with a heavier rod and a larger hocik goes to the other side of the wharf for a halibut or a sea bass When the bait dead or alive is ready tho stoutest armed man on the wharf picks up the line He swings the two or three pounds of bait around his head like an Indian does the bolas and hurls it seaward Tho great line as thick asa as-a lead pencil coils out after the hook and that is nearly all until the fish I comes along Incidentally toothpicks play quite apart a-part in tho fishing Each fisherman takes a handful with him when he leaves the breakfast table They stick one in a crack at tho top of a pile and loosely loop the line around it Tho shore part of the line is coiled on the wharf and the end is fast to an empty powder keg or some such thing that will float well 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 awhilo than to watch the flags When one goes down it means that something has taken the bait After gathering in tho barracouda eads or the impaled halibut the jewfish starts away like the locomotive on a fast express ex-press Down goes the signal flaj Everybody around runs for the line They know they cant hold the fish bui tho resistance makes it harder for him and helps them to tiro him out tho ultimate ul-timate object The great fish does not struggle at first but moves steadily seaward sea-ward pulling the lino through the mens hands Occasionally when the fish weighs less than 200 pounds they can tiro him out without paying out all of tho line but usually it all goes and presently the struggle is transferred to tho water Tho empty powder keg bounces over the water most erratically erratical-ly tho men chase it in a boat and when they catch it hold on Then tho real fun of jewfishing begins It is just sport for a fish of any size to tow a Whitehall around the bay and its pretty pret-ty rough sailing in his wake As soon as he realizes that there is a fight on the jewfish seems to forget that he 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 tho cavern of biB gullet ho has an arrangement of bone liko a 1 Couple of millstones and when he discovers dis-covers ho cannot spit out the 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 tho hooks are mado of hand forged tool steel they have snapped many of them If everything goes well if the hook holds and tho fish does not grind the line if he steers away from submerged buoy chains and docks tho fight must end in tho death of the fish Sometimes ho tows tho boat for three hours before his strength is gone and he is hauled to the surface The death struggle is r2HA ill The fish is dragged to the HBBP iies there apparently all but j dead Ther they drive a harpoon into him and the sting of the steel starts all his life again Tho harpoon line holds hirj near the surface and he makes a great rao for a little while but of course it cannot last At tho end the fish is towed back to the dock and there the floating population of San Diego is assembled Everybody gets hold of a opt avd hoists the giant fish upon the Sock and there the tired monster flounders floun-ders its mouth gaping IIKO a tunnel and its eyes big as aseballs starting from their sockets San Francisco Ex uuillcr |