Enthusiastic anglers have, I believe, been heard to declare with emphasis that they would rather catch no fish at all than return with a full creel inveigled in an “unsportsmanlike” way. Of course, ideas of what constitutes sport vary almost with the individual, since like the rubric—(with red edges, please)—sporting canons are susceptible of private interpretation. But if the ultimate object of fishing be the gratification of catching fish, my stupidity baulks at the notion of an angler, enthusiastic or stolid, preferring to be unsuccessful rather than to succeed by the exercise of a little personal ingenuity, whether it be unconventional or canonical. What can be more pathetic, for instance, than to see a perfectly-equipped sportsman, whose outfit has made a terrible hole in a £20 note, watching with simulated indifference outwardly, but black envy clawing his liver, some grimy urchin with string and stick grassing fish after fish, while he is unable to get a rise? Perhaps, however, my point of view is unfair, because one-sided. For while it has many hundreds of times been my lot to either catch some fish or go without a meal, which certainly quickened my interest in the sport, I have seldom had the pleasure of fishing merely for amusement. Although never a professional fisherman, and therefore a hater of nets as reducing the joy or success to the level of scavenging, I have from a very early age, and in nearly every part of the world washed by the sea, taken a hand at fishing from deep personal motives, and always on unconventional lines.

My first introduction to the stern delights of sea-fishing was in a Jamaican harbour when I was thirteen years old. Having been shipwrecked I was for the time by way of being a juvenile beachcomber, but I had plenty of good-natured darky chums. Four of them took me out one day in their canoe barracouta-fishing. Now this fish is a sort of sea-pike which sometimes reaches four feet in length, and for his fierceness is more dreaded in the West Indies by bathers than the much maligned shark. His principal food is small fish, although he is not dainty. In order to imitate as nearly as possible the flight of his usual prey, it is customary for four darkies to man a canoe, get well out to sea during the early morning calm, and then paddle furiously for a few hundred yards at a time, towing a small mackerel at the end of a stout line. On this occasion I held the line. I thought it glorious fun; but suddenly I saw a bar of silver leap into the air, followed instanter by my sudden exit from the canoe. I had a turn of the line round my hand, a trick of inexperience. There was a good deal of noise and excitement, during which the dugout capsized and spilled her crew around, while the big fish did his best to tow the light craft away from us; but in some mysterious scrambling fashion we all embarked again. By this time the ’couter was very tired, allowing us to haul him up alongside and take him aboard quite peaceably. Then hey for the beach, borrow a truck, and peddle the prize around town at so much a pound. But they wouldn’t take me any more.

A good deal of promiscuous fishing of an unsatisfactory kind was added to my youthful experiences before I reached home, some of it only to be recalled with many pangs. After a long, weary pull in the sweltering, tropical evenings, to drop upon some ghoulish reef-spur and break hook after hook in the rugged coral branches until no more remained, and we must needs return hungry and dispirited—these are not pleasant things to remember. But the following year I made my first long voyage, and on the passage out got an experience that makes my finger-tips tingle to-day. With envious eyes I had watched the mate, as from the end of the flying jibboom he had vainly tried to cozen some bonito (a sort of exaggerated mackerel) that were accompanying the ship into the belief that a shred of white rag with which he was flicking the water was a flying-fish. Naturally, I burned to show that I could succeed, and no sooner had he come in to take the sun than I was out along the boom like a rat to take his place. There was a fresh breeze blowing, and as the ship heeled and plunged the line blew far away to leeward in a graceful curve which only permitted the rag to touch the wave-tops occasionally. I trembled so with excitement that I could not have kept my perch, but that my legs were jammed in between the jib guys and the boom. I had not been there more than five minutes when a splendid fish sprang twenty feet into the air and swallowed my bait on the wing. I hauled for dear life, scarcely daring to look below where my prize hung dangling, a weight I could only just manage to pull up. But I succeeded at last, and grabbed him to my panting breast. There wasn’t time to get scared at the contract I had on my hands; I just hung on while his tremendous vibrations benumbed my body so that I could not even feel that he was actually chafing all the skin off my ribs. At last, feeling my strength almost gone, I plunged him into the folds of the flying-jib, which was furled on the boom, and laid on him. In this way I succeeded in overcoming his reluctance to stay with me, and eventually I bore him on board in triumph, not even dashed by the effective ropes-ending I got for soaking the jib in blood from head to tack. After that memorable capture I was simply crazed with fishing. Even in calms, when predatory fish such as dolphin, barracouta, bonito, or albacore hang around listlessly and are considered quite uncatchable by seamen generally, I have managed to deceive them and obtain that great desideratum, a fresh mess for all hands. But coming home round the Cape, when in the strength of the Agulhas current, the wind failed, and the mate got out the deep-sea lead-line. In orthodox fashion we passed it forrard and dropped the long plummet into the dark depths, with two or three stout hooks, baited with lumps of fat pork, fastened to it. When we hauled it in each hook was burdened with a magnificent cod, and a scene of wild excitement ensued. All the watch improvised tackle of some kind—a piece of hambro’ line, a marlinespike for sinker, and one hook was the usual outfit—and in a couple of hours the deck was like Billingsgate. All sorts and conditions of fish apparently lived down there, and all most accommodating in their appetite.

In Manila Bay the natives taught me how to catch a delicious fish like a more symmetrical John Dory, with a most delicate line of twisted grass and a tiny hook. The bait was rice, boiled to a paste; and so successful was I that all hands enjoyed a hearty supper of fish every evening, being the only crew in the harbour where such a thing was known. On that passage home, however, I caught a Tartar. I was fishing off the boom for bonito, when suddenly the school closed up into a compact body and fled. I thought it strange, but went on playing my bait. Suddenly out of the cool shade beneath the ship rushed an albacore, grabbing my bait before I had time to lift it out of his way. He wasn’t very large for his kind, but my gracious, he was all I wanted. I actually tried to haul him up at first, but I couldn’t begin to lift him; so I was fain to play him until we were both exhausted. He was eventually secured at last by the simple expedient of lowering a man overside who slipped a bowline round him, by which he was hoisted on board. He weighed 120 lb., but seemed as strong as a buffalo. Some years after, when out flying-fishing in Barbados one morning, we hooked an albacore that towed our boat, a 5-tonner, for over six miles before he gave in. We towed him alongside into the carenage and had him hoisted on to the wharf by a crane. He weighed 470 lb. The albacore is almost, if not quite, identical with the tunny of the Mediterranean and the tuna of California, and anybody who thirsts for greater sport than the noblest salmon can give, or even the magnificent tarpon, should try what the tuna can do for them.

But of all the queer fish I ever caught, one that I came across in Tonala River, Mexico, was the strangest. It was just inside the bar, and I had been sailing the boat smartly to and fro, catching a kind of caranx that loves a fleeting silvery bait. Sport becoming quiet, and wind falling, I packed about a pound of fish on my largest hook and let it trail while I smoked the cigarito of laziness. I hoped to get a good-sized fish in this way before returning on board. Suddenly my line tautened out, zip, zip—this was no ordinary fish. After about twenty minutes of thoroughly exhausting work I caught sight of a dirty, brownish mass away down under water. Redoubling my efforts, up came my fish—an alligator ten feet long. He looked perfectly devilish, and for the moment I was really scared. Hooks were scarce, however, so calling upon the darky with me to stand by with a running bowline, I hauled away till I got his hideous snout up out of the water, which I doubt whether I should have done but that he came for me with a rush at the last. Joe dropped the noose over his upper jaw most neatly, getting it tightened between his ugly yellow teeth so that he couldn’t bite it. Just then a breeze sprang up, and making the rope fast to a thwart we kept away for the ship, the great saurian’s jaws banging against the boat’s planks and ripping large splinters out of them. We got him aboard safely, to find “he” was a female, with over a bushel of eggs in her body and a strange collection of rubbish in her stomach.