FISHING AS A SPORT 



for the flying or jumping monsters that in past ages fell 

 to the harpoons of races that the world no longer knows, 

 has become as popular an amusement as an Indian tiger- 

 shooting holiday was to our fathers. 



Among these American wonders the best known to 

 twentieth-century folk is the tarpon, a salt-water fish at 

 one time erroneously called the Jew-fish. (The Jew, it 

 should be stated, is a creature much longer than the 

 tarpon, and often three or four times as heavy.) He is 

 a magnificent blue and silver monster, a close relative 

 of the herring ; is from five to seven feet long, and may 

 weigh anything from one to two hundred pounds. The 

 body is covered with scales, some of them three and four 

 inches wide ; the back fin is very high, with a filament 

 behind, the eyes and mouth very large, the latter oblique. 

 As food the flesh is of doubtful value. 



Like the salmon, it has the power of springing out of 

 the water at will, though its method of doing so differs. 

 In fact, it is often included among the flying-fish ; fish, 

 that is, that on account of the extraordinary length of 

 their breast-fins, are able to leap from the water and make 

 some show of supporting themselves in mid-air for a brief 

 period. If the tarpon does not strictly come under this 

 zoological species, it at least spends its days in the com- 

 pany of fish that do ; for though its home is well above 

 the Tropic of Cancer, the reader will, no doubt, remem- 

 ber that the Gulf Stream, which leaves the Gulf of 

 Mexico via the Strait of Florida, gives almost a tropical 

 character to that part of the Atlantic and its inmates ; 

 for the temperature of the water at the surface is 81 F. 



83 



