GIANT FISH

Turner -Turner

et

Y OF
INIA

THE GIANT FISH OF
FLORIDA

THE GIANT FISH

OF

FLORIDA

BY

J. TURNER-TURNER

WITH 48 ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

C. ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED

PHILADELPHIA : J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
I9O2

PREFACE

THE sea ims its big game as well as the land, and there are
some of us — the name of Mr. W. H. Grenfell, M.P., at once
occurs in this connection — who have derived much sport from
its pursuit. Whether, as Mr. Grenfell and others would seem
to indicate, the tunny of the Mediterranean, which is identical
with the tuna of American waters, may yet be recognised as a
sporting fish by British anglers has to be seen ; meanwhile the
coast of America, and more particularly that of Florida and
Mexico, is the recognised resort of those who angle for the
biggest that the sea has to give.

In this volume I have endeavoured to lay before fellow
sportsmen at home some of the charms of fishing for tarpon
and the other rangers of the Gulf. The tarpon, of course,

ii

M844797

Preface

stands first ; indeed, there are [many visitors to those parts
who will fish for nothing else, thus losing many excellent
opportunities of sport on days that are too rough for them to
get out on the tarpon grounds. No attempt has been made at
anything in the nature of an exhaustive list of the sea fish
of Florida, which might easily have been gathered from one
or other of the American standard works on the subject, such
as the invaluable volumes by Jordan and Evermann, published
under the auspices of the United States National Museum.
Only 'fish that are likely to attract the notice of the angler
have been figured and briefly described, and this from the
sporting rather than from the natural-history point of view.
Nor have I devoted much space to the remaining fauna of
the coast and islands ; although a few conspicuous birds like
the cormorant and pelican, and an occasional reptile, such as
the turtle and alligator, the pursuit of which may pass an
otherwise wasted hour, have claimed a place in these notes.

Much interest attaches to the realistic photographs with
which these .pages are illustrated. One of the first anglers in
this country to [inspect them was Mr. F. G. Aflalo, a fishing
enthusiast to whom I am indebted in no small measure for the
final arrangement of my notes, and he at once pronounced
them to be certainly the most remarkable in their own way
that had ever passed through his hands. They are all from
the natural (not mounted) fish, and the effects were obtained
by a simple, though careful, arrangement of pegs and sheeting.

12

Preface

I think that I may claim for them a correctness that, while
combining the impressions of both, could never have been
obtained by either the brush or camera unaided. My thanks
are also due to Professor George A. Boulenger, who, with Mr.
Aflalo, identified as far as possible the subjects of my photo-
graphs.

There are but one or two really successful photographers
of living fish under water, and these artists must obviously
confine their efforts to comparatively small fish in the confine-
ment of aquarium tanks. Now, a considerable observation of
fish at home and abroad under every variety of conditions has
persuaded me (though I hardly expect the statement to pass
unchallenged) that the narrow confines of the aquarium tank
tend to cramped and unnatural attitudes in the subjects ; and
this contention seems to me abundantly substantiated by a
careful comparison of the otherwise excellent photographs
from time to time published, and the best studies of the best
fish painters. My own system of illustration combines the
two, and in great measure, I venture to think, obviates many
of the faults of both. Constant observation of the fish in their
natural habitat impresses on me their every attitude, and,
while unfortunately not possessed of the necessary talent to
transfer these groups to canvas, there is no insuperable
difficulty in the way of pegging the various subjects in just
the positions they assumed before my eyes an hour or two
earlier. The camera does the rest.

13

Preface

Tarpon fishing is still in its infancy. New methods and
grounds will be discovered. Meanwhile, it is a congenial task
to tell the story of the big fish of Florida seas, not from hearsay
or printed reports, but from personal and vivid experience.

J. T. T.

Cavalry Club, Christmas, 1901.

CONTENTS

PREFACE.

CHAPTER I.— THE GIANT TARPON.

„ II. — AMONG THE ALLIGATORS

„ III. — How TO CATCH TARPON.

„ IV. — A LIVELY MORNING IN THE PASS.

„ V. — LADIES WHO LOVE THE SPORT.

„ VI. — ENORMOUS RAYS OR DEVIL-FISH.

„ VII. — HARPOONING A MONSTER.

,, VIII. — THE LOGGERHEAD TURTLE.

,, IX. — CATFISH AS SCAVENGERS.

„ X. — BONY FISH — JACK — GARFISH — JEWFISH — SQUEATEAGUE —
AND BASS.

,, XI. — SPOTTED EELS — CRAB- EATERS — SURF-WHITING — MOON-
FISH — LEATHER JACKETS — TRIGGER-FISH — AND
MULLET.

„ XII. — STRIPED MULLET — SHARKS — BIRD LIFE.

INDEX.

15

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAOK.

1. A WHIP RAY LEAPING ... ... ... Frontispiece

2. THE TARPON ... ... ... ... ... ... 23

3. THE FLOATING HOTEL ... ... ... ... ... 27

4. INTERIOR OF AN ALLIGATOR ISLAND ... ... ... 31

5. THE ALLIGATOR MADE STRAIGHT FOR THE OPEN SEA ... 37

6. A TARPON GUIDE ... ... ... ... ... 45

7. A GOOD CATCH OF TARPON FOR A LADY ... ... ... 56

8. A HOOKED PIECE OF CORAL WHICH WAS MISTAKEN FOR A JEWFISH 57

9. KINGFISH ACCIDENTALLY FOUL- HOOKED ... ... ... 62

10. WITH LIGHTNING SPEED THE KINGFISH CHASED THE LIVELY

SKIPJACK ... ... ... ... ... ... 63

11. THE KINGFISH LEAPT SOME TWENTY FEET INTO THE AIR ... 67

12. A BIG JEWFISH FOR A WOMAN TO LAND ... ... ... 76

13. JEWFISH WITH SUCKER CLINGING TO IT ... ... ... 77

14. A VANQUISHED WHIP RAY ... ... ... ... 82

15. THE WHIP RAY TURNED HELPLESSLY ON ITS BACK ... ... 83

1 6. THE HOOKED TARPON FOLLOWED THE BOAT TOWARDS SHORE... 83

17. THE CREWS OF Six BOATS TOWING A HARPOONED WHIP RAY 83

18. A STRANDED WHIP RAY ... ... ... ... ... 95

19. HARPOONED DEVIL-FISH IN SHALLOW WATER ... ... 102

20. HARPOONED DEVIL-FISH WITH JAWS PROPPED OPEN ... ... 103

21 A TURTLE SWIMMING ... ... ... ... ... 109

22. HARPOONING A TURTLE ... ... ... ... ... 114

23. PLAYING A TURTLE ... ... ... ... ... 115

24. HOISTING A TURTLE ON BOARD ... ... ... ... 119

List of Illustrations

PAfiK.

25. DEAD GROUPER BEING DEVOURED BY CATFISH AND BREAM ... 127

26. GAFF TOPSAIL CATFISH AND YOUNG HAMMERHEAD SHARK ... 131

27. THE SHEEPSHEAD ... ... ... ... ... 135

28. TOAD FISH WATCHING BONY FISH AS THEY LEAP ... ... 139

29. GARFISH PURSUED BY A KINGFISH ... ... ... ... 143

30. A MARMORATUS LYING MOTIONLESS ... ... ... 146

31. A CARANX HIPPOS ... ... ... ... ... 147

32. THE MIGHTY PERCH AND HIS DEEP-WATER COMPANION, THE

RED GROUPER ... ... ... ... ... 149

33. PIECE OF SNAKE-LIKE CONCH SPAWN, AND SEA TROUT ... 156

34. CHANNEL BASS AND RED GROUPER ... ... ... 157

35. CURIOUS, SNAKE-LIKE EEL ... ... ... ... 163

36. THE COBIA, OR CRAB EATER ... ... ... ... 168

37. SURF WHITING AND MANGO SNAPPER ... ... ... 169

38. A MOON FISH ... ... ... ... ... ... 174

39. A LEATHER JACKET .... ... ... ... ... 175

40. THE TRIGGER FISH AND THE ANGEL FISH ... ... ... 180

41. SILVER MULLET ... ... ... ... ... ... 181

42. MULLET LEAPING ... ... ... ... ... 187

43. CAPTURED SAWFISH WITH SUCKER ... ... ... ... 192

44. HAMMERHEAD SHARK ... ... ... ... ... 193

45. HOOKED SHARK SEIZED BY ANOTHER ... ... ... 193

46. EXTRACTING A FIRMLY EMBEDDED HOOK FROM A SHARK ... 198

47. ALL HANDS GIVE THE SHARK A MIGHTY HEAVE ASHORE ... 199

48. LEOPARD SHARK... ... ... ... ... ... 203

CHAPTER I

The Giant Tarpon

CHAPTER I

THE GIANT TARPON

IN the old country the sport of sea-fishing, though yearly
more popular with its own votaries, can never oust the sport on
inland waters, until at any rate these are fished out. Always
excepting sharks as vermin, there is no British sea fish so
mighty as the salmon, or so game as the trout. American
waters, however, provide more than one salt-water giant
calculated to test, if not, perhaps, the finest skill, yet certainly
the greatest endurance that man is likely to bring to its
capture. Of these, the big game of the Atlantic, the tarpon
stands easily first.

Better than any detailed description of the fish and
dentition, with measurements, is its picture to be found
in this volume. Suffice it to say that the tarpon is to all
outward appearance, bar the long dorsal fin ray, a gigantic

21

B 2

Giant Fish of Florida

herring, with scales four inches in diameter. It may
weigh over two hundred pounds, and the length of such a
monster would be about seven feet. The qualities that
recommend the tarpon to the sportsman are — first, its
power of leaping clear of the water, which lends excitement to
its pursuit, since it may, and not infrequently does, land
in your boat ; and further, its mighty strength, endurance,
and cunning, which combine to render it a worthy antagonist.
It will, very often, indeed, completely tire out an angler,
who then hands the rod to his guide, leaving him to finish
off the half-exhausted fish, an alliance that, however un-
sporting it may seem to the hypercritical, may be absolutely
necessary if the fish, or, indeed, the tackle, is to be saved.
Not that the fish, except as a trophy, is of much use when
gaffed. As food it is of little worth, and it is quite a pity
that the pioneers in tarpon fishing should have thought
it necessary to gaff through the gills and kill every fish,
and leave it dead on the foreshore. Nowadays a more
economic and sporting spirit prevails, and fish are often
landed without being gaffed at all, and then allowed to go
free.

Attempts have from time to time been made to compare
tarpon and salmon fishing, to the advantage of one or the
other, but the fact is that no such comparison is possible. As
well compare shooting trap pigeons and rocketing pheasants.
The salmon calls for skill, experience, and light tackle ; the

22

Giant Fish of Florida

tarpon requires no skill and no experience, but the very
strongest of tackle. It also taxes the angler's strength
and staying power to an extent that would, save in very
exceptional circumstances, be out of the question in salmon
fishing. And why, after all, any call for these eternal
comparisons ? To every country and season and income
their fish ; and those who have the opportunities may without
difficulty kill their Florida tarpon and their Highland salmon
in the same summer. Nor is the tarpon, though first, the only
fish worth catching in those waters, and I have purposely
devoted a page here and there to the sport obtainable with
smaller species, and even with the harpoon.

The best time of tide for sea-fishing at Boca Grand
is slack water, and the interval immediately before and
after it. A good deal depends on the quarter of the moon and
direction of the wind, for it is these that regulate the
duration of a fishing-tide. The tides are erratic in those
seas ; at times it is possible to fish for three hours on
end, while on other days no sooner are you fairly under
way than the tide becomes too strong, and there is nothing for
it but to reel up and go ashore. Much the same difference is,
of course, discernible in sea-fishing at home during a week
of spring or neap tides, but there is much greater irregularity
on the Florida coast.

Tarpon fishing by night is exciting work, somewhat
too exciting for many people. The fish, however, bite with

25

Giant Fish of Florida

far more certainty than by day, particularly when the moon is
shining. There is an element of danger about this night-
fishing, and more than one nervous system has been shattered
by a porpoise jumping into a boat ; indeed, Mr. Otis Mygatt,
one of the most celebrated of tarpon-fishermen, suffered
severely from this startling intrusion.

It is impossible to know how far one is drifting towards
the open sea, and on all sides are heard the plunges of
mighty fish, which are far more likely to land in the boat
than during the day. A great tarpon may seize the bait and
get round behind the angler, to his utter confusion. Even
if the shore is reached in time, there is considerable difficulty
and excitement in landing a tarpon on a dark night. Towards
the end of May those who are not strong enough to land
their tarpon without delay lose them to the sharks. As many
as five of these monsters will attack a hooked tarpon at
once, and on one occasion I remember four of them
while thus engaged attacking a fifth, and in a few moments
not a shred of that fifth shark remained. The angler recovered
only the head of the tarpon. It is remarkable, seeing the
position of the shark's mouth, what rapid bites he can take at a
struggling tarpon, just as we should take the first bite of a sand-
wich. It is no bad plan to carry a rifle in the boat so late in
the season. It will often keep off sharks and save a good fish.

A few words must now be said as to the means of
reaching Boca Grand Pass, the most fashionable tarpon

26

Giant Fish of Florida

ground of to-day, and as to the accommodation to be had
there. There seems to be a mistaken idea that tarpon fishing
is an inordinately costly recreation ; but this cannot be upheld
when it is remembered that the total expenses on the spot
amount to little more than thirty shillings a day, including
hotel, board and lodging, guide, boat, bait, and guide's
keep, while the return fare, with forty hours train and four
hours boat after reaching New York, is not more than £32
out and home.

The Boca Grand Pass was not always the headquarters of
tarpon trolling, for this modern method of fishing was
first successfully practised some few years ago in the Captiva
Pass. There is also good tarpon fishing in Aransas Pass,
Mexico, where living and other expenses are much less
than at Boca Grand, but the fish run smaller. In 1901
Hughes' Floating Hotel was the only accommodation
available, with the exception of hired yachts, and, though
most comfortable in every way, had certain disadvantages
arising out of the spot in which it was moored. There
was also, however, to be shortly completed on Museppa
Island, about three miles from Boca Grand Pass, a well-
appointed hotel, with every modern comfort, including a
steamer and launches to convey fishers to and from the
Pass. Guides, bait, a photographing room, and shark-proof
bathing establishment were among the attractions to be antici-
pated at this hotel for the next fishing season.

29

Giant Fish of Florida

Tackle for tarpon fishing should, for the present at any
rate, be bought of Vom Hofe, of New York. English tackle
makers have the matter in view, but it is to be questioned
whether the lower prices at which they will one of these
days be able to turn out equally good stuff will not be more
than neutralised by the excessive duties. The rods cost
about ^3 each, and the reels about ^7. Money for use
during the trip should be sent to the bank at Punta Gorda,
a little town with few resources beyond its fashionable
hotel.

INTERIOR OF AN ALLIGATOR ISLAND. THE HAUNT OF THE RATTLESNAKE, GOPHER,
TORTOISE, AND RACCOON.

CHAPTER II

Among the Alligators

CHAPTER II

AMONG THE ALLIGATORS

THE scenery of that coast will not be found prepossessing ;
but some of the islands, though almost repellent from with-
out, with their unvarying fringe of oyster-covered mangrove
growth depending in the water, are really beautiful in the
interior, where their vegetation presents a luxuriant medley of
palms, yucca, cactus, indiarubber trees, and all the wealth
of festooned creepers so characteristic of the sub-tropical
forest. There are long avenues of cabbage palm, that curious
proof of human patience, which leads men willingly to fell a
plant fourteen inches thick for the sake of a nut-like heart
measuring six inches by three. Many of the pools and
swamps in the interior are still the haunts of alligators, though
the ranks of those hideous reptiles have been greatly thinned
by the professional skin hunters.

35

Giant Fish of Florida

A 'gator hunt is not bad fun on an off day, even though
the twelve-foot veterans are now few and far between. If
pursued on the shore, the alligator will almost certainly make
good its escape into the sea, though how it fares with the
ever-attendant sharks has not yet been determined. The first
requisite for an alligator hunt inland is to enlist the services of
a professional hunter, which your guide can easily do, though
the only obvious qualification of that official seems to lie in the
sanguine but unrealisable assurance that he gives, that every
submerged cave contains a quarry. The only equipment for
this " sport " is a strong gaff and a fourteen-foot sprit from the
boat. You then pick your way through tangled undergrowth,
disturbing many a mocassin snake that glides away on your
approach.

At every likely puddle the professional one holds his nose
and emits a series of fearful grunts, with the object of
attracting the wayward reptile. As this expert trick usually
fails, the only plan is to make fast the gaff to the sprit,
and carefully probe every hole and cave, exploring crevices
in the dry earth that look no bigger than large rabbit earths.
At length, if success is to be yours, the gaff will be seized in
the jaws of the infuriated sleeper, which may [then be gaffed
anywhere near the head and hauled from his lair. On being
brought forth into the daylight, he opens his jaws to their full
extent and grunts loudly, but seems a harmless, torpid creature
enough, though it is prudent to keep clear of his tail, which

36

Giant Fish of Florida

can, with little apparent effort, whisk a man off his legs ; and
of the jaws, which then snap round unpleasantly near the other
end.

It would be folly to class this pastime as sport, for it is
merely a novel experience ; but a somewhat more sporting
method, where alligators are sufficiently plentiful, is to shoot
them with a rifle at night. Professional hunters take only the
underside of the skin, which is worth just twenty-five cents to
them. There is one alligator story that every visitor to Boca
Grand is sure to hear. A professional hunter was on one
occasion engaged to find sport for a man who wanted an easy
kill without adventuring his person among the parasites of the
bush, and they returned with a dead alligator within half
an hour. It afterwards transpired from an unknown source
that the hunter had walked with his employer to a small pond
a few hundred yards distant, and there made strange noises
through his nose, and told the other to fire in a certain
direction. The sportsman fired at quite another spot, being
somewhat excited ; but that made no difference, for the
hunter rushed in knee-deep and dragged forth a fine dead
alligator. There was no mark of any wound on its hide, but
the man told us that it had been killed by the concussion.
No one else said anything. Such recreation, however, is
appropriate only to days on which sea-fishing is impracticable,
and I now come to the main business of my notes, the capture
of tarpon by the modern method of trolling.

39

CHAPTER III

How to Catch Tarpon

CHAPTER III

HOW TO CATCH TARPON

HAVE I sufficiently introduced the tarpon itself ? I hope so.
The fish shown in the frontispiece was caught in March, and
was therefore in poor condition. They improve rapidly
towards the end of April, and are heavy with spawn late
in May. Strips of mullet — four cut from the white belly
of each — are the orthodox bait for tarpon, yet an autopsy will
reveal only an occasional fish, small crabs being by far the
more usual food. When a tarpon is seen rising slowly, head
and tail like a salmon, it may be regarded as on its way
to the bottom to feed, its movements when routing among the
rocks and weeds being notified by the string of bubbles that
rise to the surface, much like the otter's chain.

In Boca Grand the tarpon is fished for close to the
bottom, but elsewhere it is sometimes caught near the

43

Giant Fish of Florida

surface. When actually rolling and playing on the waters the
fish are rarely caught, and where they congregate in a strong
tide and in shallows they are most difficult to hook — not more
than one fish being on the average caught out of four or
more strikes. When a hooked tarpon does not break water,
a comparatively rare occurrence, he may be regarded as a
heavy fish. Once the life is out of the tarpon, he is of little
use, unless it be to furnish a trophy for exhibition to admiring
friends at home, who may like to see what America can raise
in the herring line. Yet probably this universal neglect is
due to the abundance of other more excellent food-fish in
those waters rather than to inherent unfitness, for its flesh is
dark, firm, and meaty.

Not the least important factor in success is a good guide.
These men are quite characters in their way, and never speak
of their master as having caught or lost a fish : with them it is
always " I did this or that," and in truth their experience and
skill mean so very much that this egotism is not altogether
unpardonable. They are for the most part civil and obliging
e 1 ows, particularly the niggers, but there are, of course,
exceptions, and these the sportsman should, for the public
good, never hesitate to get rid of.

At the same time a little consideration is due to the guides
themselves, and if they are worked all day, they should be
allowed to rest at night. Quite apart from their carefully
acquired knowledge, their duties are by no means light.

44

A TARPON GUIDE.

Giant Fish of Florida

They have to be at their employers' beck and call at all hours
of the day and night, and to help him get sport in a willing
and efficient manner. During the fishing they have to
exercise great care in manoeuvring the boat, so as to keep
a tight line when it is impossible to reel in fast enough.
They must also be always on the lookout for moving tarpon,
and they must, above all, have an unfailing supply of fresh
and well-cut baits. All said and done, the daily wage of less
than a sovereign for the guide and boat is well earned.

Tarpon fishing has one feature unique in angling annals ;
it is a social gathering, and not by any means a solitary sport.
Whether the undoubted charm of this distinction lies in the
inherent gregariousness, often undiscovered, in the angler's
bosom, or rather perhaps in the rare pleasure of seeing one's
friends in all manner of difficulties, it is quite certain that
tarpon fishing would be far less popular under other
conditions. As it is, where the fish are seen on the move,
there must every one go, and twenty or thirty boats will soon
be clustered with no more than twenty yards between each.

An element of excitement is also imported by the
continual apparition of great fish leaping high in the air,
falling into boats and jeopardising life and limb, for it is a
poor choice whether you will have 150 Ib. of lively fish
dropped on the top of your skull, or whether you will rather
have it fair in the side, with the risk of being knocked over-
board to the sharks.

47

C 2

Giant Fish of Florida

There will no doubt be disparaging anglers who despair
of tarpon fishing as a sport when they read my frank
admission that it calls for little special knowledge beyond a
useful husbanding of one's strength that can be acquired only
with practice. At the same time, attention to the business in
hand will often save many little inconveniences, such as
getting your finger broken by the reel handle, or cut through
by quick-running slack line.

In thus discounting the skill at present necessary to the
killing of tarpon, I do not overlook the fact that this state
of things will not in all probability continue indefinitely, since
there are already signs that the tarpon may become both
scarcer and better educated as the sport gains more ad-
herents ; nor is it other than probable that we do not yet
know the best methods of catching this splendid fish. In
Boca Grand Pass, for instance, we fish for tarpon with a strip
of mullet used close to the bottom. In other places where
the sport is followed they use a whole mullet near the surface.
The probability is that we know no more of the life history
and habits of the tarpon than our fathers knew of the salmon
forty years ago. It is when greater art is called for in the
capture of the scarcer and more wary fish that the more
intelligent guides and sportsmen will inevitably score in a
measure that, it must be confessed, is not always the reward
of superior intelligence to-day.

As to season, the most agreeable time for tarpon fishing

48

Giant Fish of Florida

is undoubtedly from the second week in April until the end
of May, or as much longer, for the matter of that, as the
mosquitoes are graciously pleased to let you bide in peace.
Still-fishing, the old-fashioned method of angling, is practised
under the lea of some islands only on days that do not permit
of your getting out into the Pass. It bears considerable
resemblance to some ways of sea-fishing at home, and consists
in anchoring the boat, baiting and throwing out a gorge-hook,
and then sitting down to wait for a bite. As often as not the
bite never comes ; as often as not, when it does, the fish
proves to be a shore-haunting shark.

49

CHAPTER IV

A Lively Morning in the Pass

CHAPTER IV

A LIVELY MORNING IN THE PASS

I WILL now endeavour to describe a typical morning's
tarpon fishing in the Pass, and one such morning will, with
varying results, be found much as another. The tides of
Boca Grand are erratic, yet the guides must have an accurate
knowledge of their vagaries, since on them depends the
duration of the fishing-time. Only in slack water can tarpon
be fished for with any comfort. The tide is, in fact, slacking,
as four and twenty boats drift rapidly down through the Pass
and out towards the Gulf, to row back close in shore and out
of the current, and repeat the process.

Presently, as the tide is all but done, some one gets a
strike ; up comes a hundred-pounder a second or two later,
eight feet in the air, shaking his head in fury until his gills
rattle loudly, then, with a plainly audible grunt, shaking free

53

Giant Fish of Florida

first the leads, then the bait, and finally the hook, all in about
a second of time. This performance, however disturbing to
the novice, barely attracts the notice of the old hand, for he
is well accustomed to such treatment, and does not regard his
hook as fast until the fish has made its second jump in vain.
Still, the sight of the fish acts like a magnet on the other boats,
which are now being rowed towards the favoured spot with all
the strength of their guides, who well know that, like most of
the herring tribe, tarpon feed in shoals.

And now I see that the lady-angler who yesterday landed
four tarpon, is fast into another. Up it comes and dashes
straight into old " Orange Blossom's " boat, all but knocking
the old man overboard, and wetting him through and leaving
abundance of slime and scales on his coat ; then, with a couple
of kicks that break an oar and knock a crack in the boat, the
tarpon flounders over the side. She must have lost it ! No ;
it is still on, and there is no doubt about its being well hooked.
The guide is now making frantic efforts to get his boat out of
the press and towards the shore.

Meanwhile there have been two other strikes ; one of the
fish got away at the first jump, the other is playing the deuce
all round, and now it is steering straight tor " Dibbler's" boat.
" Reel up ! " yells the guide, but that is more than " Dibbler "
can do, for is he not fast in his customary jewfish ? About three
of these great fish " Dibbler " hooks every day, and always in
the same spot, losing them all with unfailing regularity through

54

A HOOKED PIECE OP CORAL WHICH WAS MISTAKEN FOR A JEWFISH.

Giant Fish of Florida

breakage. It is futile to try and persuade him that just at that
spot the rock rises about fifteen feet higher than on the rest of
the reef : nothing will induce him to keep clear of the rock,
and he has his daily exciting struggles with his impassive and
unmoved antagonists.

" Keep away ! " he shouts, now " I am going to land this
jewfish, whatever happens ! " Yet who can keep a hooked
tarpon clear of a given spot ? Already the lady's tarpon has
fouled poor " Dibbler's" line, and he, all unconscious, and with
a radiant face that beams with anticipation, shouts out to us the
inspiring intelligence that he is moving it at last, and will
certainly land the record jewfish very shortly. Alas ! the
tarpon soon cuts through his frayed line, leaving him to float
disconsolately onward and reel in, bemoaning the loss of yet
another jewfish, and just as he was getting the best of
it too !

Sometimes one of the lumps of coral is detached, and
the novice, and on occasion even the old hand, will play it for
the best part of an hour, for it may easily be mistaken for a.
jewfish, a sulky monster that may weigh up to 300 Ib. The
deceptive effect is heightened by the drifting of the boat,
and altogether there is much excuse for the error.

It is wonderful, too, how deceptive some of the bolder
biting fishes are. I recollect on one occasion seeing a novice
strike, as he thought, a tarpon, throw himself backwards
and play it as he supposed right ; his guide, who also

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Giant Fish of Florida

seemed to think it was a tarpon, manoeuvred in the
orthodox way, and presently a pound-grouper flew into the
boat !

There have now been some seven strikes, with only
two tarpon landed, and sport is somewhat slack. A fair angler
carelessly trailing her bait over the side is suddenly
startled by the magnificent leap of a thirty-pound kingfish,
a mighty mackerel, which all but wrenches the rod from
her hands. Away it dashes, taking out line at an appalling
pace, foul-hooked in the eye, but unable to free itself, and
at last duly brought to gaff. What a handsome fish !
Particularly noticeable are the knife-edged, conical teeth,
that can cut baits just below the hook as with scissors, and
the small proportion of its fin to its swimming power.

The kingfish is one of the swiftest swimmers in those
seas, and the Spaniards recognise this by calling it " cavalla,"
or the horse. I have shown two figures of kingfish, the
one chasing a skipjack, its favourite food, below the
surface, the other leaping in the air and throwing up a
newly-hunted skipjack, an almost invariable habit. Indeed, a
kingfish breaking water always appears to have a skipjack
in readiness to throw up, and this, its next meal, accompanies
it for about a third of its flight. Although the skipjack
appears to be knocked out of the water by the kingfish,
and sometimes shows bleeding rents in its sides, it may be
that the leap is a voluntary one to avoid capture, for it is

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Giant Fish of Florida

difficult to imagine the object of the kingfish in throwing
its prey into the air. These skipjacks often skip into boats,
and exceedingly beautiful little fish they are, with the
steely blue sheen on their burnished silver coats, and their
amber fins and sharply-forked tail. The damaged tail-fin
of the swimming kingfish figured opposite struck me the
moment I caught it, and I came to the conclusion at the
time that the tail-fin had been bitten by a prowling shark
that the kingfish was, thanks to its lightning speed, able to
baulk of a more substantial meal. Of the sharks that infest
this coast I shall have something to say later on. They are
numerous and ravenous, and spare nothing, great or small.

And now the tarpon are biting again. There are two,
three, four strikes ; three fish have jumped, two are fairly
hooked. The excitement grows.

" Hi, you, sir ! reel up there. Can't you see you have
fouled that lady's line ? Cut your line — tell you you have no
fish on at all — just cut your line ! "

" Pull like hell ! " shouts some one to his guide, as his
tarpon rushes in towards him.

" Pick up that chair, Bill," cries the guide, a minute later.
" My gent's fallen out — got to tow him ashore. There goes a
rod broken at the butt."

" Lend us an oar, Sam ; mine's smashed."

" Come and get it yourself," sings out the courteous Sam.

" Can't ; got a fish on."

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Giant Fish of Florida

" Look out ! There's a shark after your tarpon. Where's
your gun ? "

" Now, then, you there ; where are you shooting ? "

And so on, and so on. Six mad tarpon, six mad fishers,
six mad guides, and six quite unmanageable boats dashing
about in confusion among near a score of others. This it is
that makes tarpon fishing so fascinating once you get the true
spirit of the thing. In those two hours that we have been out
just nineteen fish were landed out of fifty or sixty strikes, and
more than one boat never got a touch.

As soon as the tide runs too strong boat after boat is
pulled ashore, and every one seeks a shady nook for luncheon,
generally under the lighthouse. Here in the cool we munch
our sandwiches and talk tarpon, every other subject being
tabooed at Boca Grand. And how wonderfully has that big
fish of yesterday increased in the night ! It was really a fine
fish, scaling, as a matter of fact, 171 lb., and needed no
editing. Yet the man who weighed it called 181 lb. The
fortunate angler added a matter of 10 lb. for loss of weight in
transport to the scales. This somewhat generous allowance for
wear and tear brought its already respectable weight up to
191 lb. That was last night. To-day he speaks of it as
" close on 200 lb.," and we can infer what that will mean as
soon as he gets back home.

Then, as to its measurements, he left it hanging out last
night, and measured it alone this morning. It hung by one

66

•

THE KING FISH LEAPT SOME 20 FEET INTO THE AIR, AND UP WITH HIM CAME A
SKIPJACK DEEPLY GASHED ALONG THE SIDE.

Giant Fish of Florida

jaw, and its own weight must have stretched it by at least
three inches. He is not, however, content with measuring it
with the mouth open ; he must needs add another four inches
" for luck." This is only a fair example of the manufacture of
long and heavy fish, and a little study of such cases will go far
to explain not merely the extraordinary shrinkage in the hands
of the taxidermist, but also the otherwise incomprehensible
fact of some sportsmen getting so large a percentage of the
heavy fish, while others score only the average.

69

CHAPTER V

Ladies Who Love the Sport

CHAPTER V

LADIES WHO LOVE THE SPORT

THERE are generally some ladies in the company, indeed the
gentler sex seems to have taken to tarpon fishing to an extent
quite unforeseen when first men introduced the sport. It is
wonderful, too, how ladies manage to hold on to these mighty
fish, and to husband their strength, the department in
which, in their excitement, they might reasonably be
expected to fail. I have already mentioned the feat of the
lady who killed her four tarpon in one morning. Considering
that these fish weighed close on 100 Ib. apiece, this
was no mean achievement. This same woman, while
beaching one of her first heavy fish early in the season,
fell backwards over a few straws. She was too exhausted
to stand upright again for some moments, but so excited
was her imagination that she was firmly persuaded, until

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Giant Fish of Florida

convinced by the evidence of her own eyes, that she had
fallen over a log

There were many other successful lady anglers. One of
these caught and landed a jewfish scaling 137 lb., and this
must have called for all her strength, for these jewfish have
enormous power of resistance so long as they sulk at the
bottom, which they do as if they were rocks. I have watched
a man fighting with a 35o-lb. jewfish, which he eventually
succeeded in killing, though not without a severe tussle, which
taxed his patience and his tackle in no small degree.

For a long time we thought he was playing a rock, after the
manner dear to " Dibbler," so little did the object in which the
hook was fast seem to yield to his persuasions, and it was only
the fact of his being too old a hand to be taken in by any such
makebelieve that convinced us that big game was really in
question. For a good twenty minutes hard pulling he cannot
have moved that jewfish through more than fourteen feet of
water, and all his labour would seem to be undone next
moment, for the monster simply sinks to the bottom again and
is doubtless trying to cut his line against some sharp coral edge.
Yet his skill and patience have not in fact been thrown away,
for the great fish is tiring. The next steady strain brings it
appreciably nearer to the surface, and at last, after a giant's
contest lasting fully two hours, the three hundred and odd
pounds of fish float blown and helpless on the top of the water,
the vanquished monster looking more like a barrel than a fish.

74

A BIG JEWFISH FOR A WOMAN TO LAND.

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Like most ground - hugging species, the jewfish, once
brought to the top, is inflated and helpless. His one hope is in
the razor-edges of the coral, and well he knows how to turn
these, where available, to account. If he is caught, it is
because he has inadvertently wandered far from his natural
defences, and cannot risk a sudden haul from above by an
attempt to regain them. A ponderous perch-like fish, he is
known in many southern and sub-tropical seas, and is a
favourite object of sport, like his ally, the grouper, all round
the Australian coasts.

It is just possible, of course, to reckon too securely on this
helplessness of jewfish when hauled to the surface, for an
occasional captive may put forth exceptional efforts to regain
its liberty. Thus, I recollect a case in which one of 300 Ib.
was lost by a lady through too great reliance on this usual
collapse, for the fish was made fast by the line close along-
side the boat, and was being towed ashore, when it made a
sudden dash for freedom and went down like a stone.

Like most of the other great fish of those waters, the jew-
fish is troubled with suckers, and in the photograph facing this
page may be seen a sucker of about i Ib. adhering to the side
of a 4OO-lb. jewfish. So close do these uninvited guests cling
by means of their sucking apparatus on the head, that only a
quick leap (which the jewfish, by the way, cannot manage) and
a sudden twist in the air dislodges them. I have seen sharks
leap out of water and throw them off in showers. The only

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Giant Fish of Florida

thing that will tempt a sucker from its comfortable position is a
small and suitable bait dangled near it. Thus lured, it will
frequently swim away from its host, and allow itself to be caught.

The scales of the jewfish are somewhat curiously formed,
and those of sufficiently active imagination profess to see in
the centre of each an accurate and unmistakable full length
portrait of the Virgin Mary. Many, however, will, I venture
to predict, look for this in vain.

Before quitting the subject of the many successes achieved
by women on those hunting grounds, I may mention one in
which an enormous whip ray was foul-hooked, and the lady
obligingly stood on her victim that the camera might do its
share. On the whole, fishing in Florida seas may be said to
offer thrilling sport to such ladies as are venturesome enough to
give it a trial. There is just that spice of danger which sports-
women never resent, without the need of prolonged roughing it,
that tries them far more than sudden calls on their endurance.
As long experience and angling skill are not required, at any
rate at present, a lady has on her first outing as good a chance
as any one of hooking the record fish of the season, tarpon,
jewfish, or shark, as the case may be ; nor is the ordinary work
of tarpon fishing, though beyond doubt arduous, such as to
alarm any woman of average aptitude for outdoor sport. When
you have fairly hooked your tarpon, you sit comfortably back
in the armchair, your rod resting in a socket screwed on the
thwart or suspended round the waist, and thus you pit your

80

THE VANQUISHED WHIP RAY.

THE WHIP RAY FIRMLY HARPOONED TURNED HELPLESSLY
ON ITS BACK.

STEADILY THE HOOKED TARPON FOLLOWED THE BOAT
TOWARDS SHORE.

THE CREWS OF SIX BOATS TOWING A HARPOONED WHIP

,

"

Giant Fish of Florida

strength against that of the fish. Your reel carries 200 yards
of line, but it is rarely that half of that length is required.
Most tarpon fishers bring their fish to the gaff from the boat,
but it is far more sportsmanlike to beach them, as they need
not then be destroyed.

When this lady foul-hooked the whip ray, it towed her
boat about for quite half an hour. She then got rather tired
and handed her rod to her husband, who, in the course of
another hour's hard fight, could do no more than raise the
brute to the top of the water fully thirty yards away from his
boat. He then sent along to the man with the harpoon to help
him, and next time the ray came to the surface the harpooner
had it fast, and it was triumphantly towed ashore by a remark-
able procession of boats. Its estimated weight was 500 lb.,
and this I should regard as not far wide of the mark.

CHAPTER VI

Enormous Rays, or Devil-Fish

CHAPTER VI

ENORMOUS RAYS, OR DEVIL-FISH

RAYS, which are somewhat closely related to the sharks, though
so different to the casual observer, are characteristic of all seas,
but especially perhaps of the tropical waters of America,
where some of them attain to enormous weight. The sting-
rays, of which the one depicted in this volume is a variety,
armed with formidable serrated spikes at the base of the tail,
are in some cases fearsome creatures, while many of the
family are provided with the means of numbing their victims
with an electric discharge. The whip ray, however, though
carrying spikes above the tail, is a harmless and indeed beau-
tiful creature. At the same time, its frantic leaps when driven
wild by the suckers that adhere to its disc are sufficiently
alarming to those unaccustomed to its ways.

To see a kite-shaped creature with a long and whip-like

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Giant Fish of Florida

tail leaping high in the air, then merely touching the water
again like a ricocheting shell and again soaring aloft, a series
of such leaps taking it quite a hundred yards over the surface,
is, to say the least of it, a novel spectacle to those just out from
Europe, the seas of which do not afford these apparitions. It
is as if the monster fish were suddenly tenanted by the
wandering spirit of a defunct kangaroo, and when it is added
that its aerial leaps often bring it quite close to the boats —
though I do not remember hearing of a single case in which it
actually jumped into one — it will be seen that there is some
excuse for the occasional signs of alarm evoked by its sudden
appearance. The splash with which it regains the water can,
on still days, be heard quite a mile away.

The swimming action of these great rays is very beautiful,
displaying all the graceful undulating movements so character-
istic of the shark tribe, which go so far towards mitigating the
repulsive appearance of some of them. There is always this
striking contrast between the live and dead shark ; the one,
though endowed with instincts that can never commend it to
our goodwill, is yet a very lithe and graceful' robber ; the
other, deprived of all life and movement, shows only the vices
with none of the redeeming beauty.

A more characteristic pose of the rays, however, is that of
lying motionless, or, at most, with its disc slightly undulating with
respiration, on the sand just under water. Sometimes, indeed,
they are found lying a yard or so above low-water mark in pits

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Giant Fish of Florida

of their own making, and it is in such positions that they may
be particularly dangerous, through no fault of their own, to the
too eager surf-fisherman who wades bare-footed in the muddy
water, careless of such risks. The whip rays seem of wide
distribution under a variety of names, and a striped species
has been taken on the Irish coasts. It would be difficult to
know what use the delicate tail — usually stripped bare of its
skin an inch from the tip — can be to this fish. The armament
of spikes at the base can be erected at will, and the fish is able
to bend up its back, much after the fashion of the scorpion,
so as to bring them to bear on enemies attacking it in front.
Each spike is serrated, its innumerable small points setting
inwards, and the whole is enveloped in a skin so thin as to be
ruptured by the mere act of withdrawing it from some body
into which the fearful weapon has been thrust. My own
impression is that portions of this skin remain in the wound,
and set up that local poisoning that gives to such an act of
aggression the popular name of " stinging."

There are even larger rays on that coast than the whip
ray. The giant ray, for instance, is one of the largest of
existing fishes, and specimens have been captured measuring
as much as twenty feet across the " wings." Indeed, the
Spanish and half-caste pearl divers call this ghoulish monster
the " blanket," from a fixed belief (though no one can have
survived to tell the tale) that it envelops its victims as in a
blanket, and then devours them at leisure. This sobriquet

Giant Fish of Florida

survives in the adopted scientific name of Manta. It appears
to me that such a diet is against all probability, if we may
judge by the food of most of the order, but these men are
firmly convinced that the giant ray, or, as it is also not
inappropriately called, devil-fish, is an inveterate enemy to
man, and they at least earn the right to an opinion on dangers
to which they alone are constantly exposed.

The proper way to capture these creatures, if any one cares
about an occasional hour's excitement, is with the harpoon.
As for catching them on the rod, it is only done by foul
hooking, and it merely strains the arms and tackle in what
cannot be described as a very good cause. Harpooning, how-
ever, may be really exciting, and I will try to describe such an
adventure to the best of my recollection.

You take the harpoon and get your guide to row you along
the shore northwards. Standing in the bows, behind the
neatly coiled harpoon line, you keep a sharp lookout for game,
and very soon you see a mighty disc lying on the sand at no
great depth. Poising the harpoon in the air, you let drive at
the object of your desires ; it vanishes in a trailing cloud of
sand, and you have an opportunity of seeing how poor a shot
you made by insufficient allowance for refraction, which, of
course, distorts the size, shape, and position of objects under
water ; and, as you assure yourself that in this case the harpoon
went a good five feet ahead of the fish, you resolve to study the
position of the next more accurately.

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Giant Fish of Florida

Look out ! Here is a long, dark object coming straight at
you. It is a shark. Let him have it right in the neck. That
is better. The harpoon has struck this time. Habet ! Only
the weapon has entered near the tail, not within four feet of
the spot you thought to reach. You have to keep the rope
close to the bow, or the brute may capsize you. But the
harpoon has come away, and you coil the rope for the next
comer. There is a sting ray right under your boat. No
calculation necessary this time. You strike it fair in the
centre. Be careful how you handle it, for should it get its spike
into you, you will remember the wrenching out of the barbs.

All ready again ! See that dark patch a hundred yards
ahead ! It is a whip ray, weighing perhaps 400 Ib. How
gracefully it flies beneath the water ! You take careful note of
its bearings, and reckon that it lies about seven feet deep and
perhaps seventeen feet ahead. This means that the centre of
the fish is some nine feet nearer to you than appears to be the
case. Good ! You threw too far again, but the ray is struck
near the head, and you will get some sport anyhow.

The infuriated fish tows the boat in all directions. It is
too heavy to haul in, and must be got ashore. This is not very
difficult, for you let it run free when heading in that direction,
and check it when making a move for deeper water. At last
it is beached. There is no occasion to cut out the harpoon,
for all you need do is to thrust in your finger and press up the
barb on either side, and it comes away at once.

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Giant Fish of Florida

As a trophy, the back of this ray, with its black ground
and small white rings within larger ones, characteristic of old
fish, makes a handsome table cover. The tail is about six feet
in length, and less in thickness than a cedar pencil, and at its
base are three or four barbed spears. It feeds entirely on
Crustacea, never taking a fish bait, and is caught only by foul
hooking. In the roof of the whip ray's mouth will be seen a
series of processes like corrugated grinding stones, and there is
a corresponding series on the lower jaw. It is between these
that the shell fish are thoroughly triturated. I have some-
where read that the male rays have sharper teeth and no
grinding arrangement, but I am not sufficiently acquainted
with the sex distinctions to bear this out.

94

<

: *•. • •

• • •.*--,.-»-.:• ?•-" >'-r.

!

CHAPTER VII

Harpooning a Monster

CHAPTER VII

HARPOONING A MONSTER

I REMEMBER another exciting adventure, which resulted in
the capture of a giant ray, weighing many hundred pounds.
The wind had just gone to the south after many days of
cold northers, and, whereas it would require several days of
such wind to bring the tarpon back to a feeding humour,
this first breath from the south was sufficient to stir up a
long line of foam and slush that means food to the devil-
fish. Twenty feet and upwards across these monsters may
measure, and they have been taken weighing over 4,000 Ib.
In the corners of the mouth, which gapes like a letter-box,
are coiled fans that are used in waving the food into the
throat. Three of these devil-fish we saw on the day in
question, coming along and raising breakers as if they were
steam-propelled rafts. With the tips of their great wings

99

£ 2

Giant Fish of Florida

occasionally showing, and their huge shining black backs
continually appearing above the surface, they looked very
terrible.

In full pursuit was the man with the harpoon, who had
been waiting such a chance for weeks. And now, as we can
plainly see, he is close to this moving line of flesh. Whiz goes
the harpoon, hurled by a strong and practised arm ; not
only the metal head, but also the shaft is deeply buried in that
three-feet slab of flesh, and the maddened monster bounds off
with lightning speed. The next moment the man changes
places with his guide, no easy proceeding in a slender I4ft.
craft, but it is necessary that he should do so, for he killed
a devil-fish alone not a month since, and the skin has not
yet grown again on his raw hands. Ere the boat has got
properly under way a loose bight of rope catches the guide
round the leg, and flings him into the gunwale ; there is plenty
of way on now, and a dangerous list into the bargain as
the bow dips under water. The man rushes, knife in hand, to
his guide's assistance, but the latter succeeds with great
dexterity in freeing himself from the coils, and there is no
need to cut loose.

And now the pace grows fast and furious. Eighty feet of
line are out, waves are flying from the bow, and the boat
speeds so that no launch in Florida could catch her. The
great fish is close to the bottom, and suddenly shifts its
course. This manoeuvre is like to cost it dear, for it enables six

100

A HARPOONED DEVIL FISH IN SHALLOW WATER.

Giant Fish of Florida

other boats, which had already stopped fishing, to join in
the chase, to cut off a corner and hitch on to the circling
harpoon boat. A seventh boat from the fishing grounds
has failed to make connection, and, before the day is over,
others will wish they had done likewise.

On, and ever on, speeds this extraordinary procession,
the like of which was surely never seen under other
circumstances, propelled by an unseen power to an unknown
destination with a force so great that it makes no account so far
of the additional strain on its resources. Some have tried
to back water as a check on the runaway, and have for
their pains been almost thrown out of the boats and had
the oars torn from, their hands. Onward they tear, the
great fish keeping carefully in the deep channel-way, and
avoiding treacherous shallows on its unrestrained course to
the open sea. When the ray has thus run for five miles,
it quite suddenly doubles on its course, with the surprising and
discomforting result that the seven boats are tied in a knot.
Quickly they will have to extricate themselves, else, as it
is impossible to go full speed ahead in that formation, over
they must go.

The pace gradually slackens during the next three
miles, and at last all oars are shipped and the guides back
water. This is not without its effect on the "devil," who
promptly heads again for the open sea, and moves on until the
shore is but a streak on the horizon. Anxious eyes are now

Giant Fish of Florida

seeking for the smoke of the steamer that they hope will
have been sent to their assistance. It is two hours or
more since the giant was first harpooned, and it is tiring
sufficiently to allow of its being brought now and again to
the surface to receive a Winchester bullet or two in its
spine. Its mighty wings still flap, however, and it is like
some great unwieldy water bird for ever struggling onwards.
And now the welcome smoke can just be seen in the
distance, though it will take the steamer a good hour to
reach the ground, and goodness knows how many hours to
tow such a flotilla home.

Only two hours of daylight remain, and one of these
is well nigh gone ere the steamer comes along, and
promptly crashes into the somewhat erratic harpoon boat,
striking her fair amidships, almost the worst disaster of
the day. Fortunately she was a nice limp boat with scarce
a sound rib in her, and she gave so freely to the sudden
blow that little fresh damage was done and she leaked but
slightly more than usual. The rest of the day's sport, the slay-
ing and towing ashore of the giant ray, was a matter of time
only, yet, curiously enough, when that man went harpooning
devil-fish again he went alone. The rest of the company
had somehow lost all taste for such weird recreation.

1 06

CHAPTER VIII

The Loggerhead Turtle

i

,'

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOGGERHEAD TURTLE

ONE of the favourite objects of the harpoon in those waters is
the loggerhead turtle, and as the procedure differs in some
respects from that followed in the pursuit of the unprofitable
ray, I will attempt to give some account of the way in which
amateurs spear their turtle. If you must catch your turtle
before you cook him, you must as surely find one before you
can spear him. Turtles are in the habit of coming up for a
breather somewhere about slack water, and at such times they
may be seen basking lazily at the surface.

A small and sharp harpoon is necessary to penetrate the
turtle's shell, and it is important to make this change in your
equipment if you go from rays to turtles. All being ready,
your guide paddles you as quietly as possible into the pass, and
you must get in the way of standing motionless in the bow in

in

Giant Fish of Florida

a slight lop, for roughish weather is undoubtedly the best for
turtle-spearing.

At length you see a great loggerhead some three hundred
yards ahead on the port bow. The loggerhead turtle is the
most common on this coast ; the more delicate green turtle is
the rarest ; and between them in point of numbers comes the
leathery species. It is most important, when you have sighted
a turtle/to creep up as close and as quickly as possible, without
making the slightest noise. You must even stand quite steady
and crouch without kicking the boat, as the least disturbance
may send the turtle to the bottom. The great thing is to
restrain yourself from letting drive with the harpoon until the
most favourable moment, and the most favourable moment is
that at which you are closest to your quarry, so that it may feel
the full force of the harpoon.

If, when you are within reach, the turtle shows signs of
diving, in with the harpoon ; otherwise, get a little nearer.
Now put all your back into the 'cast, iand the barbed point
goes clipping through the shell. You think that it did not
penetrate very far ? Well, your instinct is probably correct, so
it will be as well to fix another dart ready and, playing him
gently the while, strike again the moment he comes up to
breathe. He may remain beneath the surface fully twenty
minutes, on the move the whole while, but he will soon
want air after that time has elapsed. If you were sure
of having struck the barb well home, the more usual course

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Giant Fish of Florida

would be to haul in at once ; but it is sometimes safe to give
the case the benefit of the doubt, and to handle the captive
gingerly at first, until a second blow has made things doubly
sure.

Up he comes at last ; a second barb is driven into shell and
flesh ; and now, being quite sure that there is a firm hold, you
alter your tactics and haul boldly. As he comes floundering
to the surface you seize one flipper (careful ! that beak, which
is fashioned to crush the strongest shells, could easily nip your
hand off at the wrist !) while the guide lays hold of thCipther.
You both keep well on the opposite side of the boat to prevent
her collapsing, and the turtle, weighing 200 lb., is finally lifted
in tail first and laid on his back. You are very careful to keep
your legs out of his way, for the flippers hit hard and the male's
nails tear deep. Blindly in his impotent wrath he flounders,
striking out in all directions and chipping away planks like
matchwood if he gets the chance.

Before hoisting in a turtle, see that your oars are properly
stowed away. We once landed a heavy loggerhead upon an
oar half drawn into the boat, with the result that it was driven
through the bottom, and the accident discovered only when
the boat was a third full of water. In spite of hard bailing, by
the time the turtle had been shifted, and the guide had
whipped off his shirt and stuffed it into the hole, the boat was
in a sinking condition, and the turtle had most of the fun to
itself.

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Giant Fish of Florida

Though its reputation is deservedly less than that of its green
relative, the loggerhead nevertheless makes excellent soup, but
you have to dress your own turtle if you want to utilise it in
this way. The first thing is to kill it, and killing a turtle is
easier to write than to do. Its head must be cut off at any
cost, and the particular cost to avoid is having your fingers
nipped off. Always bear in mind that the shell is a very
important part of the skeleton ; the ribs and neck are firmly
joined to it. The big bones fore and aft, as well as the
shoulder blades and pelvis, are separate ; otherwise all the
solid parts and the shell are one. I am not desiring to discourse
on the anatomy of the turtle, but this unity with the shell is
worth remembering by any one attempting to remove the head.

To get at the turtle's best meat you have to cut round the
margin of the under plates and lift up the lid. Even then,
unless you have some experience of the composition of the
animal, it is by no means easy to be sure that you have struck
the liver, and not some other part that you do not want. A
turtle is one of those creatures that do not seem nearly dead
when you have killed them. When the turtles are pairing, by
the way, nothing will drive them from each other's company,
and there can under the circumstances be no possible sport or
advantage in killing them, particularly as the male is then unfit
for food.

Such are some of the fruits of harpooning. It will be found
a pleasant change, exercising a new combination of the senses

118

Giant Fish of Florida

and muscles, and requiring some skill ; but it is, of course,
only a bastard form of sport, and is usually resorted to on
days when the tarpon will not feed, or the tide is too strong
for fishing. The turtle is the only useful animal taken on that
coast by such means, and there is this excuse for harpooning
your turtle that you cannot get them in any other way. The
turtle's cousin on land, the gophir tortoise, which is common
enough in those parts, is said to be taken in a very curious way,
though, as the animal is useless, few put it to the test. This
tortoise lives in underground burrows, not unlike rabbit earths,
and its abundance may be judged by the number of such
burrows. Into these the natives say they drop a ball attached
to a string, a sudden intrusion that infuriates the occupant of
the burrow, who, in his slow and sure fashion, pursues it into
daylight, and is then easily secured. I hand on the story for
what the cautious reader may think it worth. Personally, I am
not much inclined, from my limited knowledge of reptile
habits, to credit it.

The turtles come ashore in the warm May nights to lay
their eggs, and the female, as soon as she touches land,
raises her head and peers cautiously around to see that the
coast is clear. Satisfied on this point, she scrambles on to the
dry sand and above high-water mark, scrapes a hole and
therein deposits her eggs, covers them up, and returns to the
sea. Three sittings she will lay each season, and many a
banquet is thus provided for racoons. It is at this laying

121

Giant Fish of Florida

season that so many turtles are procured for the market, and
many a loggerhead finds its way into the real green turtle soup.
In their wanderings below the surface they not infrequently
get foul of a line, but, so hard is their skin, that the hook
seldom penetrates. Some idea of the toughness of the skin
may be formed when it is mentioned that even the strongest
men can with difficulty pierce it with a gaff. When they chance
to foul a line they are generally played for about half an hour,
after which they show once and then go free. On one occasion
the harpooner of the party slowly and cautiously approached a
basking loggerhead, his right arm poised, his weapon ready to
strike. Then, slowly, it was lowered ; the turtle must have
been dead at least a week. Yells of laughter greeted his dis-
covery, for the decaying reptile had drifted down the whole
line of boats, reaching him the last, and had even deceived one
or two of their inmates into fetching out their gaffs.

122

CHAPTER IX

CATFISH AS SCAVENGERS

WITH the exception of the sharks, which, vermin as they
are, give a measure of sport under favourable conditions,
I have now disposed of most of the really big game of the
Florida coast waters, and it remains to draw the reader's
and intending visitor's attention to the number of other
sea-fish that on occasion give excellent sport in those latitudes.
I have often thought that in the all-absorbing ambition for
the record tarpon some of these humbler fish, which would
themselves create a sensation in English waters, are too
consistently neglected. The sharks shall receive notice
where their low standing as vermin relegates them, at the
end of the book.

It may be complained, particularly by those who have
never been on the spot, that I have passed too lightly

125

Giant Fish of Florida

over the real art of tarpon fishing, made too little of its
difficulties, laid too much stress on the simplicity of success.
Well, these are matters of opinion. I never, in my own
tarpon experiences, found a single instance where real
skill and expert knowledge were nearly so important as
brute strength and endurance, and I write only of what
I know. Those who like detailed instructions in the art
of tarpon fishing should consult the back files of Forest
and Stream, the great American fishing paper, and in
these they will find innumerable excellent articles and
letters on the subject. In a quite recent volume, for instance, I
find an admirable series of tarpon papers from the pen of
Mr. J. A. L. Waddell, and I append, as a specimen of the
detail with which some of these writers lovingly handle
their subject, Mr. Waddell's twelve ways in which a
tarpon may be lost by the careless or ill-starred.

1. By failure of the hook to penetrate a soft place.

2. By the cutting of a hole in the mouth, from which the

hook drops when the line is slackened.

3. By breaking or corkscrewing the hook.

4. By breaking the line, owing to : —

(a) its deterioration.

(b) fouling of line by overrunning of the reel.

(c) tangling of something by the reel handle.

(a) too severe application of the brake or reel
handle in order to stop the fish.
126

Giant Fish of Florida

5. By breaking of the snell.

6. By breaking of the rod, generally in the tip, but

sometimes in the butt.

7. By carelessness of boatman in gaffing.

8. By attack of a shark.

It remains to put before the intending visitor to Florida
some of the commoner but yet interesting sea-fish, less game
than the tarpon, less immense than the jewfish, that will under
a variety of conditions, and on days when the tarpon itself is
out of reach, afford excellent sport. These notes are not, of
course, addressed to the expert naturalist ; indeed, they are for
the most part very brief, and serve chiefly to introduce my
photographs, which may, perhaps, claim to be t^e most
characteristic series of the kind yet published.

THE COMMON CATFISH (Galeichthys felis)

As the turkey buzzards on land, so the catfish in the sea
act as scavengers that we could ill dispense with. The sharks,
on the other hand, with their fiercer and more predatory
instincts, may rather be compared with the eagles among birds.
These catfish are, as may be seen from the photograph, not
beautiful to the eye. Neither, for the matter of that, is the
condor, yet it is, perhaps, of more use to South America than
the humming bird.

We here see a trio of catfish busy on the carcase of a
monster grouper that floats dead on the surface ; and what

129

f 2

Giant Fish of Florida

would become of such polluting offal but for services such as
are rendered by these useful scavengers, one shudders to
think. These catfish have no scales, their bodies being shiny,
and sleek to the touch, but the fisherman must beware of
insidious spikes hidden behind the fins. Any one familiar with
the salmon will not fail to notice a similar adipose fin on
the back of the catfish, in front of the tail, and the other
distinctive feature is the growth of whiskers, in reality sensitive
feelers, on the head. Many catfish are found only in the
rivers of the warmer regions of the globe, and German and
Austrian anglers have their own siluroid in the giant wels of so
many continental rivers and lakes.

In the picture will be seen a couple of sea-bream, apparently
hovering around to pick up the leavings of the larger fish,
and, for this or some other reason, sea-bream are very often
caught in company with catfish.

Catfish and buzzards are not the only scavengers of that
coast. No tarpon that is wanted again should be left on the
shore, for no sooner are you out of sight than every hole and
cranny in the sand above high-water mark gives up its ghostly
crabs, elfish little body - snatchers that creep stealthily, and
quickly eat their way into the soft parts of the fish. Ghost-
crabs they call them thereabouts, and phantom-like they look
when disturbed and tearing seawards with their attenuated
white legs held on high.

130

Giant Fish of Florida

THE GAFF TOPSAIL CATFISH ( jElurichthys marinus)

In the gaff topsail catfish there is not merely an extra-
ordinary development in the " whiskers," but the back fin also
carries a long threadlike growth not unlike that in the tarpon.
All these catfish frequent sandy grounds, and are rarely found
in the clearer coral waters. The present species runs to
greater weights than the last, and it is as a rule found both
farther from land, and in deeper levels. As they are all
inoffensive scavengers, and by no means the fierce creatures
they look, it is difficult to account for their being so often
hooked by tarpon fishers, except by the probability of their
endeavouring to suck the baits off, and getting foul hooked.

All catfish are active at night, which might be thought to
account for their popular name, only that they are on the feed
all day as well. It is nevertheless a pretty sight on hot nights
when the sea is highly phosphorescent to throw morsels of fish
or meat into the water, and watch the balls of fire darting in all
directions as the catfish and others dash to their repast.

In the picture will be seen a baby hammerhead shark
(Sphyrna zygcena), a rather interesting personality, for it had
not long been born when photographed, and had not in fact
developed the singular " hammer " of a later stage, its eyes
being still flush with the sides of the head, and its only
distinction from the more typical sharks lying in the extra-
ordinarily prolonged snout. I give a photograph of an adult
hammerhead later on.

Giant Fish of Florida

THE SHEEPSHEAD (Archosargus probatocephalus)

1 mentioned the sea-bream in writing of catfish, and one
of the commonest of the group on that coast is the sheepshead,
so-called, I imagine, from the solid, sheeplike teeth that can
even crunch the mangrove oysters, in the neighbourhood of
which these fish are so fond of foregathering. These growths
of oysters on the red mangrove always attract the notice of
visitors unused to the spectacle. The best bait for these
bream is a fiddler crab, a crustacean found in every lagoon
thereabouts, and owing its name to a singular habit of waving
its large claw (only the male has this disproportionate limb)
exactly as if it were drawing a bow across a fiddle. As the sea-
bream are fond of company, playing one is generally the
prelude to a good bag of them. They bear little resemblance
to their namesakes of rivers and ponds, for they are not so
slimy or sluggish, but on the contrary more spiny, and have
the dark band markings and game fighting manner of perch.
They feed not far from the bottom, and must be struck sharply
the moment they bite, and for their size they play very well.
They can be taken in immense quantities.

CHAPTER X

Bony Fish, Jack Fish, Jewfish,
Squeateague and Bass

A FAT TOAD FISH SQUATTED AT THE BOTTOM WATCHING THE SLIM BONY FISH AS THEY LEAP.

CHAPTER X

BONY FISH, JACK GARFISH, JEWFISH, SQUEATEAGUE

AND BASS

BONY FISH (Elops saurus) AND TOAD FISH (Antennarius

marmoratus)

THIS active and graceful fish, a near relative of the tarpon,
which perhaps derives its name from its leanness, rises freely
to the fly under favourable conditions, and its wild jumps make
lively sport. Its several popular names are puzzling— there is
a tendency on the other side to eccentric naming of fish — and
no fish is considered genteel without at least three or four to
choose from.

141

Giant Fish of Florida

Under the two bony fish in the photograph will be seen, on
a shell, one of the remarkable toad fish clinging to its support
and lying in ambush for unwary small fry. This particular
specimen, of which I give an enlarged presentment, seems
a very primitive creature, with its handlike fins and tiny eyes
and general absence of vitality, yet it is admirably equipped
for satisfying its own greed and escaping that of its enemies.
It is all but invisible clinging to the shell against a deceptive
background of weeds, and its gaping mouth is striped black and
white inside in an attractive manner that proves the doom of
many fish endowed with a fatal curiosity. This particular
individual, indeed, had actually swallowed a young snapper of
exactly its own weight and half an inch longer than itself ! I
relate this merely as it came under my own notice, for I took
the one from the other, but I hardly expect to be believed.

142

Giant Fish of Florida

THE CAVALLY OR " JACK " (Caranx hippos)

The scad, or horse-mackerel, are familiar in most seas ;
even on the British coasts we have them. In warm latitudes,
however, they are beautiful as well as bold, and the combination
of burnished silver and metallic blues and yellows on the
favourite "jack " of Florida waters make him a very handsome
fish. Like all the horse-mackerel, he is capable of wonderful
bursts of speed, and takes all manner of baits, particularly those
not intended for him. He is not much fished for purposely,
but may be regarded as one of the miscellany that one time or
another come to the basket of the sea-fisherman at Boca Grand.
There is no doubt that if fished for with the fly to which he
will rise, so strong a fighter would show very fine sport.

Giant Fish of Florida

THE GARFISH (Belone spec.)

The flying fish is by no means common, though probably
existent on that coast, but it has a relative in the garfish ;
and, though this does not commonly do much flying, it can
on occasion, as when pursued by a swift and powerful
enemy, throw itself clean out of the water with much energy,
and can propel itself for thirty yards in the air by occasionally
tipping the water with its tail. In this case the garfish are
alarmed by a kingfish that is really after a skipjack. A
good deal of prejudice exists against this fish at home, on
account of its green bones (I take this to be the same species
that swims in British waters), but it is first-rate eating.
Garfish may be found, as a rule, close in amid the surf,
where they hunt for small, thin-shelled sandhoppers, about
the size of French beans. One of these on a small hook
is, in fact, the best bait if any one wishes to angle specially
for garfish, but the long bill and the presence inside it of
innumerable needle-like teeth do not make the work of
extracting the hook particularly pleasant.

148

Giant Fish of Florida

JEWFISH (Promicrops guttatus) AND RED GROUPER
(Epinephelus morio)

Of the jewfish enough has already been said. The
lower figure in the photograph is a red grouper, a large
deep-water fish with a good deal of pale red on the head
and throat, and a more vivid red inside the mouth. It is a
vigorous fighter when hooked on deep rocky ground, and
makes an excellent table fish, but it is not so common as
the black grouper.

Giant Fish of Florida

THE SPOTTED SQUEATEAGUE OR "SEA TROUT" (Cynoscion
nebulosus) AND GROUND SPEARING (Scirus myops)

The subjects of this photograph are not salmonoid fish
out of drawing, as might at first sight appear, but fish,
miscalled " trout," of Gulf waters that give fine sport when
hooked. As if in vindication of its spots and name, this
" trout " will often take a grilse fly when on the feed. It
is a strong fighter and jumps continually. It is usually
taken spinning with reel or artificial bait. Found on the
sandy grounds, it is in some favour as a food fish. Many
visitors fail to take with them a light fly rod ; hence these very
sporting fish are done to death on a kind of miniature
tarpon rod in a hand-over-hand fashion, whereas they
would otherwise afford nearly as much sport as a four-pound
lake trout. On the sea bed, beneath the squeateagues, will
be seen a ground spearing.

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Giant Fish of Florida

CHANNEL BASS (Scicenops ocellatus) AND BLACK GROUPER
(Gairupa nigrata)

The channel bass, or red drum, is a bronze fish that runs
up to 40 or 50 Ib. weight, and gives good sport on a rod
in the surf. So many of the smaller sporting fish are caught in
the surf on the Florida coast, that I have often wondered
whether this is a merely local habit, due to their dread
of the sharks outside, or whether indeed sea-fishermen at
home neglect the more productive surf, in their haste to
fish the extreme end of a long pier or the deeper waters
attainable in boats.

The black grouper is a great trouble to the tarpon fisher,
for on some days it seizes bait after bait, and at once darts into
some convenient crevice in the coral. The puzzled angler
strikes again and again, and each time finds himself hitched
into the rock, which often entails the loss of all his tackle with
many feet of line. Only the old hand knows the real source
of the trouble and promptly changes his ground, but as those
fish are more or less numerous all through the pass, the real
secret of avoiding them is to fish a few feet higher.

CHAPTER XI

Spotted Eels, Crab Eaters, Surf Whiting, Moon
Fish, Leather Jackets, Trigger Fish, and Mullet.

CHAPTER XI

SPOTTED EELS, CRAB EATERS, SURF WHITING, MOON FISH,
LEATHER JACKETS, TRIGGER FISH, AND MULLET

SPOTTED EEL (Mystriophys intertinctus)

THERE is something peculiarly snakelike about these yellow,
black-spotted eels, which are only found washed ashore after
storms from a certain quarter, and never, at any rate to my
knowledge, take a baited hook. There are many of these
spotted eels in the waters round Florida Keys, and one of them
is known as the " sea-serpent."

The small upper fish in the photograph is evidently a wrass
of some kind, probably a rock-cook (Centrolabrus), but as no
one catches the wrass, save by accident, I never studied
them.

165

G 2

Giant Fish of Florida

GOBI A OR CRAB EATER (Rachycentron canadus)

This handsome and sporting fish is allied to the mackerel,
and in some parts, indeed, goes by the name of " bonito,"
though the true bonito is more closely related to the tunny.
Its specific name is a good instance of the singular inappro-
priateness of some such titles, for it does not occur in Canada.
The cobia grows to a length of four or five feet, and is a
dashing fish when hooked, though it is not very common
in the angler's catch.

166

Giant Fish of Florida

SURF WHITING (Menticirrhus littoralis) AND MANGROVE
SNAPPER (Neomaenis spec.}

The surf whiting, as its name implies, frequents the surf,
where it is caught like so many others on that coast ; it takes
mullet as bait.

The snapper, which is one of a very large group, derives
its distinctive name from the fact of the young, and sometimes
the grown fish as well, being found feeding in the neighbour-
hood of the mangroves.

171

Giant Fish of Florida

SILVER MOON FISH OR LOOK DOWN (Selene vomer)

This eccentric-looking fish is of a beautiful mother-of-
pearl tint, and the long ray of the dorsal fin shows the subject
of the photograph to be a young fish, for this long growth is
shed at a more mature age. The moon fish makes capital bait
for tarpon and other large fish, and the wonder is, indeed,
that such a species can survive at all, for it is to all appearance
both defenceless and slow in its movements.

172

A MOON FISH.

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Giant Fish of Florida

LEATHER JACKET (Monacanthus hispidus)

These leather jackets are found in most tropical seas, and
with their large sheeplike teeth they seize any bait left
stationary at the bottom. They are without true scales, the
body being covered with roughnesses instead. They are thin,
tough fish, and of no use for food.

177

Giant Fish of Florida

TRIGGER FISH (Batistes carolinemis) AND ANGEL FISH
(Angelichthys isabelitaj

The trigger fish, like the last species figured, also goes by the
name of " leather jacket," and is, as a glance at its general outline
will show, a similar type of fish. The trigger fish derives the
name from the curious arrangement of its dorsal fin, which lies
flat in a socket or slot. It has, like the last, no true scales, but
excrescences, which can be plainly seen in the photograph. It
is not often taken on a hook.

The little angel fish is one of the most gaudy inhabitants
of those seas, where the usual preponderance of gaily coloured
fish is hardly, perhaps, so marked as in some other warm
waters. It is found in shoals round wrecks and sunken piles.
Blue and yellow, with reddish and brown and olive markings
and spots, some varieties of the " angel " are beautiful
if somewhat gorgeous fish. If well angled for they can be
taken in quantities. These are among the many accidental
arrivals in the tarpon fisher's boat, but I have thought it best to
give as many photographs of local fish as possible, so that the
visitor with a liking for natural history may not be at a loss to
identify an occasional strange fish, about which he wants to
write to the proper authorities for further information.

178

TRIGGER FISH -A LEATHERY DARK FISH WITH ROUGH DIAMOND-SHAPED EXCRESCENCES INSTEAD

OF SCALES.

ANGEL FISH, A DELICATE VERY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FISH.

Giant Fish of Florida

SILVER MULLET (Mugil brasiliensis)

This is the less common of the two mullets found in those
waters, and is chiefly noteworthy as being not the one in general
use as bait. It is taken only in nets, and not often in those,
as its habit is to skirt the shore, where shooting a net is attended
with difficulties.

183

CHAPTER XII

Striped Mullet, Sharks, Bird Life

CHAPTER XII

STRIPED MULLET — SHARKS — BIRD LIFE

STRIPED MULLET (Mugil cephalus)

THE adventitious interest that attaches to this active fish is that
to it we owe all our tarpon, for the tarpon baits are cut from its
white stomach, four from each fish. It seems identical with
the British grey mullet, a similar slimy fish which feeds by
a kind of suction among the sea herbage. There is, however,
this difference that the Florida mullet is for ever jumping on
all sides of your boat in shallow water, and is surrounded by
many enemies, whereas the grey mullet at home has, at any
rate in the grown-up stage, few enemies beyond man, whom it
is generally able to elude. The same fish in Florida seas has so
many foes, and is bait for so many monsters, that the wonder
is it survives in such quantities.

During the tarpon season the one family of fishermen at

189

Giant Fish of Florida

Boca Grand are fully occupied in procuring sufficient mullet to
provide bait for the anglers. Thirty fishers would require about
150 mullet a day. It is, therefore, scarcely surprising to hear
that mullet are seriously decreasing in numbers. I very much
doubt whether several other fish would not produce equally
killing baits. I can answer for the moon fish and its allies, also
the devil-fish and rays in general, whose milky-white under
sides were tried with success.

SHARKS AND SHARK-FISHING

I conclude this little book with a few notes on sharks and
on bird life on that coast. Shark-fishing can now and then be
very good fun, although the fish are vermin. After all, we do
not eat tarpon, and the saw of the sawfish makes as good a
trophy as the scale of the great herring. I am not, of course,
for one moment comparing the one fish or fishing with the
other, but on days when it is too rough to get afloat, or when
the tide does not serve, it is better to catch great sharks from
the beach or pier than to loaf on shore doing nothing.

Having named the sawfish (Pristis pectinatus), 1 will start
off with the picture of a fine specimen, measuring 18 feet,
which was taken on a night-line set for sharks. It moves slowly
and prowls on the bottom, close in shore, for food. A sucking
fish was still adhering to this one when caught. For all its
shark-like appearance, the sawfish is in reality one of that
kindred group, the rays, of which some pictures have already

190

A HAMMERHEAD SHARK. A SAVAGE AND REPULSIVE FISH.

THIS SHARK SEIZED ANOTHER ALREADY HOOKED AND WAS ITSELF CAUGHT.

Giant Fish of Florida

been given. It must, of course, be distinguished from the
swordfish, which is more closely allied to the mackerel, and
which has a long pointed weapon without teeth on its edges.

Any one wishing to catch a sawfish on the rod must seek
such weird game in the isolated deep holes in the lagoons and
shallows. The average depth will not be more than three or
four feet, but every now and then the lead will igo down into a
much deeper hole, and there lie the sawfish. A well-known
American angler caught one weighing 700 Ib. in this way. The
chief food of the sawfish is said to consist of horseshoe crabs,
but it also in all probability slashes round with its great saw
and stuns sufficient fish for a meal. I have seen young saw-
fish out there with the scales of smaller fish impaled on the
teeth of their saws. Evidently these teeth must grow blunt
with age, for piercing a fish scale is a feat that would certainly
be beyond the saw-teeth in all the larger specimens that have
come under my notice.

On an earlier page I have given the portrait of a baby
hammerhead shark, drawing the reader's attention to the fact
that the " hammer " was not yet developed. This difference
in two stages of growth may be appreciated by a comparison
with the subject of the accompanying photograph, in which the
curious hammer, with an eye at either end, is plainly seen.
The hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena) is a voracious species,
yet when swimming after a ship it has all the graceful, undulating
movement of the family.

Giant Fish of Florida

I do not profess to know these vermin severally by name,
but two or three pictures of some that were captured during
my stay may be of interest. The subject of the first was, like
most of the tribe, a cannibal, for it took another shark (though
I do not know that it was of the same species) that had
been hooked, and the two were secured by the coloured
" gentleman " in the picture.

This incident of its swallowing a fish already hooked
reminds me of another. An angler had to return to England
rather suddenly, but he was anxious to complete his catch of
100 tarpon for the season. He had already caught 99, and
but half an hour remained before his boat left. He hooked the
hundredth, luckily enough, but it was promptly seized by a
shark, and it still looked as if his century would not be com-
pleted, when he very cleverly landed shark and all, with a few
minutes to spare, and thus made up his total of tarpon.

The end of May is the time when sharks most plague the
tarpon fisher, and is consequently the time for shark fishing.
The best way is to bait a large hook with a whole split fish
made fast to a long stout line. Then you fling this well out from
the Lighthouse Jetty, leave a good coil of slack, and make the
end fast. Before very long, the slack line begins to creep out,
then rushes, and you must, if the shark is a large one, call all
the help you can muster, for the fight will be a good one. All
hands play him from the beach, and, with a little give and take,
he generally comes in with a run, a nasty-looking brute perhaps

196

EXTRACTING A FIRMLY EMBEDDED HOOK FROM A SHARK.

Giant Fish of Florida

fifteen feet long. If you catch a great leopard shark, or man-
eater (Carcharodon carcharias), the white belly of which is
seen in the photograph facing the following page, it may be
worth while ripping him up to see whether there are any boots
within, or perchance even more personal signs of human
occupation. In one of these a sea-lion weighing 100 Ib. was
once found on the California coast, but you will be far more
likely to come across a quantity of horseshoe crabs.

From this last shark figured we took three or four young
ones, quite ready to swim away if they had been given the
chance. They were not, for it is no part of humaneness to
spare sharks.

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Giant Fish of Florida

BIRD LIFE.

The bird life of Boca Grand is not sufficiently studied
by those who spend their holiday there, so intent is every-
one on fishing. Yet it is most interesting, what the plume
hunters have left of it. America is the great land of waste
as well as of production, and the egrets and other beautiful
fowl are surely following the bison. On fine, still days,
when there is great splashing of carangoid and other fish,
the pelicans are soon astir, dashing into the shoals and
putting them to rout with heavy loss. Then, too, may be
seen the little kittiwake gulls settling unmolested on the
heads and backs of the great birds, and always expectant
of the scanty leavings that they never seem to get.

Pelicans are nowadays so scarce at Boca Grand that
any small peculiarity is certain to be noticed whenever
one puts in an appearance. I recollect one coming along
one day with his pouch slit from side to side and hanging
loose. What dreadful battle had given him such a gash
could only be guessed, but he seemed to grow thinner
and tamer and more hungry every day, for every fish that
he caught forthwith dropped out through the gap. At length,
however, he seemed to rise to the occasion, and as soon
as he caught a fish, he would clap his beak close to his
breast and coax his victim down his throat. The process was
slow, but sure, and in a few weeks this pelican was well

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Giant Fish of Florida

and strong again, and the gap in his pouch had to all
appearance healed.

There is an island just off the coast measuring scarce
one hundred yards in any direction, and thereon stands a
pelicans' rookery. There these great confiding, prehistoric-
looking, silly birds used to gather until they were all but
shot out by plume-hunters at 25 cents, the skin. And here, in
the highest trees, some of the great birds still congregate,
their curious webbed feet looking most incongruous as
they grasp the swaying branches. The neighbouring island,
somewhat larger in extent, is the home of innumerable
cormorants and herons, both blue and white, all nesting
in the tall black mangroves, and so tame that you may
approach to within six yards of the little blue herons. Yet on
all sides are the tiny corpses of deserted little birds, their
parents in the breeding plumage ruthlessly shot down to
deck women's hats ! The thin end of the wedge of bird
protection has, it is true, been inserted, but the law is
almost inoperative in these out-of-the-way regions, and
the slaughter proceeds unchecked. And so the beautiful
American woodlands are being denuded of their unrivalled
bird life in order that every mistress and every maid may
dangle "osprey" plumes over their heads.

With my pictures, then, end my notes, and I am only too
conscious of their meagreness. My object, however, was, as I
may have said already, to put before intending visitors to

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Giant Fish of Florida

Florida — and tarpon fishing must gain a wider public before
long — some of the chief fish that they are likely to meet
with in those waters.

Two curious facts that I find in my diaries seem worth
setting down in conclusion. One is that dogs cannot live long
in that climate. They succumb within four years to a disease
that has hitherto been a complete mystery. A local doctor
has, however, isolated the microbe responsible for the mischief.

My other hint is for the smoker. I find that a local cigar
epicure always made a practice of storing his weeds in the
refrigerator, in order to keep them in condition, for it is more
difficult to keep cigars green than in a perfectly matured
state.

THE END.

206

INDEX

jElurichthys marinus, 133
Albula vutyes, v. Elops saurus, 141
Alligator Hunting, 36
Angel Fish, 178
Angelichthys isabelita, 178
Antennarius marmoratus, 141
Aransas Pass, 29
Archosargus probatocephalus, 134

Batistes carolinensis, 178
Bass, Channel, 159
Black Grouper, 159
Boca Grande, 25
Bony Fish, 141
" Bonito," 166
Bream, Sea, 130

Cabbage Palm, 35
Captiva Pass, 29
Caranx hippos, 147
Carcharodon carcharias, 201
Catfish, Common, 129
Catfish, Gaff Topsail, 133
" Cavalla," 60
Cavally, 147
Centrolabrus, 165

Channel Bass, 159
Cigars, Preserving, 206
Cobia, 166

Coral Fouling Lines, 59
Cost of Tarpon Fishing, 29
Crab-eater, 166
Crabs, Fiddler, 134
Crabs, Horseshoe, 130
Cynoscion nebulosus, 154

Devil-fish, 89

Dogs, Mortality of, 206

Eel, Spotted, 165
Elops saurus, 141
Epinephelus mono, 153

Fiddler Crabs, 134

Florida Keys, 165

11 Forest and Stream " (quoted), 126

Gaff, Use of the, 85
Galeichthys felis, 129
Garfish, the, 148
Garrupa nigrita, 159

Index

Giant Ray, 91

Gopher Tortoise, Method of catching,

121

Green Turtle, 118
Ground Spearing, 154
Groupers, 159
Guide, Duties of a, 44

Hammerhead Shark, 195
Harpooning Rays, 92, 99
Harpooning Sharks, 93
Harpooning Turtles, 112
Horseshoe Crabs, 130
Hotel near Boca Grande, 29
Hughes' Floating Hotel, 29

Islands, Scenery of the, 35
Jewfish, 79
Kingfish, 60

Ladies as Tarpon Fishers, 73
Lamua cornubica, v. Carcharodon

carcharias, 201
Leather Jacket, 177
Leathery Turtle, 112
Leopard Shark, 201
Lines, American, 30
Loggerhead Turtle, in
Look Down, 172

Man-eating Shark, 195
Mangroves, 134
Mangrove Snapper, 171

" Manta," 92

Mcnticirrhus littoralis, 171
Monacanthus hispidus, 177
Mugil brasiliensis, 183

cephalus, 189

Mullet Baits for Tarpon, 190
Mullet, Silver, 183
Mullet, Striped, 189
Mystriophys intertinctus, 165

Neomaenis griseus, 171

Playing a Tarpon, 65
Playing a Shark, 196
Pristis pectinatus, 190
Promicrops gutlatus, 153
Punta Gorda, 30

Rachycentron canadus, 166

Rays, 89

Red Grouper, 153

Reels, 30

Rock Cook, 165

Rods, 30

Salmon and Tarpon Fishing com-
pared, 22
Sawfish, 190
Scales of Jewfish, 80
Scales of Tarpon, 22
Scicenops ocellatus, 159
Scirus myops, 154
" Sea Serpent," 165
" Sea Trout," 154

Index

Selene vomer, 173

Shallow Water, Tarpon in, 53

Sharks, 190

Sheepshead, the, 134

Silver Moon Fish, 172

Silver Mullet, 183

Skill required in Tarpon Fishing, 48

Skipjack, 60

Sphyrna zygaena, 195

Spotted Eel, 165

Spotted Squeateague, 154

Still Fishing, 49

Striped Mullet, 189

Sucking Fish or Suckers, 79

Surf Whiting, 171

Tackle, 30

Tail of Whip Ray, 94

Tarpon, 31
Toad Fish, 141
Tortoise, 121
Trigger Fish, 178
Turtle, Cutting up, 118
Turtle, Harpooning, 112
Tylosaurus marinus, v. Bclone spec.,
148.

Vegetation, 35
Vom Hofe, 30

Waddell, Mr. J. A. L. (quoted), 126
Ways of Losing a Tarpon, 126
Weight of Tarpon, 22
Whip Ray, Foulhooked, 85
Whip Ray, Habits of, 89
Whip Ray, Harpooning, 92

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