"Well—the next time water conditions were right, I started to experiment. I tied a rod at the bow of the boat, put on a swivel, leader and hook, and tied a diving sinker to the latter. Then I let out enough line so that the hook, leader and swivel would run back as far as the stern. Then I had George run full speed ahead and watched to see what would happen. I saw quick enough! I saw the swivel churning up the air, forcing it out through the holes, forming that shining bait plug. I didn't need anybody to tell me that it would be twice as big and twice as shiny with a big fish dragging it!

"Right there I began to figure out something to take the place of the swivel—something that would do a swivel's work, but would offer less chance of churning up the air in the water. I got it all right—an improvement on our old line-saver. It's simple enough—but does the work. Another big advantage it has is that it saves you from having to tie your line to the leader. In case you don't know it—every time you put a knot in a fish line, you weaken it a good half—and I'm not sure but that knots have caused as many broken lines as anything.

"While we're still on the subject of tuna, I wonder why it is that both anglers and boatmen have never learned why they so often fail to get a strike out of a school. I've heard them say—and so have you—"Blank, dash, and double dash it all! I dragged my bait through the middle of half a dozen schools today and not one would even so much as look at it! That's exactly what they did—and what happened. I've done the same thing myself, time and time again. One day Farnsworth let me drag my bait through school after school. I skated it across their backs. I hit 'em on the head with it. I did everything but cram it down their throats—and never got so much as a flash of a belly for my pains. After George got done laughing about it, he showed me why. Here it is.

"Tuna travel in schools, and those schools are V-shaped, just like a flight of wild geese. Ahead of every school, fifty to a hundred feet, are three or four leaders. Now, if the wake of your boat gets to the school before your bait, you'll never get a strike. As soon as that wake reaches them they commence to sink—and will not strike. Now, here's the part that interests me the most. If the wake gets to the leaders before the bait gets to the school, the leaders start to sink, and, simultaneously the school starts to sink, too! Don't ask me how they communicate—for I don't know. But they do, somehow! Most anybody whose eyes are trained can see a school of tuna—they make a quiver on the surface that you can't mistake, once you know what to look for. But there's lots of people, boatmen included, who don't see those leaders. The wake hits the leaders before the bait gets to the school—and they don't get a strike.

"It's a never ending mystery to me—the working of Nature! What is it makes quail and deer be everywhere in plain sight until the morning that the season opens—and then not a one to be found? What makes ducks, resting upon a body of water that's part refuge and part open, swim right up to that refuge boundary and never cross it?

"It was on account of tuna not taking a bait if the wake of the boat reached them first, that brought out the use of a kite. Once, years ago, they would take a bait trolled astern. Then they quit—God knows why! We worked for years trying to figure some way to make them bite. The Lord knows what we didn't try—balloons, parachutes, sleds, even sky rockets—until, at last, George Farnsworth hit upon the kite idea—and made it do the work. Here's the method.

"Put up a kite—any kind. Bridle it so that it will fly high or low, depending upon the wind. The idea is to keep your bait on the surface—not underneath—and off to one side, away from the disturbance caused by the boat's passage through the water. When your kite is up as far as you want it—it doesn't matter much how far—take about a foot of six-thread line and tie your kite line to the swivel of your leader with it. Pay out a hundred or so feet off your reel, then swing your boat so that the bait travels more or less parallel to you. It will skip and jump, skitter and splash along the surface, and looks very much like a crippled flying fish trying to get out of the water. Help it along with sweeps and jerks of your rod. That's what we call 'skipping' it. When a fish strikes, the jerk of the strike snaps the six-thread line, and your kite falls into the water just about where he's sounding. Unless they've gone mad with feeding, that's the only way you'll ever get a bluefin tuna.

"There's a lot to tuna fishing—more than most people would believe. It's not just a matter of going out and catching fish. You could spend a lifetime studying them—and then you wouldn't know much. In fact, there's practically nothing known about them. Go to any ichthyologist and ask him. He'll tell you their scientific name—that they belong to the mackerel family—that they're migratory—that they're good to eat—and that's all! He doesn't know any more. Nobody knows where they come from or where they go—or where they spawn, or when, or how. A few of us know a little of how they act when they are in our waters—but even that is mighty little!

"One of the most important things in studying the move­ments and habits of fish is a knowledge of the configuration of the ocean's bottom. We know it is broken up into mountains, plateaus, hills, and valleys, just as is dry land. Where it lifts up closer to the surface we call 'banks.' That is where you'll find the small fish—bait—that the big ones feed on. You won't find bait or fish gathered at deep places. But where you do find bait in quantities, there you'll find the big fish hanging around and feeding. Learn your ocean bottom—and you'll catch fish when no one else does!

"Currents, too, play a big part in what fish do. I won't go into that, though, for several reasons. In the first place nobody knows much about currents. In the second place they're tricky things—you never can tell what they're going to do. In the third place, most people wouldn't know one if they saw one! But here's one example of the effect they have on fish. You can go out one day, and the sea is alive with tuna. Go out the next, with the same weather conditions, and there's not one to be seen or taken. You're pretty sure they haven't moved off. You can tell that by the way the birds act—and other things. Ten to one, if you'll study the surface, you'll find a certain current running—and the fish will be deep down, away from its influence.

"I like to figure such things out—as much, or more, than I like to catch fish. I never could understand why more anglers didn't do the same thing—but they don't. I've sat out in a boat all day long and watched tuna working, and never even thought of putting a bait in the water. I've stood by and watched a broadbill swordfish for hours—and there's an interesting, puzzling fish, if ever there was one! I've watched marlin dart at a bait, size it up, rap it a little with their bill, cock their heads at it, rush it, then dodge—but never take it. It's a lot of fun to me, this study of wild life.

"I never could see why the Fish and Game Commission didn't send out an expedition to study tuna and see if they could find where they spawn. There's a good many million dollars tied up in the commercial fishing industry, and a good many thousand people employed. There's other millions spent by anglers. It would seem to me they would be a lot better occupied doing something like that than a lot of the things they seem to putter around with.

"I've got a guess as where the bluefin tuna come from—but it's only a guess. Judging by their angle of approach to our coast, and judging by the place where we first find them, I've got a hunch that they might—mind you, I say might—come from somewhere out in the Pacific a thousand miles or so west of Cedros Island.

"We usually find them first around Forty Fathom Bank—that's about half way between the East End of San Clemente Island and La Jolla, down by San Diego. From there they spread out and come up the channels, following regular lanes. They surface at certain places where the ocean bottom lifts up—and that's where we catch them. Knowing those surfacing places is why smart boatmen can get fish when nobody else does. It takes years of study, this business of figuring fish. You can show a lot of people—in fact, most of them—tuna within a hundred feet of the boat, but they won't see them. On the other hand, if your eyes are trained, you can spot a school a mile and a half away and twenty feet down. What chance has an angler who doesn't know what it's all about, and with a boatman who doesn't know much more? If he gets fish at all, it's just blind luck. To me, half the fun is knowing what you're looking for, and then finding it, just as you thought you'd find it. Speaking of studying things out, and watching fish, without thinking so much about catching them, one of the biggest kicks I ever got was when I herded a big school of tuna right into Avalon Bay and among the moorings. Herded them just like they were a flock of sheep!

"Those lanes of travel that I spoke of are just as plain as our highways—if you know your charts. Some of them are between the mainland and Catalina, and some between Catalina and Clemente. They seem to more or less join off the west end of Catalina and lead over to the lee of Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa Islands. There they turn and go out on to Santa Rosa Flats—a big bank, forty miles or so long, and extending from Santa Rosa Island to San Nicolas Island. There they hang around for a while—there's lots of bait out there—and maybe build up for their long journey home. Who knows? Here's one to think over. I don't believe there has ever been a tuna or swordfish taken in these waters when he's been on the back track!