Tuna

“ It was thrilling to run down on the school and skip a flying-fish before the leaders as they rolled along, fins out, silver sides showing, raising little swells and leaving a dark, winkling, dimpling wake behind them. When the bait got just right a larger tuna charged furiously, throwing up a great splash. He hit the bait, and threw the hook before R. C. could strike hard. ”

“ Sometimes before tackle is in readiness and launches got under way, the tuna shoal sweeps right into the little bay of Avalon, chasing the flying fish in every direction. It can easily be imagined that such a sight is calculated to fire the blood of the most phlegmatic of fishermen, and, the Western American being by no means a stolid individual, the effect must be somewhat startling. ”

“ One famous fisherman brought in thirteen tuna—nine hundred and eighty-six pounds of tuna—that he caught in one day! This is unbelievable, yet it is true. Another brought in eleven tuna in one day. These fishermen are representative of the coterie who fish for records. All of them are big, powerful men, and when they hook a fish they will not give him a foot of line if they can help it. They horse him in, and if they can horse him in before he wakes up to real combat they are the better pleased. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Naturally it can be made from either Opuntia Fiscus-Indica or Opuntia Tuna, but a combination of these two gives the salad an exquisite appearance and a tiny touch more delicious flavor, because Tuna, which is red, has to my taste a trifle richer and fuller flavor than Indica, which is yellow. Both fruits taste more like the best well-ripened watermelon than any other I recall.
Bring down the Tunas with a fishing rod or a long pole with a nail in the end. With anything save your fingers roll them in the sand or in tufts of grass to remove the spines. ”

“ The tuna is the game fish par excellence of these waters; a famous leaper and the most powerful fish of its size known. On the records of the Tuna Club are accounts of boats being towed from seven to twenty miles, and nearly every fish caught made a struggle worthy of record. The largest tuna taken with rod and reel weighed 183 pounds and fought its captor, the president of the club, four hours.
The club, with its three hundred members, advocates certain methods which
The second greatest catch in the world with rod and reel. ”

“ The tuna reached the surface with a speed that seemed incredible to the boy, and though he had been reeling as rapidly as he could make his fingers fly, even the big multiplier on the reel had failed to bring in all the slack. The tuna, panic-stricken by the strange line that hissed behind him and which he could neither outrace nor shake off, tried to charge the loops of twine that the reel had not yet been able to bring in. ”

“ Tunas there run up to 300 lbs., big enough, and yet tiny compared with the monsters of the Mediterranean, the Morocco coast and the Japanese seas; there they run up to 2000 lbs. The tuna is called the "leaping" tuna because he plays and hunts his prey on the surface of the water; but he never "leaps" as does the tarpon. Once hooked he goes off to sea and will tow your boat maybe fifteen miles; that is to say, he partly tows the boat, but the heavy motor launch must also use its power to keep up or the line will at once be snapped. ”

“ Three more times we put up the kite—three more flying-fish we wired on the double hooks—three more runs we made through that tantalizing school of tuna that grew huger and swifter and more impossible—three more smashing wide breaks of water on the strike—and quicker than a flash three more broken lines! ”

“ When we left Phari, months and months before, and crossed the Tang la, we entered the desert.
Tuna is built on bare gravel, and in winter-time does not boast a blade of grass. Within a mile there are stunted bushes, dry, withered, and sapless, which lend a sustenance to the gazelle and wild asses, beasts that from the beginning have chosen isolation, and, like the Tibetans, who people the same waste, are content with spare diet so long as they are left alone. ”

“ Kite high, pulling hard—bait working fine. You’re sure of a strike.... When you see one get the bait hook him quick and hard.”
The ambition of years, the long patience, the endless efforts, the numberless disappointments, and that never-to-be-forgotten day among the giant tuna—these flashed up at Captain Dan’s words of certainty, and, together with the thrilling proximity of the tuna we were chasing, they roused in me emotion utterly beyond proportion or reason. ”

“ I couldn’t stop marveling at these animals so perfectly cut out for racing, their heads small, their bodies sleek, spindle-shaped, and in some cases over three meters long, their pectoral fins gifted with remarkable strength, their caudal fins forked. Like certain flocks of birds, whose speed they equal, these tuna swim in triangle formation, which prompted the ancients to say they’d boned up on geometry and military strategy. And yet they can’t escape the Provençal fishermen, who prize them as highly as did the ancient inhabitants of Turkey and Italy ”

“ From 50 to 100 gallons of water would flow into the mouth and be strained out through the gills. This water was full of larval crustaceans, or banded shrimps, about a half-inch long.
In each observed case the body of the shark stood vertically. Why each shark should select a school of tuna and put itself almost precisely in the center of the swarming fish is a complete mystery. It does not eat tuna, except possibly very small ones. Presumably, however, it feeds on about the same sort of material as the fish. It knows there is food where the tuna congregate. ”

“ I forgot to mention that the bait used for the130 yellow-finned tuna is a sardine, that for his big blue-finned cousin being invariably a flying-fish. Both these tuna are the same species of fish, be it understood, but bearing about the same relation to one another in point of size as the trout does to a salmon.
In angling for the big tuna a kite is sometimes used. This is flown over the sea, and attached to it is a line with a flying-fish (the bait) dangling at the end of it on or near the surface of the water. ”

“ We owe the latter stride toward conservation and sportsmanship to Mr. James Jump, and to Lone Angler, and to President Coxe of the Tuna Club. I had not been entirely in sympathy with their feats of taking Marlin swordfish and tuna on light tackle. My objections to the use of too light tackle have been cited before in this book. Many fish break away on the nine-thread. I know this because I tried it out. Fifteen of those small tuna, one after another, broke my line on the first rush. But I believe that was my lack of skill with handling of rod and boat. ”

“ One of the attractions of this sport is the fact that it is done on sight, so to speak; there is no dreary trolling aimlessly about, half asleep under a hot sun. No one goes tuna fishing unless the fish are seen, because it is absolutely useless; failing a sight of them a small gathering of men collects in Avalon who lounge about the hotel and beach. The true tuna man does not as a rule care much for any lesser sport, but awaits the coming of the fish he is after. ”

“ The tuna, followed by a sheet of spume-blue water churned by the rapidly-towed line, plunged on and on, until two hundred and fifty feet of line had been run out. Then, from the ice-cold bottom, rising as a meteor darts across the sky, the great fish clove the water to the surface.
"What will I do when he leaps?" asked Colin breathlessly, reeling for dear life as soon as he felt the upward dash of the tuna.
"He won't leap after he's hooked," his father [Pg 173] said; "they very seldom do. I told you that before. It's the tarpon that plunges and leaps after being hooked." ”

“ The first three are all species of mackerel. The last named can often be caught in large quantities, but gives little sport. All are got by trolling a small herring.
The yellow-tail is well spoken of by the tuna fishermen as being for its size even stronger than the tuna. It is fished for with a lighter rod and 12-ply line. I shall give a description of tuna tackle later; the tackle used for yellow-tail resembles it in general character, but is much lighter. The fish is a handsome mackerel of a dull silvery colour, tinged with yellow, which becomes more marked towards the tail. ”

“ And the tuna must not be omitted, or, at any rate, the thunnus thynnus, the thunnus alalonsa, and the thunnus macrapterus, so called by the scientists, but known by the Hawaiians under the generic name of ahi, and, by light-tackle men as the leaping tuna, the long-fin tuna, and the yellow-fin tuna. In the past two months, Messrs. Jump, Burnham and Morris, from the mainland, seem to have broken every world record in the tuna line. They had to come to Hawaii to do it, but, once here, they did it easily, even if Morris did break a few ribs in the doing of it. ”

“ I strongly suspect that their strange reaction to my friendly feeling is because I have caught more and larger black-bass than they ever saw. Some day I will go back to the swift streams and deep lakes, where the bronze-backs live, and fish with my friends, and then they will realize that I never lie about the sport and beauty and wonder of the great outdoors.
Every season for the five years that I have been visiting Avalon there has been a run of tuna. But the average weight was from sixty to ninety-five pounds. Until this season only a very few big tuna had been taken. ”

“ Captain Dan wanted to try to get the kite up, but I objected on the score that if we could fly it at all it would only be to drag a bait behind the boat. That would necessitate running through the schools of tuna, and as I believed this would put them down, I wanted to wait for enough wind to drag a bait at right angles with the boat. This is the proper procedure, because it enables an angler to place his bait over a school of tuna at a hundred yards or more from the boat. It certainly is the most beautiful and thrilling way to get a strike. ”

“ Colin answered. "What's that for?"
"It is the greatest fishing honor that is to be got anywhere. Only about seventy members of the club have gained it; two, I believe, being women, and the second largest tuna ever caught on rod and line was brought to gaff by a woman angler. It is given for catching a tuna weighing over one hundred pounds, on a light rod."
"That must be fearfully hard to do," the boy said; "even a twenty-pound fish is a strain to a light rod." ”

“ The record black sea-bass, rod and reel, that has been caught here was four hundred and thirty-six pounds in the season of 1905. The biggest tuna—they're the hardest fighters of any fish that swims—was two hundred and fifty-one pounds, caught in the season of 1900. I reckon Major Dare's fast to one that's just a good size for sport. ”

“ Remove mushrooms and pepper and blend flour with the fat. Add the Carnation diluted with the water and cook until the mixture is thickened, stirring constantly to prevent lumping. Place flaked tuna fish, peas, egg, mushrooms, and pepper in top of double boiler. Pour over this the sauce and continue cooking over hot water for 10 minutes. Serve in patty shells or on toast points. Serves 6. Lobster or shrimp may be used instead of tuna fish.
9 Meats
Both fish and meat are important sources of tissue building material. ”

“ At present preference is given to tunny preserved in oil. Many of the fishes, especially the smaller ones, are consumed fresh. The tunny occurs also in the Pacific and is much sought for by anglers on the coast of southern California, where tuna-fishing has become a fashionable sport ”

“ Mix with equal quantity of diced celery, one small cucumber pickle chopped fine, a sprinkling of cayenne, and one cupful of chopped mushrooms. Serve on lettuce with Green Mayonnaise.
TUNA SALAD.
Mix equal quantity of tuna and chopped celery. Slice midget cucumber pickles in lengthwise, small strips, mix with the fish and celery and sprinkle with cayenne. Serve on lettuce leaves and dress with Mayonnaise No. 2. This salad is also nice for bridge parties. The tuna fish is often called the “Chicken of the sea.” ”

“ But he was radiantly happy; for he had qualified on his very first day for the Tuna Club—the blue riband of ocean angling.
128 To become a member of this exclusive association the fisherman must catch and kill with unbroken rod a fish weighing not less than 100 lb. It need not, however, necessarily be a tuna. A barracouta will do, or an albicore, or a black bass. Some of these latter fish run up to 500 lb. (nearly a quarter of a ton) and are as fierce and game as tigers. ”

“ The wine makes them stupid. They make a great quantity of preserves from the tuna; they preserve it in a large amount of its sap without other honey. They make bread of the mesquite, like cheese, which keeps good for a whole year. There are native melons in this country so large that a person can carry only one of them. ”