THE TARPON 23 



''For ten years I have fished for and caught tarpon, the 

 gamiest of all fish, among the Ten Thousand Islands that 

 surround my winter camp, and farther down the Coast 

 around the mouths of Chatham, Losmans, Rogers, Har- 

 vey and Shark Rivers. We get them to bite here long be- 

 fore they appear at Captiva and Boca Grande. I have 

 caught them in every month from October to May. Last 

 winter (20-21) in the upper Shark River during the month 

 of February I found the water full of small tarpon from 

 eight to twelve inches long. They were jumping and strik- 

 ing constantly, thousands of them, and had the water 

 churned up and dirty from their activities. I had gone up 

 there to fish for black bass, the water being fresh, but the 

 small tarpon had evidently driven the bass away for I 

 could not get a strike from a bass although a few weeks 

 before we had had wonderful bass fishing. I used my fly 

 rod with dry fly, small spinner and small pieces of cut bait 

 and succeeded in catching several but found them hard 

 to hook. A few years ago while fishing for bass with arti- 

 ficial bait in the headwaters of North River which flows 

 into White Water Bay a tarpon perhaps five feet long 

 struck my bait and carried it with a goodly portion of my 

 line away with him, which proves that at times they like 

 fresh water." 



Mr. Frank Gray Griswold, in his beautifully printed volumes 

 entitled "Sport on Land and Water" (privately printed) 

 calls attention to the fact that while tarpon are in rivers and 

 not in motion they lie upon the bottom, coming to the surface 

 at intervals for a mouthful of air which comes up in bubbles 

 for some time after they have again retired to the bottom. A 

 very small tarpon which he placed in a tub of water did the 

 same thing. He has searched about twenty Cuban rivers for 

 tarpon, finding them in only five, viz. : 



