Presently, when B.’s boat was just right for his anglers to see everything my way, I felt a tug on my line. I leaped up, let the reel run. Then I threw on my drag and leaned over to strike. But he let go. Quickly I threw off the drag. The sailfish came back. Another tug! I let him run. Then threw on the drag and got ready. But, no, he let go. Again I threw off the drag and again he came back. He was hungry, but he was cunning, too, and too far back for me to see. I let him run fifty feet, threw on the drag, and struck hard. No go! I missed him. But again I threw off the drag, let out more line back to him, and he took the bait the fourth time, and harder than ever. I let him run perhaps a hundred feet. All the time, of course, my boat was running. I had out a long line—two hundred yards. Then I threw on the drag and almost cracked the rod. This time I actually felt the hook go in.
How heavy and fast he was! The line slipped off and I was afraid of the drag. I threw it off—no easy matter with that weight on it—and then the line whistled. The sailfish was running straight toward B.’s boat and, I calculated, should be close to it.
“Sam,” I yelled, “watch him! If he jumps he’ll jump into that boat!”
Then he came out, the biggest sailfish I ever saw, and he leaped magnificently, not twenty yards back of that boat. He must have been beyond the lines of the trolling anglers. I expected him to cross them or cut himself loose. We yelled to B. to steer off, and while we yelled the big sailfish leaped and leaped, apparently keeping just as close to the boat. He certainly was right upon it and he was a savage leaper. He would shoot up, wag his head, his sail spread like the ears of a mad elephant, and he would turn clear over to alight with a smack and splash that we plainly heard. And he had out nine hundred feet of line. Because of his size I wanted him badly, but, badly as that was, I fought him without a drag, let him run and leap, and I hoped he would jump right into that boat. Afterward these anglers told me they expected him to do just that and were scared to death. Also they said a close sight of him leaping was beautiful and thrilling in the extreme.
I did not keep track of all this sailfish’s leaps, but Sam recorded twenty-three, and that is enough for any fisherman. I venture to state that it will not be beaten very soon. When he stopped leaping we drew him away from the other boat, and settled down to a hard fight with a heavy, stubborn, game fish. In perhaps half an hour I had him twenty yards away, and there he stayed while I stood up on the stern to watch him and keep clear of the propeller. He weaved from side to side, exactly like a tired swordfish, and every now and then he would stick out his bill and swish! he would cut at the leader. This fish was not only much larger than any I had seen, but also more brilliantly colored. There were suggestions of purple that reminded me of the swordfish—that royal purple game of the Pacific. Another striking feature was that in certain lights he was a vivid green, and again, when deeper, he assumed a strange, triangular shape, much like that of a kite. That, of course, was when he extended the wide, waving sail. I was not able to see that this sail afforded him any particular aid. It took me an hour to tire out this sailfish, and when we got him in the boat he measured seven feet and six inches, which was four inches longer than any record I could find then.
At eleven o’clock I had another in the boat, making four sailfish in all. We got fourteen jumps out of this last one. That was the end of my remarkable luck, though it was luck to me to hook other sailfish during the afternoon, and running up the number of leaps. I am proud of that, anyway, and to those who criticized my catch as unsportsman-like I could only say that it was a chance of a lifetime and I was after photographs of leaping sailfish. Besides, I had a great opportunity to beat my record of four swordfish in one day at Clemente Island in the Pacific. But I was not equal to it.
I do not know how to catch sailfish yet, though I have caught a good many. The sport is young and it is as difficult as it is trying. This catch of mine made fishermen flock to the Stream all the rest of the season, and more fish were caught than formerly. But the proportion held about the same, although I consider that fishing for a sailfish and catching one is a great gain in point. Still, we do not know much about sailfish or how to take them. If I got twenty strikes and caught only four fish, very likely the smallest that bit, I most assuredly was not doing skilful fishing as compared with other kinds of fishing. And there is the rub. Sailfish are not any other kind of fish. They have a wary and cunning habit, with an exceptional occasion of blind hunger, and they have small, bony jaws into which it is hard to sink a hook. Not one of my sailfish was hooked deep down. Yet I let nearly all of them run out a long line. Moreover, as I said before, if a sailfish is hooked there are ten chances to one that he will free himself.
