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It had taken all this time for me to appreciate what swordfishing might be. I assured Captain Dan I would come back in 1915, but at the time he did not believe me. He said: "If you hadn't stuck it out so long I wouldn't care. Most of the fishermen try only a few days and never come back. Don't quit now!" But I did go back in 1915.
Hope it'll be that way this time!" It was almost noon before the whole trawl was aboard. It had yielded barely two hundred pounds of hake. "Tell you what!" exclaimed Jim as he looked at his compass and headed the Barracouta westward through the fog for home, "we'll put the trawl in the house for a few days, and fit up for swordfishing. There's a good ground fifteen miles south of the island.
To the great majority of anglers it may seem unreasonable to place swordfishing in a class by itself by far the most magnificent sport in the world with rod and reel. Yet I do not hesitate to make this statement and believe I can prove it. The sport is young at this writing very little has been written by men who have caught swordfish. It was this that attracted me.
My eyes got tired searching the sea for fins. It was a great game, this swordfishing, and beat any other I ever tried, for patience and endurance. The last fish showed his cunning. They were all different, and a study of each would be fascinating and instructive. Next morning was fine. There were several hours when the sea was smooth and we could have sighted a swordfish a long distance.
Long ago on my lonely desert trips I learned the value of companions and I dreaded the strain of this swordfishing game. I needed some one to help lessen it. Besides that, I needed snapshot pictures of leaping swordfish, and it was obvious that Captain Dan and I would have our hands full when a fish got hooked. We had music, books, magazines everything that could be thought of.
The area of the whole bank is approximately 8,050 square miles, all of which, except for the shoals, is available in summer for the taking of cod, haddock, cusk, halibut, and hake, with a considerable amount of mackereling and swordfishing, as well as the taking of other species. During February, March, and April large schools of cod make their appearance on the bank.
But the accidents, the flukes, the lucky stabs of the game, do not in any sense prove what swordfishing is or what it is not. In August, 1914, I arrived at Avalon with tuna experience behind me, with tarpon experience, and all the other kinds of fishing experience, even to the hooking of a swordfish in Mexico. I am inclined to confess that all this experience made me well, somewhat too assured.
This had happened to me before, notably in swordfishing, but never had I felt such thrills, such tingling nerves, such oppression on my chest, such a wild, eager rapture. It would have been impossible, notwithstanding my emotional temperament, if the leading up to this moment had not included so much long-sustained feeling. "Jump your bait!" called Dan, with a ring in his voice.
Swordfishing in the Bay of Fundy was formerly profitable in September, although these fish were never so numerous here as upon the outer shore of Nova Scotia. St. Marys Bay is a summer herring ground. Good haddocking may be had here, also, from April 15 to October 15, with the period from the opening of the fishing in April up to July 15 the best of it.
One fisherman out of a hundred will get his sailfish, but only one out of a thousand will experience the wonder and thrill and beauty of the sport. Sailfishing is really swordfishing, and herein lies the secret of my success at Long Key. I am not satisfied that the sailfish I caught were all Marlin and brothers to the Pacific Marlin.
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