Part 2

I was in Florida at the time of the “Big Freeze,” living in a houseboat on the St. Lucie River. The mercury went to 18 degrees, and the river water steamed and smoked. It was not the cold that directly killed the fish, but the cold seemed to have consumed the oxygen in the water, for the fish died from asphyxiation.

For two hundred miles both shores of the shallow Indian River were banked with dead fish, mostly so-called surface feeders such as snook, bluefish, and the like. The bottom fish did not seem to be affected.

I saw many bluefish of five pounds flopping along on the surface, but no mullet. These wise fish went to sea in schools the day before the Norther arrived.

We picked up nineteen green turtles that were benumbed by the cold and floating on the surface. These turtles were stacked on the lower deck of the houseboat and revived much to the consternation of the crew, although they were compensated for their troubles the following day when they disposed of the turtles at Fort Pierce for $200.

I have fished for tarpon in the St. Lucie River in midwinter. For days you would not see any fish, but if you waited until after a few days of hot sun had warmed the water to 68 degrees they would begin to roll and show themselves and would then take live silver mullet bait.

It took me some time to find out how to keep mullet alive, for if you put them into a well in a boat they bruise their noses against the sides of the well and die.

I procured oat bags and laced barrel hoops around them on the outside. I then ran drawing strings around the mouths of the bags. After placing half a dozen live mullet, taken by cast-net, in each of several bags I practised with them to find out in what depth of water the mullet were most comfortable. I then tied the bags to the roots of trees along the bank of the stretch of river I proposed to fish. In this manner I always had fresh, live bait at my convenient disposal.

I found the new moon was the best day of the month to fish. One winter, on the new moon in January, I took a 187-pound tarpon; and on the following new moon, in February, I landed a fish weighing 165 pounds.

This fishing was done from a row boat; but in later years and since the advent of the Wilson spoon I have fished in a small launch. A live bait behind a launch soon dies and revolves like a pin-wheel which destroys one’s line, but the Wilson spoon skitters and does not revolve in the water.

Tarpon are greatly attracted by this spoon, and it has been a blessing to me in Cuba where no mullet were to be had.

I built two fishing yachts, the Savalo and the Kona, for tarpon fishing in Cuba, and fished there almost every winter from 1904 to 1920.

I have cruised from Nipe Bay to the westward around Cape San Antonio and as far as Cienfuegos on the south coast, and also to the Isle of Pines 60 miles south of Cuba.

Tarpon are to be found in certain rivers in Cuba at all times of the year. I say certain rivers, for the tarpon is a clean fish and does not favor muddy water. The soil of Cuba is red and rich, so that the streams that drain the cultivated lands are mostly muddy; in such rivers no tarpon are to be found.

There are large swamps in Cuba, and the rivers that drain these swamps run clear. It is in these rivers that the most fish are to be found.

The Rio Negro and Jatibonico drain over one hundred square miles of swamp, and in these rivers the tarpon abound.

The Damuji River is also a river of fairly clear water, and at times there is good fishing there.

These rivers are all on the south coast of Cuba. On the north coast a small river with a long name, the Zaraguanacan, is often full of tarpon.

The fish do not seem to go above the tide. The limit of the mangroves, which do not grow along fresh water, seems to be the limit of the tarpon from what I have seen, yet Mr. Zane Grey says he found tarpon one hundred miles up the Panuco River in Mexico.

The fish do not run as large as at some places in Florida, although I have taken fish of 130 pounds in weight and have lost heavier ones. The headwaters of the rivers abound in small fish. I have at times seen hundreds of tarpon that would weigh from 10 to 15 pounds and have taken them four inches long.

On one occasion I found a narrow stretch of the Jatibonico River simply alive with 15-pound tarpon. I landed 14 in an hour’s fishing and must have “jumped” 25 more fish. At another time and in another river I “jumped” 52 large tarpon in three days’ fishing of the flood tides.

My fishing journal tells me that I landed 254 tarpon in Cuba, which means that I must have hooked over 1,000 fish, for it is not possible to save more than one hooked tarpon out of five fish hung on a Wilson spoon. The weight of the spoon helps the fish to free himself.

I invariably turned the hooked fish loose unless they were damaged. They sometimes bruise their gills in jumping and bleed profusely. In such cases the fish will not live if liberated.

The natives of Cuba spear tarpon and I am sorry to say net the small ones. Both there and in Mexico the fish are eaten fresh as well as salted.

My method of fishing in Cuba has been trolling a large sized Wilson spoon with sixty feet of line over the stern of a small launch. The launch travels at the rate of four miles an hour. If a fish is hooked in a wide part of the river I have the launch circle the fish. It is easy to land a 100-pound tarpon in 8 minutes by this method if you understand fighting fish.

If a fish is hooked in a narrow stream it is necessary to keep the boat away from the fish until he is well spent. In narrow streams you lose many fish for they jump into the over-hanging branches of the mangrove trees which line the banks and tumble back into the water leaving your tackle entangled among the branches.

The Cauto on the south coast is the only river in Cuba that is navigable. The other streams are often from eight to ten feet deep, excepting where they flow into the sea; here you will find wide bars with but four feet of water.

It is a delight to fish in these rivers in winter for there are no sharks to rob you of your fish nor any insects of any kind excepting a few mosquitoes at sunset if your yacht happens to be five or ten miles up a river and moored to the windward bank. The rivers are lined with mangroves and dotted here and there along the banks with royal palms, the most beautiful of trees.

Of this tree Davis wrote: “The royal palm is the characteristic feature of the landscape in Cuba. It is the most beautiful of all palms and possibly the most beautiful of trees. The cocoanut palm, picturesque as it is, has a pathetic resemblance to a shabby feather duster and its trunk bends and twists as though it had not the strength to push its way through the air and to hold itself erect. But the royal palm shoots up boldly from the earth with the grace and symmetry of a marble column.”