St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1899-06-17
he was coming for me like a .hot aid ON

he was coming for ne like a ahot aid ON
4 the surface. his blue back and yellow
fms blazing IN the sunlight. | reeled
for my life, there was no doubt about
that. | had big multiplier that ate
up line like windmill, but no reeling
on top of the earth could have met that
4 rush, and / saw my line slack and made
| up my mind that the game was up. The
! 4 fish stopped go feet from the boat, or as
soon as he saw NE, whirled about, and
fairly dazzled me as the sun struck
him, and was off again with 200 feet be-
fore I could stop him. Then he began
10 plunge to the bottom and drag the
line like steam engine, hauling the
| boat round; then he came to the top
again and rushed in on me as before.
| Finally, after nearly three hours of
this thesfish started down the coast and
4 toweds US five miles, sometimes stop
| ping to rush away, occasionally turning
and towing the boat against heavy
i sea that had picked up, n1it Invariably
turning south again, and in four hours
from the start was gaffei after hard
struggle He broke the first gaH in
| pieces and tore it from the hands of the
boatman. The fish was fought hard
from the start to the finish and weighed
1s3 pounds
/ "It'sa good fish story, no doubt, said
the black sea bass champion as the col-
onel concluded; Its game fish, but
it's not in the same class with the black
sea bass and / never landed my biggest
fish. 1t was this way: was fishing for
whitefsh and had on a sardine. got
/ q bite and pulled up, then got assheavier
bite, then still heavier one, and final
| " after a hard struggle got the fish up
! and to my amazement / saw it was a
| black sea bass. A rockbass had taken
the sardine, a whitefish had taken the
| rockbass, a yellowtan had gra abbed the
whitefish and the sea- bass had taken
the yellowtan. The fish towed us, an
chor down, four miles up the coast and
headed for San Nicolas, 20 miles away;
| then / said to jim: 1 reckon ives out
classed.' The bass was as long as the
boat, as near as we coutI Judge, and 7
would have given a thousand dollars to
see him weighed. He would have tipped
| the scales at 500 pounds, sure But it
I was not our day; he suddenly gave
lunge and got awaEf for a hundred feet.
While was reeling him in we saw big
furry and a 15-foot man eater cane right
| out of the water with that bass iii his
mouth and bit the fish square in two,
leaving me the head, which l had
mounted as q trophy.
N 7-pound fish, which has accord
ed me the championship of the world,
! landed fairly and squarely in 55 nnin-
utes. We were fishing ON the bottom
with 12-ounce rods and 21-strand lines.
All at once my line began to run out I
gave the fish about ten feet and struck.
Well, gentlemen" and the narrator
took off his hat and wiped his brow at
the mere recollection. Il give you my
word, l thought that fish would take
the boatman under water. Jim threw
off the anchor rope, and with whistle
from the reel and a rush of water we
were off, Jim pulling for his life to get
headway On the boat, and working the
thumb brake with all my strength to
stop the rush; but before knew il had
taken 700 feet Of line and worn an inch
leather pad down to nothing. And
that's what bothered me-the smoke of
that burning thumb brake kept getting
In my eyes, though Jim kept tanning
it away. heard afterward that people
who saw@us thought 1t was a steam
launch. But finally the brake burned
up, and used thumbstall. When that
wore out I doubled up my hat, and final
". after a rushsof 900 feet. I stopped the
fish. He began to skulll, but / put the
tarpon-pumping movement into play,
and soon started him. Then he began
to rush around the boat, going SO fast
that both Jim and | got dizzy. We
couldn't see the shore at all. and finally
had Ito shut our eyes, and there, Of
course, we lost time; but we kept at the
reel, and several times the rubber began
to melt, but Jim kept pouring water on
it as reeled, and at last, by a fIerculean
effort, / got that fish within 20 feet Of
the boat. Tt was then As minutes by the
clock. What clock Why, the boat
clock. I never go fishing without
clock $50 5f#@
.'s+As l was saying, we had the fish up
within 90 feet, but to move him another
foot we couldn't. Minutes and seconds
were slipping away, and finally we had
only ten minutes: you see, I wanted to |
do it in an hour, and just then Jim had
an. Inspiration. He said stop reelfng,
sir, and wen pull the boat up to the
fish, You see, all the time we had been
trying to pull the fish to the boat. So |
Jim took his oars and rowed alongsid |
while l reeled in the slack; and just 55 |
minutes from the time hooked the fish |
Jim hauled him into the boat, 327 |
pounds to a dot; there isn't man on |
earth that can do it in less" and the |
black sea bass advocate looked around |
at. the awe-striclsen assent blage. But |
the tuna man had disappeared. IN. Y.
Sun.
Modern Cave DvelIers.
Cave dwellers,s or. to be exact. earth
or rock dwellers, are not yet extinct. A |
traveller who visited the prehistoric |
cave dwellings near Halberstadt, in the
Harz mountains, found in the nearby |