Fish and Fishin<r in America. 



339 



vaulting- monarch of the magnolia seas! 

 You know him b}- his shield of ham- 

 mered silver, and by the wavy sheen of 

 sunlit pearl on his back. Up with the 

 anchor! Now comes the tug of war. 

 Steady as you go. Let him earn every 

 inch of line. Keep, if you can, a five- 

 pound pressure on him, for the steel is 

 imbedded in his throat, and that fero- 

 cious, rabid shake of the head cannot 

 free it from the flesh. Mark ! Now he 

 is again in the air, six feet to a milli- 

 meter! Can your rod and line stand it? 

 If so, give him the butt with both hands, 

 not too fiercely, but with all yovir 

 strength, just at the moment he is at the 

 maximiim height of his aerial flight, and 

 you will bring him flat upon his side. 

 If this is well done, and just at the right 

 moment, with proper force, you will 

 take the breath out of the giant, and 

 render him helpless at your command. 

 Failing' to make this movement effect- 

 ive, the lordly fish will take " the bit in 

 his mouth," and you are subject to an 

 hour or more of long, powerful, sullen 

 surges before you can bring him to 

 gaff. The highest reach of angling 

 skill is to kill your tarpon, not in the 

 water, but in the air. Finally, let your 

 fish tow the boat; never row against 

 him ; hold your rod well up in playing 

 your fish ; do not fear ' ' holding too 

 hard"; do not let your boatman gaff 

 the fish until it shows exhaustion ; gaff 

 the fish in the gills or throat-latch. 



The foregoing notes describe but 

 imperfectly the skilled methods of 

 tarpon-fishing. A volume has been 

 written and has not exhausted the sub- 

 ject, and the scope of the work before 

 me does not include, or permit space 

 for, a treatise on angling as applied to 

 each species of fish. 



The angler will not be apt to expect 

 a historical or sentimental element as 



existing in the records of this great 

 vaulter of the seas. The grayling, or 

 the umber of the old monks, is the 

 poetic fish of the craft ; the trout is the 

 type of beauty among fishes, and has 

 been heralded as such from time imme- 

 morial, and even the history of the 

 carp is year-worn, although barren of 

 sentimental interest. But it falls to 

 -the tarpon to possess a heraldry 

 studded with gems of splendor through 

 all the pre-historic ages, and the 

 chronicler thereof is Mr. Charles 

 Hallock, the accomplished author and 

 student of nature. He wrote me 

 in 1885: 



' ' Last summer I showed samples of 

 some tarpon scales to the Indians of 

 Montana, by whom they are highly 

 prized as ornaments ; but so seldom are 

 they seen, and so little are they known, 

 that even the possession of such is 

 traditional. It is said that in the pre- 

 historic era, wealth scarcely sufficed to 

 purchase a single one; for not only 

 were the scales valued for their rarity 

 and beauty, but for their extraordinary 

 talismanic powers. Indeed, they were 

 regarded as the key to all the joys of 

 heaven, as well as to the full fruition 

 of the earth. Some such legend as the 

 following is still preserved among the 

 River Crows. I transcribe it from a 

 manuscript now in the hands of C. H. 

 Barstow, at the Crow Agency. It runs 

 in this wise: — 



" ' Many creations ago, when the salt 

 ocean covered all the surface of the 

 Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountain 

 range formed the shore-line of the 

 primitive continent — long before any 

 land-animals existed except reptiles — 

 the Great Spirit had constituted the 

 tarpon-fish the Great Silver King, and 

 appointed him to be the guardian of 

 the then undiscovered vast ore-beds of 



