Seaboarders

From Cuba to Cape Breton lies the most famed game-fishing lane in the world. Once the pastime of sophisticated sportsmen, the great, crazily unpredictable and usually expensive sport of game fishing has become popular in the past five years among more ordinary summer vacationists. Last week, reverently as turn-of-the-century maidens perennially inspecting their hope chests, thousands of winter-weary U. S. men & women took out their dusty fishing kits, added a few newfangled gadgets, collected roadmaps for their annual summer fishing trip (see map, p. 56).*

Game fish have three characteristics: 1) thrilling strike, 2) great speed or spectacular leaps when hooked, 3) endurance to make long and repeated surface runs. Most popular with Atlantic anglers is the weak-mouthed weakfish (world's record: 17 Ibs. 3 oz.), least sporty of game fish. From the first of May, when the annual weakfish run starts off Cape Hatteras, they attract thousands of anglers along the saltwater bays, inlets and tidal rivers from Delaware to Long Island. Best weak, fishing spot is Peconic Bay on eastern Long Island where, during June, boats will be as numerous as canoes on a summer-camp lake.

Most pugnacious little game fish is the bluefish. Around Cape Cod anglers are still trying to equal the world's-record 25-pounder taken off Cohasset in 1874--oldest salt-water-mark in record-books. Among this generation of fishermen, no one has come within eight pounds of it.

Old favorite among Eastern Seaboarders is the majestic striped bass, caught either by casting or trolling--anywhere from the Carolinas to Martha's Vineyard. World's record for striped bass: 73 Ibs., set at Vineyard Sound 26 years ago.

A distant relative of the striped bass is the copper-colored channel bass, a surf fish whose sportiness is confined to acting like a Japanese tumbler. Last week, around Cape Hatteras, No. 1 locale for channel bass, surfcasters were hopefully trying to beach one bigger than the world's record 74-pounder taken off Virginia in 1929.

Most spectacular of Atlantic game fish are the swordfish family: sailfish, marlin, broadbill. Almost any day in the year a sailfish can be caught in the Gulf Stream off Palm Beach--and frequently anywhere from Palm Beach to Key West where the biggest Atlantic sail ever recorded (119 Ibs.) was caught in 1934. White Marlin (world's record 161 Ibs. ), presumably move up the coast from Miami in the spring, reach New Jersey about the Fourth of July. Blue Marlin are plentiful in the summer (from late June) at Bimini, B. W. I., famed fishing paradise of the Atlantic. There the world's record 636-pounder was boated in 1935. Broadbill, fishing for which is most difficult (because its soft mouth is hard to hook and harder to keep hooked), and most expensive (because many fruitless attempts make boat hire costly), migrate as far north as Cape Breton, N. S., where a 601-pounder, a North American record,* was caught three years ago.

Best tarpon fishing is at Boca Grande (on the West Coast of Florida), Bahia Honda (in the Florida Keys) and Aransas Pass in Texas--where one may expect to catch at least one a day during June. World's record: 242 1/2 Ibs., taken in the Panuco River, Mexico, 1934.

The sportiest fish in the world, pound for pound (according to many angling authorities), is the bonefish, tiniest of all game fish. The largest ever caught weighed only 13 3/4 Ibs. But the bonefish is wily as a fox, nimble as a squirrel, fast as a deer--and thoroughly unpredictable. To get one is a recondite art. No. 1 bonefishing locale in the U. S. is at Upper Matecumbe in the Florida Keys. Best in the world is in the Bight at Andros, 65 miles west of Nassau.

Biggest of Atlantic game fish is the bluefin tuna (horse mackerel to old salts). In May and June tuna-fishing is at its best in the little strip of Gulf Stream between Bimini and Cat Cay, two tiny Bahaman islands 50 miles east of Miami (35 minutes by plane). Through these crystal-clear waters thousands of giant tuna race in a mad dash up the coast to get to Nova Scotia by August when the herring arrive. Because they are lean and hungry at the beginning of their run, tuna are more sporty in the Bahamas than they are in Nova Scotia. This year, for the first time, a tuna tournament is being held in Bahaman waters--at Cat Cay, from May 25 to June 5--as well as the annual International Tuna Matches held off Nova Scotia in September. During July and August, anglers at Manasquan, Montauk and many another Jersey and Long Island fishing centre will try to catch a tuna as the parade swarms by. To land a giant tuna may take ten minutes or ten hours. Largest tuna ever caught on rod & reel, an 864-pounder, was taken at Shelburne, N. S. last September in 4 1/2 hours by a village bumpkin named Alfred Kenney. It was the first time he had ever gone tuna-fishing.

*Places indicated on map are only celebrated sample spots where species named are often found in abundance.

*World's record broadbill (842 Ibs.) was taken off Tocopilla, Chile in 1937.

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