Part 6

“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

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.

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 lb. 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 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 350-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.

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 lb. was lost by a lady through too great reliance on this usual collapse, for the fish was made fast by the line close alongside 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 jewfish is troubled with suckers, and in the photograph facing this page may be seen a sucker of about 1 lb. adhering to the side of a 400-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 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 sportswomen 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

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 remarkable 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 stingrays, 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 beautiful 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 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 characteristic 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 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 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.