"Just the same as I studied about tackle, and why it did certain things under certain conditions, so I studied fish. Then, when I began to build my reel—studied them all the more. There's a good deal more to this big game fishing than you would think. I wonder how many anglers really know what they are doing—or why?

"You've seen men—supposed to be good anglers—fight a fish. How do they do it? By main strength and awkward­ness—with a lot of luck thrown in for good measure. They strain and heave, and sweat and swear. Every muscle in their bodies gets to hurting. They damn the fish from here to Halifax. They subject their tackle to every kind of abuse—then cuss the manufacturer when something breaks. They take two or three hours on a job that ought not to take twenty minutes. They make hard work out of something that ought to be play. They never stop to figure that the harder you fight a fish—or a man—the harder he'll fight back! That's just Nature!

"What do most of them do the minute they've hooked a tuna? Screw up on the drags and try to stop him! That makes me laugh! It just can't be done! The more you try to stop him, the faster and harder he'll run. He'll tear off four or five hundred feet and plunge down as deep as his strength, and the drag of the line through the water, will let him. Once he's down there—down there he'll stay—and you've got a job on your hands to bring him up to the surface again! Believe me—that's no child's play.

"That's one way of handling a fish—and the wrong way, if you ask me. Here's another way—and the right way. As soon as you've set the hook, and I'm speaking of tuna—and be sure you set it, never rely on the kite to do that—back off your drag and let him go. Nine times out of ten he'll not go more than three hundred feet, and will stay on the surface, lying out there and showing his silver belly when he rolls. There's no reason why he should act any differently. There's nothing pulling him, holding him. All right—just as soon as he stops his run and starts to roll, that's the time to go after him. Never let him get his head again. Keep pumping him right to you, not trying to take too much line at a time—just a few inches with each turn of the reel, but without any let-up. That's hard on the fish and easy on you.

"Just that way is how I got my seven tuna in one day—in fifty-nine minutes of actual time, and three hours and thirty minutes of elapsed time—and every one of 'em over a hundred pounds. Do you think I could have done it if I had fought them the way most anglers do? Not a chance in the world! That isn't all, either. Let hundred-pound tuna come back as they used to be and I'll take as many more in a day—and never turn a hair doing it! Why, in one day I took thirty-two tuna on light tackle ranging from thirty-five to forty-seven pounds! There's one thing about those kind of stunts, though—you have to have a good boatman and a reel that will respond instantly to your every requirement. I had Farnsworth—and my reel did just that very thing—and all mine will, too!

"Tuna aren't the only fish to use this method on—it works with any of 'em. Take Ed Featherstone, for instance. He was just crazy to get a broadbill. Fished for them all the time—and kept losing them all the time. Lines broke, hooks pulled out, rods broke, he lost one complete outfit overboard, had it pulled out of his hands. He had so much hard luck that he began to think he never would get a fish. All the time he kept after me to go out with him and show him how to do it. At last I did. The first day out, and not ten minutes after we got to where the fish were, we hooked on to one. I stood right behind him and told him exactly what to do. In nine minutes that broadbill was alongside and dead, belly up. The boatman put a gaff into him, handed it to me, and then put another one in. As we both held him on the gaffs, waiting for the last convulsions to pass, the boat rolled away from the fish. Naturally that roll made us lift him out of the water. Both gaffs straightened out and the fish slid off. In the meantime Ed, who was afraid he'd miss something, had laid the rod down and the line slipped under a grating. Of course the fish started to sink, and before Ed could free the line, it fouled the propeller and the sinking weight broke it. So, he lost the fish in the end, but that didn't alter the fact that he had brought it alongside dead in just nine minutes. The straightening out of those two gaffs started me in to making them for myself. Mine don't straighten out!

"Don't get any idea, though, that all you have to do is to sit there and hold on until your fish tries to climb aboard! You have to keep after him all the time—not slam-bang, give 'em hell fashion—but hard and steady every second. Let me illustrate what I mean. Try and kick a launch away from the dock. You can kick until you break every bone in your foot—but you'll never move her. Now try it this way. Just start pushing against her easy with your hand and never let up. Pretty soon she'll start moving off. You see now what I mean? Well, it's just that steady, unending pressure that whips a fish. The line, the arc of the rod, the tension of the drag, your hands, arms and body, all combine to make something that he can't stand.

"I've proved my theory hundreds of times. So have others. There's Col. Stapleton-Cotton, that Englishman. He took six tunny, horse mackerel, with an average weight of 600 pounds, in one day! Do you remember how he wrote to you, and to me, and said how he had used the methods I wrote about in my booklet, TACKLE FACTS, and thanked me for the dope I'd given him? Now, I'm perfectly willing to grant that those tunny, over in the North Sea, and the horse mackerel of Maine and Nova Scotia, too, are a lot different from our Pacific bluefin tuna. I'm also willing to grant that the waters there are shallow—and that they use heavy lines and fish out of rowboats. But the fact remains that 3,600 pounds of tunny, or any other kind of fish, on rod and reel, in one day, is something for anybody to shoot at! I'll bet every dollar I've got, though, that nobody could ever do that trick, using the ordinary method of fighting a fish!

"Let's take George Pillsbury, who, in my opinion, is one of the best anglers on the Pacific Coast today—perhaps in the world. A few years ago George took nine broadbill swordfish in one season—a record that's never been equalled, probably never will be. Every Monday morning, just as regular as clockwork, he comes up here to the office and tells me everything that's happened when he's been out fish­ing over the week-end—where he found the fish—what they are doing—what he used for bait—how they acted after they were hooked—what he did—everything about them. Then he and I would put our heads together and try to figure some way of outsmarting them. George has used my method for years—and year in and year out he's right up there among the leaders when the season's records are cast up.

"Then again, there's Dr. Zane Grey—most people don't know he's a doctor of dentistry, but he is—has used my reels on nearly every big fish he's taken. That shows he thinks something of them—doesn't it?

"Women often make better anglers than men. There's Mrs. O'Mara, Mrs. Greenfield, Mrs. Spalding, Carrie Fin, and the late Mrs. Hillman. Every one of them have done wonderful things in the way of angling. A lot of men anglers can't understand how they do it. I can! Not having the strength of a man, they let the fish do the fighting against that constant pressure I was talking about a while ago. In other words, they use their heads, instead of strength they haven't got. Carrie Fin, who lives in Tahiti, took a black marlin of 883 pounds, and took the trouble to send me a picture of it and tell me how my advice helped her! There's the picture, right over there, and autographed by her.

"Now here's another interesting thing. You know how often lines break and the angler can't figure out why? Apparently he doesn't do anything wrong—and yet they break just the same. Especially is this true when you are fishing for tuna. Well, like everything else, there's a reason for it—and it's not always the fault of the lines or the angler. Most fishermen never take the trouble to figure such things out. They go right along making the same mistakes, having the same things happen to them. They blame everybody but themselves—the tackle, the manufacturer, the boatman, the boat, the fish! They never seem to look for the reason behind it all, and then try to correct that reason. A lot of this line breaking on tuna is simple enough.

"When a tuna strikes, he's going somewhere in a hurry. There's a swivel at the end of the leader. That swivel has holes in it—it spins around. As soon as it gets under the surface it begins to churn up the air that's always in water—forcing it through those holes under pressure—in a way aerating it. That air forms into a cylinder as much as an inch and a half in diameter, and as long as a bait plug! That's exactly what it looks like—a bait plug—just the same kind we use for casting or trolling. Now—just try and imagine that shining 'plug' racing down through the water. Then, stop and realize that you always take a tuna out of a school. As soon as he's hooked he tries to follow that school—goes tearing right down through the middle of it—and there's usually a good many more fish there than you realize. As he goes—he drags that shining 'plug' after him. What happens? The other fish strike at it—but it's moving so fast they often miss it and hit the line, which is as tight as a banjo string. That's all that's needed! Pop goes your line—and you come home cussing!

"Here's how I figured it out. I was fishing off the west end of Catalina and the ocean was full of tuna. It was no trouble to get strikes—but it wasn't any trouble to break lines, either. I'll bet I had nine strikes in eight minutes and broke nine lines! I got madder and madder—and Farnsworth's kidding didn't help matters any! I did catch some fish—but still I couldn't figure out why I kept breaking lines when, so far as I could tell, I wasn't doing anything different.