AFTER BIG FISH

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12527, 17 August 1926, Page 6

AFTER BIG FISH

AMERICANS’ PLANS RETURNING THIS YEAR “GREAT BOOSTER FOR NEW ZEALAND” “I am a great booster for New Zealand,” confesses Captain L. D. Mitchell, the friend and fishing companion of Zane Grey in a letter which has just arrived in New Zealand. Captain Mitchell gives news of the American fishermen who are planning to visit New Zealand this year. He has interested several friends who contemplate making the trip after big fish, and William K. Vanderbilt is particularly taken with the idea, and has been corresponding with Captain Mitchell at length. Zane Grey has sent to the New Zealand High Commissioner’s Office in London a number of enlarged photographs of the big fish which he caught in Dominion waters, and these are expected to make a fine display in the window of New Zealand House. Captain Mitchell also has written an article on the trip foe “The Field.” Zane Grey has booked by the Tahiti sailing from San Francisco on December 29th, while the yacht Fisherman will leave about November Ist, and the party will join her at Russell. Mr Vanderbilt is expected to come in his own yacht, ahd there may arrive, too, Mr Spaulding, a famous American sportsman. Captain Mitchell gives the news that Zane Grey has caught another record fish, a monster broadbill swordfish weighing 6821 b, which it took five and a half hours to land at Avalon, Santa Catalina Island. The following day he came in with another which scaled 6151 b, and his brother, R. C. Grey, has landed three weighing 368, 334, and 2151 b.

“I am the unlucky fisherman,” says Captain Mitchell. “So far, although I have fed bait to 41 broadbills I have ndt had a, strike. New Zealand has Spoiled me for any other place.”