The American Angler/Volume 12/How Do You Account For It?

How Do You Account For It? I was talking the other day with Captain Kinner, now master of the schooner-yacht Nirvana and a "sailor from way back," and chanced to ask him if he'd had any fishing this season. He said in reply that he had not, and said moreover that there was something curious about it too. "Why," said he "we've been outside along the near-by coast pretty much every week this summer, cruising about anywhere from one to twenty miles off shore, and we've never failed to troll the 'squids' astern on the chance of hooking a stray bluefish, as we've done many years before from this and many other boats I've sailed. This year, however, we haven't had a single 'strike' of any sort whatever. Now, I might think that this was only 'just our luck,' but I was talking to the captain of one of the pilot-boats the other day, and he assured me that he had the same experience all during the season. He told me that in former years they had always managed first and last to catch by trolling all the fish they wanted to eat at some time during the season. Sometimes they were 'running' and sometimes they weren't, but sooner or later they would always get into a school of 'em and hook onto all they wanted. This year, however, he had sailed his boat up and down through schools of bluefish away out to sea, and done the same in shore where the 'chummers' were anchored and catching 'em that way hand over fist, but never a bluefish, big or little, would take a squid or any other trolling lure that he had used." Now we have here the simple evidence of two intelligent and observant seafaring men about a matter which is of no great importance to either of them and is of the more value on that account. Of course it does not prove anything, but it suggested the query "How do you account for it?" It is possible, but not probable, that the bluefish have reached a point in their evolution where they recognize the metal "squid " as an hereditary danger-or rather they have an hereditary perception of the danger of the metal "squid." This would be a most satisfactory explanation to the advocates of the theory of evolution, but unfortunately for them. the experiences of one season, though pointing in this direction, can hardly be regarded as conclusive evidence. Meantime who among the readers of THE ANGLER can suggest some simple, unscientific and commonplace explanation of what appears to be an observed and remarkable fact? Ben Bent.