Part 4

With light tackle you must follow the fish, with heavy tackle the fish comes to you. As hooked tarpon always float with the tide or current it is at times hard work, but when you hear of a fisherman who has been an hour or more killing a tarpon you may be quite certain he has been trying to pull the heavy fish against the tide.

The Light Tackle Club at Aransas Pass died a natural death, for many members have told me they gave up going there because they wearied of light tackle yet did not like to go back to the only real sport, heavy tackle.

Mr. L. G. Murphy holds the Aransas Pass record for light tackle, a tarpon 6 feet 9¾ inches long.

At Catalina Island a marlin of 185 pounds and a tuna weighing 145½ pounds have been landed with light tackle by Mr. Jump. This is done by setting the drag at the proper tension so that a long run of the fish will not break the line. The angler holds the handle of the reel which works but one way when the drag is on. The fish takes the line from the reel with the set drag and the fisherman reels in the slack when he can get it. It takes skill, time, and patience but to me it does not give the satisfaction of being “up against” a big fish.

If the advocates of light tackle for tarpon would go back to the plain reel instead I can promise them plenty of exercise and entertainment.

I am greatly interested in all fish and have a real affection for the tarpon. He is a gentleman among fishes. He is not in the least afraid of man or boat and when once hooked does not attempt to run away or take advantage of his great strength.

His one idea is to get rid of the hook which annoys him and he will jump clear of the surface many times and attempt to free himself. If these tactics fail he will then swim close up to the boat, raise himself out of the water and shake his head. It is then that he is usually lost.

He is the grandest and most beautiful silver fish that swims and he has the best manners of any of the denizens of the deep, for he avoids all snags, stumps, or obstructions in a river when hooked and never takes advantage of the fisherman but fights square.

I have the greatest admiration for this Silver King of sea fishes.

METHODS OF TARPON FISHING

The first tarpon were taken bottom fishing. It was the custom to anchor the boat at some chosen spot that was frequented by the fish and then to chum with pieces of cut mullet. Two hooks baited with the better part of a mullet on each hook were cast out. The angler watched one rod and his guide took charge of the other.

I always took pains that my rod pointed towards the spot where my bait lay so that when the latter was picked up the line would run free from the reel. The fish was allowed to take fifty feet of line before striking because a tarpon will pick up a bait and move off with it in his mouth before gorging it.

The theory that loose line must be coiled in the bottom of the boat was for novices that could not pick up a rod without checking the fish.

Tarpon that have gorged the bait, unless hooked in a vital spot, fight much harder than those that are hooked in the mouth.

The drawback to bottom fishing was that the fish were all destroyed and could not be set free.

The snoods were made of deerskin or cotton cord partly for the reason that wire is stiff and the fish would drop such a bait and also that if a shark picked up the bait he would bite through the snood and free himself.

I always used snoods made of three strands of fine wire twisted. They were not so easily seen, were pliable and took more fish, besides I enjoyed playing the mackerel sharks for they are great jumpers and strong fighters.

When the Van Vleck hook was invented the general method of fishing changed. It had been discovered that when trolling the greater part of the fish were hooked over the incisors which are very large in the tarpon and that the fish would jump and throw the hook. Mr. Van Vleck had hooks made with the belly nearer the point of the hook, which made it more difficult for the fish to get rid of the hook when jumping.

I say this hook was invented, yet I have seen in the Naples Museum, the very same hook found in Pompeii (destroyed A. D. 79) and probably used for trolling for tunney-fish.

We then either trolled for tarpon or anchored in strong tideways in the Passes with a strip of mullet for bait and with one hundred feet of wet line. When a tarpon was hooked your guide would throw the buoyed anchor rope overboard and you would follow the fish. Having your anchor buoyed saved time and it also gave you a reserved position to return to.

When Mr. Mygatt discovered Boca Grande as a fishing possibility (1898), owing to the great depth of water there drift fishing was adopted.

The leader used is of heavy strong piano wire six feet in length and at the upper or rod end of the leader a sinker is fastened to the swivel or ring with a light piece of string. The hook is baited with a live blue crab or a strip of mullet. The launch goes under power to the entrance to the Pass and drifts in with the tide. The fisherman keeps the hook off the bottom, in other words slowly trolls the bait close to the bottom where the tarpon lie.

As the depth of water changes, the length of line is changed. If you hook a fish his first jump frees the sinker. The drawback to this fishing is that the sharks are numerous and steal the hooked fish.

To my mind this is the most uninteresting form of tarpon fishing, for to hook a fish near the bottom in 60 feet of water does not give the same sensation as travelling along at four miles an hour and hooking near the surface, a fish that immediately leaps in the air. A tarpon will also jump twice as often in 8 feet of water.

I have seen forty or more boats drifting fairly close together at Boca Grande on a moonlit night and consternation caused among them by the sudden jumping of two or three large hooked fish.

It is a popular and lazy form of sport where fish are plentiful, and as the tarpon is an elusive fish and difficult to find, Boca Grande is much frequented for the fish are known to be there in numbers.

To me the great charm of tarpon fishing is to hunt for the fish and find them, which you can do in rivers as they often swim along the surface, or if lying on the bottom come up from time to time for air.

Fish hooked in the mouth can readily be set free. Your guide is provided with a large barbless release-hook which he inserts in the fish’s jaw and then removes the fishhook with his gloved hand.