Part 5

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 lb. 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 overboard to the sharks.

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 adherents; 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 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.

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 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 for “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

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 lb. 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 seemed to think it was a tarpon, manœuvred 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

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.”

“Look out! There’s a shark after your tarpon. Where’s your gun?”