TARPON FISHING IN THE PASS 



By lord desborough 



The tarpon is a big herring, king of the herring tribe. 

 Structural differences there are, no doubt, apart from the 

 striking discrepancy in size, and the most noticeable of these 

 to the untrained eye is the disproportionately long ray of 

 the dorsal fin, which sweeps back towards the tail and is 

 thought by some to assist the great fish in those rapid twists 

 and turns by which, in conjunction with high speed, it is 

 able to avoid the sharks and other natural enemies that inhabit 

 the Gulf of Mexico and other warm seas within its range, 

 which is now known to embrace not only the whole of the 

 West Indies, but also the West Coast of Africa, and at any 

 rate the north littoral of tropical Australia. Many fish of 

 both sea and river are loosely described as silvery, but to no 

 other does the term apply more accurately than to the tarpon, 

 for the tip of each of its large scales is thickly coated with 

 silver, and as the tip is the only portion exposed to view in 

 the natural state, the fish literally resembles a solid bar of 

 silver as it flings itself high in the air on feeling the hook, 

 and, with violent shaking of its massive head, tries, not always 

 unsuccessfully, to fling that which hurts it from its bony 

 mouth. Not at once did men realise that tarpon could be 

 caught with rod and line. As in the case of other fish, the 



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