THE TARPON 81 



Just before anglers began to take these fish with a rod and 

 reel that celebrated angler, Dr. James A. Henshall, the author- 

 ity on black bass, thus described their capture : 



' * The boat being poled quietly along the fringe of man- 

 grove bushes at the edge of the channels, the man stand- 

 ing in the bow with the grains ready, at length spies a 

 great tarpuni some six feet long, like a giant fish of bur- 

 nished silver, poised motionless in the shade. When with- 

 in striking distances, he hurls the grains by its long handle 

 with a skillful and dexterous thrust and unerring aim, 

 born of long experience, which strikes home with an enor- 

 mous thud, when the monster tears away with a tremen- 

 dous spurt, leaps clear of the surface, and, falling back, 

 makes the water fairly boil and seethe in his desperate 

 efforts to escape. But the barbed grains hold fast, and the 

 long stout line is as tense as a bowstring. The great fish 

 tows the boat around like a cockle-shell until his fierce 

 struggles and grand leaps begin to tell on him, and at 

 length he is towed ashore completely exhausted. Some- 

 times the boat is capsized or swamped by an unusually 

 large and powerful fish." 

 It apparently never entered Dr. Henshall 's mind, a cool and 

 experienced angler, that it would be feasible to attempt the 

 capture of a large tarpon with a rod and reel. The methods of 

 capture he described were the same as those employed when 

 Captain William Dampier, the buccaneer, tried his hand off 

 the coast of Yucatan, two hundred and nine years before. 



In the issue of the Forest and Stream for April 9, 1885, the 

 following item from a local correspondent appeared, bearing 

 the date of April 2, 1885 : 



"A Mr. Wood of New York took at Punta Rassa last 

 week a tarpon measuring five feet eight inches and weigh- 

 ing sixty-eight pounds; tackle rod and reel." 

 In the issue of the 23rd of that month Mr. W. H. Wood 

 stated that his first fish was caught in Tarpon Bay, Fla., on 



