A POPULAR NOVELIST.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19692, 20 January 1926, Page 11

A POPULAR NOVELIST.

ZANE GREY’S ARRIVAL. SEEKING LITERARY MATERIAL. BIG GAME FISHING INCIDENTAL. (Per United Pbess Association.) WELLINGTON, January 18. “And then I let up a great yell. I guess they heard it all over me ship.” This was how Zane Grey, the popular American novelist, described to a representative of the Evening Post a great piscatorial discovery that he made yesterday. He was on board the Makura coming towards Wellington and about 150 miles from port, in the vicinity of Cape Kidnappers, when he saw proof of what he has been told beforehand —of the existence of the true broad-billed swordfish. “It was about 15 miles off the coast. Well! that classifies this fish in New Zealand waters and close to Wellington, too, for they are never solitary. Where there’s one there’s more, you can depend on that.” Mr Grey is wasting no time in Wellington, for he is making tracks for Tauranga to-morrow. One of his friends is a Mr Baker, who owns sheep ranches in Australia, and 100 miles of rubber plantations in Malaya. He is an Engliahmaiji a fine fisherman, and he did something in the big war. “He never,’ says Mr Grey, “told me why it was he wanted me to come out to New Zealand. I am going to meet him in Auckland. We have been fishing together in the Gulf of Mexico, and he talked a lot about New Zealand, so I suppose I owe him something for the notion of coming here.” FISHING METHODS. “From what I have seen your methods of salt-water fishing are wholly English,” said Mr Grey. “Our swordfish is the true Xiphias gladius, and from pictures I have seen of your swordfish you do not seem to catch this true type. Your fish seems to me to be the spearfish, and all the tackle I have seen in photographs appears to me to be absolutely inefficient for dealing with the broad-billed swordfish. However, I shall see, but they do not make the right tackle for the job in England, although for salmon the English tackle is the best in the world.” As for the mako shark, which has put many fishermen to the test in North Auckland waters, Mr Grey was interested, but his comment was; “American fishermen consider all sharks as vermin. I do not call the shark a game fish. However, I am willing to try the Auckland mako.” Then he spoke rapidly and fluently of tuna fishing off Nova Scotia, where he caught a 7881 b fish, a world’s record, and his description of that combat with the tuna was an epic in itself. “It took six hours 10 minutes to catch that tuna (oxtunny). I hope to catch a 10001 b fish in your New Zealand waters, a real broad billed swordfish. You, out here, seem to wait till you see your fish. Wo do not do that, we go for him,” said Mr Grey, not boastfully. “We never see a fish,” he wont on, “but every time we put the bait over we bring a fish up. How? That is the secret.” Mr Grey spoke of the beautiful sail fish and general varieties of swordfish, fierce fighters all, and of great weights and a cunning that is often superior to the wit of man. Zane Grey talked as he writes — swiftly, all action, flashes of foreign seas and Speaking with conviction, he said: “You have the greatest fishing places in the world in New Zealand, but they are undeveloped. You fish off shore. We fish 20 to 30 miles out of Santa Catalina. Charge you? Yes, the broadbilled swordfish will kill a man if he gets a chance. He does not ram a boat by accident or fright, as the other swordfish does, but he goes straight at it to smash it, sink it, and kill his man, and you have that fish here off your Wellington coast.”

Then the talk veered round to Zane Grey’s books. He thought thev were popular in Australia and New Zealand because of some analogy in the pioneer life of the people in this part of the world, and that of the peoples in the south-western States of America. The wide, open spaces and the rough life made them appeal here, as in the States, and everything that goes to make a pioneering life is interesting. “ Plans?” exclaimed Mr Zane Grey, in answer to a question. “ Well, I want to see something of New Zealand, and particularly of the Never Never country of Australia. Lasky’s want to spend 1,000,000d01. on a film taken out in these parts. Yes, I will write a novel, and i expect to introduce Australian and New Zealand scenery. That is my forte —scenic description—so they say. How do I like the filming of my stories? Terrible, but my stories and films are clean, I will say that. I am the second writer most popular with children readers in the United States, and I am proud of that, too. I think a great success would be made in England with a novel having an Australian or New Zealand background. I will do it if I can get the story. Mind, I am in dead earnest about fishing, but that is not all I have come this way for. I came out for literary material, and to do some fishing as incidental to it. I expect to be hero until May.”