66 THE ENGLISH ANGLER IN FLORIDA Vi 



fork of the St. Lucie River, using a channel bass rod, troHing 

 and casting for crevalli, with a spoon bait, when a tarpon seized 

 the hook, jumped, and escaped scot-free. All that day he 

 continued striking fish and losing spoons and phantom minnows. 

 In one tarpon school he thus had nearly fifty strikes. He 

 returned sadder and wiser to his sailing boat, and spent hours 

 in dressing " most complex and weird jumbo flies " ; returned 

 to the spot next day, and found what he thinks was the same 

 school of tarpon, which had advanced by this time some two 

 miles farther up stream. 



His flies were made of pieces of wood 3 inches long by 

 \ inch in diameter, covered with red flannel, and tied with 

 three or four feathers. Each was about 4 inches long, and 

 terminated with three bass hooks, set at different angles — a 

 lure, in fact, very much like the flies we use in England for 

 pike fishing in shallow lakes. There was no end to the rises 

 at this delicacy. The angler repeatedly struck hard enough to 

 make the fish jump out of water, but they always managed to 

 get rid of the fly or sever the snell. One fish at last did take 

 the fly and the hooks, and after forty minutes' battle was 

 gaffed. This was Mr. Mygatt's first tarpon, but it had been 

 taken by one of the hooks entering the skin that covered the 



