Part 8

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

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 gopher 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 raccoons. It is at this laying 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 discovery, 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.

CHAPTER IX

Catfish as Scavengers

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 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.

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

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 the 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 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.