Big Tuna

By Zane Grey

Pearl Zane Grey was best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that were a basis for the Western genre in literature and the arts, but he also wrote two hunting books, six children’s books, three baseball books, and eight fishing books. It is estimated that he wrote over nine million words in his career, which made him one of the first millionaire authors, as well as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's favorite writer. In this story, a powerful tuna tests Grey's endurance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781633840232

Zane Grey

Zane Grey (1872–1939) was an American writer best known for western literature. Born and raised in Ohio, Grey was one of five children from an English Quaker family. As a youth, he developed an interest in sports, history and eventually writing. He attended University of Pennsylvania where he studied dentistry, while balancing his creative endeavors. One of his first published pieces was the article “A Day on the Delaware" (1902), followed by the novels Betty Zane (1903) and The Spirit of the Border (1906). His career spanned several decades and was often inspired by real-life settings and events.

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BIG TUNA

by ZANE GREY

Wilder Publications

Copyright © 2014 Wilder Publications

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-1-63384-023-2

It took me five seasons at Catalina to catch a big tuna, and the event was so thrilling that I had to write to my fisherman friends about it. The result of my effusions seem rather dubious. Robert H. Davis, editor of Munsey’s, replies in this wise: If you went out with a mosquito-net to catch a mess of minnows your story would read like Roman gladiators seining the Tigris for whales. Now, I am at a loss to know how to take that compliment. Davis goes on to say more, and he also quotes me: You say ‘the hard, diving fight of a tuna liberates the brute instinct in a man.’ Well, Zane, it also liberates the qualities of a liar! Davis does not love the sweet, soft scent that breathes from off the sea. Once on the Jersey coast I went tuna-fishing with him. He was not happy on the boat. But once he came up out of the cabin with a jaunty feather in his hat. I admired it. I said:

Bob, I’ll have to get something like that for my hat.

Zane, he replied, piercingly, what you need for your hat is a head!

My friend Joe Bray, who publishes books in Chicago, also reacts peculiarly to my fish stories. He writes me a satiric, doubting letter—then shuts up his office and rushes for some river or lake. Will Dilg, the famous fly-caster, upon receipt of my communication, wrote me a nine-page prose-poem epic about the only fish in the world—black-bass. Professor Kellogg always falls ill and takes a vacation, during which he writes me that I have not mental capacity to appreciate my luck.

These fellows will illustrate how my friends receive angling news from me. I ought to have sense enough to keep my stories for publication. I strongly suspect that their strange reaction to my friendly feeling is because I have caught more and larger black-bass than they ever saw. Some day I will go back to