The launch then travels across the wind or tacks down wind, the boatman adjusting the speed and direction so as to make the flying-fish bait skitter along the surface and jump from wave to wave, which action the fisherman can aid with his rod. The kite is then given more line in order to place the bait at the proper distance from the launch. The kite is allowed about seven hundred feet of old fishing line from off a reel, and then the fisherman's line is tied to the kite line about twenty feet from the bait with a piece of cotton twine. The kite used is a simple 28 inch or larger boy's kite made preferably of silk with the usual ragtail to which are added a few wine bottle corks to make the kite float should it fall into the sea. Skittering a one-pound bait with a rod is hard work, so kite fishing was invented at Avalon for this purpose and proved to be a great success, and it has become the belief that no one can take a tuna these days by any other means. The fact remains that the schools of fish would vanish if approached by a boat and would not follow the wake of a launch under any circumstances. They are a migratory fish and it is hardly probable that the same schools return as a rule to the waters of the Channel Islands, especially as the fish have the habit of disappearing entirely for years at a time. Some of the fishermen maintained that the tuna had become educated and therefore more difficult to deceive. On my second visit in 1910 it was impossible to persuade a tuna to take unless the bait was skittered in front of his nose and the fish persuaded that the flying-fish was alive. I captured five in six hours, averaging one hundred pounds in weight, and landed thirteen fish in fifteen days' fishing within five miles of Avalon. When I first visited Catalina Island in 1900 the tuna were very plentiful and could be taken by simply trolling a hundred feet of line behind a launch, with a flying-fish for bait. NO one has ever been able to decide what causes fish to change their habits, yet every fisherman has theories on the subject.
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