Tarpon Pishing in Florida 



that it has been captured with rod and reel. 

 Beside it the lordly salmon seems to sink 

 into insignificance. They are sometimes 

 eaten, but not with avidity by those who 

 have tried them before, as the flesh is 

 coarse. 



In a book on fishes, published in New 

 York in 1884, appears the following state- 

 ment: " Imagine a herring-shaped fish five 

 or six feet long, with brilliant silvery scales 

 the size of half a dollar, in schools of a 

 dozen or twenty, leaping from the blue sur- 

 face of a summer sea. This is all that the 

 angler usually sees of the tarpon. Some- 

 times one of these glittering, rushing mon- 

 sters takes the hook. What follows ? The 

 line runs out with great speed till it has 

 all left the reel, where it parts at its weak- 

 est point, and the fish goes off leaping 

 seaward. When hooked on a hand-line 

 similar results follow. No man is strong 

 enough to hold a large tarpon unless he is 

 provided with a drag or buoy in the shape 

 of an empty keg attached to the line, 

 which may retard or even stop the fish 

 after a while. Aided by a buoy, the tar- 

 pon is sometimes taken with a harpoon or 

 seines/' Since this declaration was made, 

 evidently in full sincerity, probably no less 

 than one hundred tarpon have been killed 

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