A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



or more. The fish may be one that you have hooked yourself, 

 in which case it is only anticipating the desired result. If 

 there are many boats out, it may be a fish hooked by somebody 

 else, in which case it adds injury to insult. It may, indeed, be 

 a fish that is not hooked at all. Three cases of the kind came 

 under my notice in the Pass. The first was an experience of 

 my own. Trailing towards the tarpon ground, I struck a fish, 

 and next moment got a blow on the leg. There was a heavy 

 thud in the boat, and a 30 lb. kingfish was kicking on the 

 bottom boards. The next happened to the friend whose 

 misadventure through being carried out to sea has already 

 been related. He hooked a tarpon, which dashed straight 

 at his boat, jumped into it, broke the back of the revolving 

 chair in which he was seated, and made off over the bows. 

 The fish, however, being well hooked, was eventually caught. 



The third, and by far the most serious case, was that in 

 which Mr. Otis Mygatt was knocked overboard by a porpoise, 

 which, leaping over the bow, just missed his guide, struck him 

 on the side of the head, and knocked him, partially stunned, 

 into the water. The porpoise lay, also stunned, in the bottom 

 of the boat, and the guide, Santa Armida, managed, with great 

 difficulty, to pull Mr. Mygatt back over the side. As the boat 

 was filling, the next thing was to get rid of the porpoise. This, 

 however, proved too heavy to move, so there was nothing 

 for it but to overturn the boat and climb into it again. Other 

 boats now came to their assistance, and Mr. Mygatt was taken 

 to the Lighthouse on Gasparilla, from which he could not be 

 moved for ten days, so severe had been the shock. 



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