Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series of reprints of historic Catalina Islander articles. It has been edited. In this article, a writer expresses outrage at what he regards as the end of sportsmanship among anglers following the publication of an article by sportsfishing pioneer Zane Grey. The article was originally published on January 26, 1924.
By. A. Westerner
Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series of reprints of historic Catalina Islander articles. It has been edited. In this article, a writer expresses outrage at what he regards as the end of sportsmanship among anglers following the publication of an article by sportsfishing pioneer Zane Grey. The article was originally published on January 26, 1924.
By. A. Westerner
Los Angeles, January 17, 1924. Do you remember when you were a little, little boy? Maybe it was many years ago, more, possibly, than you care to think about. Do you remember sitting, wide-eyed, listening to fairy tales? Do you remember you desperate efforts to keep awake Christmas eve, in a vain endeavor to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus? It was all very real to you, wasn’t it?
You no more doubted the actual existence of Puck, Queen Mab, Sinbad the Sailor, the Magic Carpet, Cinderella, Santa Claus, and all the glittering cohorts of the little people, than you did your own existence, Why should you doubt, hadn’t your father and mother time and time again held you spell-bound at their knees while they told you, hours without end, those age old, blessed tales? Surely, if you didn’t believe your father and mother, there was no one you could believe.
Then without warning came your first great tragedy. Down about your head crashed this beautiful world of make-believe. All the sparkling, tinseled throng vanished like a puff of smoke, and the world was very drab and cheerless. Worst of all, who destroyed these castles in Spain? Your father and mother! The very persons whose lightest word was truth, and who had built up this wonderful structure, were the ones who ruthlessly tore it down. The explanations given were lame, and unsatisfactory. Your faith in human nature was gone. You could believe no one. For the time, mercifully short due to childhood’s effervescence, life wasn’t worth living.
I have just finished reading Zane Grey’s article on heavy tackle, and my world has come tumbling down about me. I don’t seem to be able to believe that there is a sportsman left! The whole charmed game is commercialized. The days of fast transportation, bodily comforts, gasoline, electricity and money, have driven out of existence those old-time, hard-riding, hard-living, clean-hearted men of the out-of-doors!
I have read, I believe, all of Grey’s books. I have say breathless as those lean, browned men of the west went to battle and death. I have smelled the acrid fumes of black powder, and have hearted the nerve-racking crash and roar of forty-fives in the smoking reeking barrooms of the Old West. I have say out in the open spaces with Grey, and looked across a hundred miles of jagged, silent mountains. I have felt the breath of the sage, and I have lain under the dessert stars. I have seen his seas, and sensed the beauties and mysteries of Mother Ocean. I have sweated, strained and despaired with him in his struggles with game fish, and I have gloried with him when he conquered.
Through it all, outstanding and alone a god among sportsmen, has stood—Zane Grey. And now, this article has come, and right now I feel that I am through with the whole thing. There is no such this as sportsmanship left in all this world.
Mr. Editor, I tell you the whole this is wrong! Zane Grey couldn’t have written that article! It just wasn’t in him to do it!
Surely, you know, and Grey knows that 229 tuna of over a hundred pounds were taken last year, and of those 229 fish Zane Grey caught seven and R. C. Grey took thirteen, at least, so the record books show. Didn’t A. W. Hooper take thirty-three tuna of over a hundred pounds on ordinary “inferior” 24-thread lines? Didn’t Mr. Adams take 16?
Two hundred and nine fish over 100 pounds were taken on lines that Mr. Grey says are inadequate. Many were taken by absolutely inexperienced anglers. Several were taken by women—Mrs. Spalding, Mrs. Greenfield, Mrs. Kendall, Mrs. Teller, Mrs. Wilkes. Maybe, however, these ladies were all super anglers. I’m sure I don’t know. Why didn’t the Grey brothers, fishing every day, catch more fish than anybody, with the advantage they had of high priced lines and expensive reels? For some unaccountable reason they didn’t, however, and that’s that.
For years Mr. Grey, in his tales, has stood for everything that was clean and fine. He has stood by and watched wild game, and when a shot presented itself would rather let the animal live than to needlessly take its life. At a considerable risk, he has cut big fighting fish loose, knowing that they would soon recover their strength and maybe provide, some later day, another hour’s thrill. Now that is all ended, and its bigger lines, heavier reels, more boatmen and more fish! Oh, pity of it! Vale, Zane Grey, the ideal, “Rest in Peace.”