The Saint Paul globe., 1904-06-19
Blue Fishing the
Most Popular
Most De m o.
cratic Sport in
t h e W hOL e.
WOrLd====" The
Blues HdU Ue|
Struck In!"

nTTHE blues have struck in!'
When this cry rings from
l. Hatteras to Cape Cod and
beyond, it1proclaims the be-
ginning of the most popular and
democratic sport in the whole world.
The bluefsh of the Atlantic is the
one royal game that is as accessible to
the poor man as to the rich; and, rich
or poor, the man who wants a blue
hSh has to go out to sea in a working
boat and fight for him-fght for him
against the rest of the feet, against
tide and wave, and against the brave,
unfearing, unyielding quarry itself,
which never gives up and mostly
comes into the boat tail first when
he comes in at all.
The Blue" Remains
Where Other Game Fish
Have Disappeared
He is the one game that is left
along shore from Cape May to Mon
tauk, where the overflow camps of
New York and Philadelphia and
score of lesser cities that would be
great anywhere else, have blotted out
the haunts of wild fowl and beach bird
with seashore architecture
But he is constant. Flashing
through the sea like a vengefu1
sword, blue as tempered steel, beauti-
fnl as his own Spanish Main, shapely
as pirate and as savage, he silvers
thousands of acres of frothing sea
each year.
And when the blues have struck in,
the call goes out to the banker in his
Wall street office and the sooty smith
in the hot tenement-house-line West
Side, from onyx and mahogany apart
ment house to East Side beer saloon.
In the tenement house sections of
New York almost every tobacconist
carries a stock of fishing tackle; in
every other block some shop sells to-
bacco only as a secondary line, deriv-
ing its greater income from the sale
of tackle.
He Gives the
Strongest Man
a Good Tug-of-War
The bluehsh is not merely fierce;
he is crazy
Anything that moves through the
water with sufficient speed will attract
him when the blind heat of killing is
on him. So the outfit of the hunter
after this greatest of tropic sea game
is simple enough. His hook need
merely. simulate a fish in the most
distant manner. He needs no line
dainty to invisibility It's only re-
quirement is that it be strong enough
to withstand a tug-of-war, when a
man, standing on a boat that sails
ten miles an hour, pulls with all the
might of his shoulder -tendons and
arm-musc1es, while fifty feet away in
the rolling ocean blue and silver
thing is pulling in the opposite direc-
ton with strength so supreme that
many strong man has given up, dead
beat, after having fought one fish.
To this heavy line is attached
long piece of piano wire or brass
snooding; for, added to the muscular
strength of the beautiful fish, is the
strength of jaws set with a trap Of
needle-pointed teeth, that can shear
an ordinary line in two in a twinkling.
The Great Chase
Up the Coast
After the Shoals
Up the coast tear the hsh-hrst
scattered schools of them, number
ing few thousands or tens of thous-
ands each; then shoals, driving all the
other living things in the sea before
them; shoals that stretch for miles, as
far as a clear eye can see from high
masthead tumbling, leaping, smash
ing the sea, while ahead of them,
among them and all around, spout
fountains of silver where other fish
are making their last frantic efforts
to escape those nicking jaws.
And still behind cutting into them
here, there and everywhere, come the
brown hawks of the sea-the lean,
sleek fishing smacks of Massachusetts,
and Long Island, that have hunted the
Il .