Connecticut western news., 1894-11-08
CATCHING JEWFISH.
ANGLING FOR MARINE MONSTERS IN
 SAN DIEGO BAY.


 Weigh Hundreds of Pounds.
 Don't talk to a man from southern California about black bass fishing, or he win make your best bass story a fee Lle. pitiful thing. He will tell you of black bass that could swallow the big rest days catch you ever made and take in your cree. for dessert without as much as gulping. Voice a doubt, and ;he man from San Diego will pull from his fishing traps something that looks like one fiuked ships anchor. That is what he fishes with for the strange, monstrous black bass in the bays and about the islands of the southern Cali fornia coast They don't call them black bass down there. though the fish com missioners say they are, and the natu- ralists have identified them by fms and bones and form with the gamy two and three pounders that make men fickle sven to trout
 The men who catch these fish that sometimes weigh l, ,ooo poundscal them jewfsh-a corruption of junehsh. The last is a translation of one of their Mex ican names. Probably they were called junefsh 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 jewish is wonder. He looks like 8 bass fishermanss nightmare when they get him out of the water Every fin and markis there magniAed out of all proportion. His scales arc as big as half dollars. his mouth is . gaping chasm, and the spikes of his doxsal fin are bigger than tenpen- ny nails.
 The process of catching a jewfsh is a progressive and interesting one The fishers begin at the beginning. With bent pins or dip nets they look for min. nows or sardelles The quarry secured, it promptly becomes bait. and the con- course is treated to smelt fishing. Then comes the smelt's turn in the succes- son He is impaled, and the fisherman, with a heavier rod and . larger hook, goes to the other aide of tho wharf for halibut or a sea bass
 When the bait dead or alive, is ready, the 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. The great line. as thick as lead pencil. coils out after the hook, and that is nearly all until the fish comes along.
 Incidentally toothpicks play quite a part in the fishing. Each fisherman takes a handful with him when he leaves tho breakfast table. They stick one in crack at the top of pile and loosely loop the line around it. The 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 stack a bit of white rag, and as half dozen or a dozen lines arc 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 to watch the flags When one goes down, 1t means that something has taken the bait After gathering in the barracouda heads or the impaled halibut the jewish starts away like the locomotive on 8 fast ex- press Down goes the signal flag. | Everybody around runs for tho line. They know they can't hold the fish, but | the resistance makes it harder for him and helps them to tire him out-the ul- timate object The great fish does not struggle at first, but moves steadily sea- ward, pulling the line through the mems hands Occasionally. when the fish weighs less than 200 pounds they can tire him out without paying out all I of the line, hut usually 1t all goes, and presently the struggle is transferred to the water. The empty powder keg bounces over the water most erratical- | ly, the men chase it in a boat and when they catch it hold on. Then the real fun of jewfshing begins- It is just sport for . fish of any size to tow a whitehall around the bay, and it is pret- ty rough sailing in his wake As soon as he realizes that there is fight on the jewish seems to forget that he is staid bottom fish All the steam of his black bass ancestors gets riley. and he plunge; and turns, twists and strikes Some where down in the cavern of his gullei he has an arrangement of bone like z couple of mi1lstones, and when he dis covers he cannot spit out the hook ht tries to swallow it and grind the line apart, 30 the slack has to be carefully attended to. There are some tremendous fish in San Diego bay, and though tht hooks are made of hand forged tool stee they have snapped many of them
 If everything goes we'll, if the hooi holds and the fish does not grind thu line, if he steers away from submerged buoy chains and docks, the fight mus end in the death of the fish Sometime he tows the boat for three hours befor' his strength Is gone and he is haulet
 to the surface. The death struggle Ii
 worst of all The fish is dragged to tn
 top and lies there, apparently all bu
 dead Then they drive a harpoon int
 him, and the sting of the steel starts al
 his life again. The harpoon line hold
 him near the surface, and he makes 1 great race for a little while, but, o | course, it cannot last. At the end tn
 fish is lowed back to the dock, and ther
 the floating population of San Diego i
 assembled. Everybody gets hold of
 rope and hoists the giant fish upon tn
 dock, and there the tired monster foun
 ders, its mouth gaping like a tunne and its eyes, big as baseballs, startin
 from their sockets-San Francisco E1 | amtner.
 Two Points of View.
 | Wife-How people gaze at my ne,
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