SEA FISHING 

 per diem for expenses on the spot includes this outlay. There is never, so 

 far as I know, any shortage of bait. The mullet are caught at night by 

 Spanish or half-caste fishermen, and the guides cut them up on the way 

 to the fishing grounds. There is no urgent need for the bait to be absolutely 

 fresh, only it is in that condition undeniably more agreeable at close 

 quarters during hot weather. As for the tarpon, they have no objection to 

 stale bait when they can get no other, but if one boat is using fresh bait 

 the others will have no success with stale. No other bait appears to answer 

 in Florida. An American, whom I met there, used to try garfish, but it 

 failed utterly. In Jamaica, on the other hand, tarpon take either prawn 

 or the small fish known locally as " whitebait." 



STYLES OF FISHING 



I. TROLLING 



Unless one goes in for harpooning tarpon in the manner described by 

 Messrs A. W. and Julian Dimock in " Florida Enchantments " — surely 

 the most delightful book ever written about open-air life in Florida — 

 trolling in the Passes is the most sportsmanlike way of catching these 

 fish. The open water, on the threshold of the Gulf, is far more exhilarating 

 than the sluggish river in which still -fishing has its chief vogue, and the 

 tarpon, being hooked in the edge of the mouth, both jumps more freely 

 and enjoys a better chance of throwing out a hook, an opportunity which, 

 however disappointing it may prove to the angler, should be allowed to 

 every fish caught on rod and line, particularly in cases where, as in this 

 one, the fish gets rid of the hook in the act of regaining its liberty. As a 

 matter of fact, tarpon-fishermen, in both Florida and Mexico, are more 

 and more favouring the generous policy of sparing the tarpon to fight 

 again another day, a rational issue to the game which should have been 

 general long since. I always, even while doing as others did, regretted 

 those uselessly slaughtered tarpon drawn up on the sloping beach of 

 Boca Grande and, later in the day, weighed on the sometimes flattering 

 steelyard at Useppa. That steelyard may have been a mere machine, but 

 it was full of guile. Sometimes it would register less, sometimes more, 

 than the actual weight of a fish. It had its prejudices and favoured one 

 angler at the expense of the rest. Anyhow, it is easy, with a little more 

 loss of time, to play the fish to the side of the boat in a condition so near 

 exhaustion as to permit of the hook being removed with little injury to 



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