on a casting rod furnishes a very interesting ten minutes. Sup- 

 pose, though, it is a 2o-pound jack. That ten minutes will stretch 

 into half an hour or an hour of very hard, fast fishing, before 

 you, or the jack, gets the decision. 



Could be a barracuda longer than your leg and I recommend 

 this guy, on casting tackle, to my muskellunge colleagues. Could 

 be a grouper. Or a ladyfish, also called Chiro which pinwheels 

 and jitterbugs in the air like the fastest rainbow and ladyfish 

 grow up to be lo-pounders. That cast might attract any of a 

 score more species which there isn't space to list here and it is 

 also a fine way to locate and make contact with a tarpon. 



I hold, with considerable expert backing, that no man's fishing 

 days are complete until he has attached himself to twenty or 

 thirty or forty pounds of tarpon via a rod intended for black 

 bass. Standing in a rowboat, with his fish leaping higher than 

 his head or running away like something out of a roman candle, 

 and with only a hundred yards of line and the drag of his own 

 thumb between himself and a shellacking an angler will learn 

 things about tarpon that are unknown to those who go after 

 them with heavy rods, guides, large boats, strip baits, and other 

 accessories. 



Of course, if you are the perennially unlucky angler, that cast 

 may be picked up by a shark or possibly by a goo-pound jew- 

 fish. Or maybe a tarpon as heavy as yourself will grab your plug, 

 feel its hooks, and start across the Gulf of Mexico by the air 

 route. 



Against such common extremities, the Florida caster carries 

 a good supply of plugs along and several extra lines. Further- 

 more, the Florida caster is sometimes embarrassed by a strike 

 and a catch that is not in the finny league. Among the critters 

 taken thus inadvertently are terns, gulls, pelicans, turtles, alli- 

 gators, crocodiles, and rattlesnakes. 



Reeling a pelican down from the sky is quite an experience, 

 I guarantee and how to turn loose an alligator is a problem 

 never encountered in northern ponds. 



Now get a grip on your chair and consider this: all the fish 

 just mentioned, and the many more implied, take flies. 



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