Notes and Querics 
they, because I have not yet succeeded in 
landing atarpon. This fish isa ‘‘top feeder,” 
that is, instead of being the scavenger that I 
imagined from reading accounts of the Florida 
fish, it is really a feeder on live mullet and 
other small fish and, as a rule, looks for food 
near the surface. 
same rod, reel and line is used as in still fish- 
ing, but, for a snell, the least conspicuous is 
considered the best, piano wire generally 
being used. For bait take a mullet of about 
7 inches in length and hook it through the 
head. The trolling is done in water of good 
depth, and the bait must be kept well away 
from the boat and free from grass and sea 
weed, 
When you hook a tarpon in this manner, 
you have a contract of respectable proportions 
on your hands. It is a fight to a finish, and 
you need every nerve and muscle to come out 
victorious. 
More than once have I hooked a large tar- 
pon, and hoped to land him, but my expecta- 
tions have always been disappointed. This 
season I was surely going to catch a tarpon, 
and it is Dr. McMullen’s fault that I did not. 
The doctor lives at Aransas Pass, and-—— 
Well, excuse me, but I am getting off the 
track. ; W. M.S. 
San ANTONIO, Tex. 

“It is Not All of Fishing to Fish.” 
- On the wall of the club-room, in the house of 
the Huron Mountain Shooting and Fishing 
Club, on Lake Superior, near Marquette, 
Mich., someone had posted the following news- 
paper clipping: 
STARTLING FIGURES, 
With a $10 rod and a $6 reel, with a $2 line 
and a $4creel; a book full of $2 and $u flies, 
away with his $12 ticket he hies. Thus he 
spends $40 ere he starts out, and returns ina 
week with to cents worth of trout and the 
But blank won’t supply the thirty-nine ninety, 
the sum he is shy.—Sanx Francisco News 
Letter. 

After this had remained there for several 
months, a lady visitor wrote and put up be- 
neath the clipping the following: 
TO THE WRITER OF THE ABOVE, 
What are dollars and cents, man of paper 
and ink! 
You write not what is, but first what you 
think. 
To a sportsman, indeed, the trout in his lair 
In trolling for tarpon the, 
345 
Will still prove attractive—if not found, still 
Han Sicey 
But the heart of the matter, and what Isaak is 
after, 
Is the soughing of boughs and the water’s 
sweet laughter, 
The dart of the flies as they skim on the 
stream ; 
The music of birds adding life to his dream. 
He sits leaning there ’gainst a hemlock or 
pine, 
Conscious of birches and tall maples fine. 
The tap, tap, of the woodpecker hid in the 
leaves, 
And the soft shining of green light thro’ the 
tall, slender trees. 
Then click, click, clickity 
Clickity, click, click. 
Reel him in! 
Not so quick! 
There he goes! 
Not so quick! 
Now land him, all shining, on the soft, mossy 
ground, 
The finest brook beauty that ever was found! 
What! He’s gone! 
With one leap from the moss to the stream. 
And flashing across it one sun-shiny gleam! 
There he goes—quick and glancing along that 
flat rock— 
I admire him and praise him, tho’ it’s some- 
what a shock 
To lose him, when surely I thought he was 
mine, 
And intended to prove it when I sat down to 
dine. 
But perish the thought! A creature so bright 
Is more mine when moving thus happy and 
light. 
So, dear little trout, 
Tho’ glad you were out, 
It’s true and no sin 
That I’m gladder, far gladder, 
That now you are in. 

Plenty of Tarpon. 
In a letter recently received from Aransas 
Pass, Tex., we are told that tarpon swarm the 
passes and bays. Our correspondent writes: 
‘ At this season tarpon are very numerous and 
‘voracious; the weather is perfect, and the 
number landed in a day is only a matter of 
muscle. So it will be up to the first cold winds 
in December, usually about Christmas, It is 
all top fishing, trolling from a skiff, piano wire 
snells on swivels, about 6-inch mullet hooked 
in the nose; tarpon are hooked in the mouth, 
strikes are had every few minutes, except 
when you are busy playing one that is well 
hooked. The big records made by Senator 
Lewis, Houston and others, are correctly 
stated. There is no trouble about it, provided 
you have the muscle for such hard work.” 
