feet of sabre-toothed malice leering at him from a quiet nook 

 forty yards off. Jacks, which travel in schools and which feed 

 with a roaring splash like fifty women beating fifty rugs in the 

 water, also are among the fishes that may be taken by this sort 

 of dead aim. 



In my Florida home on the Bay, I kept a casting rod with a 

 plug ready to fire, hanging on the front porch. Often, while deep 

 in the production of literature (as near as I could get) I would 

 hear the roaring splash of jacks in the water outside, rush down- 

 stairs, grab the rod, cast from my front lawn, and enjoy the next 

 quarter hour in non-literary excitements. At night, ladyfish feed 

 on shrimp with a surging surface break, and the rod on my 

 porch was handy for that too. 



Bonefish occasionally and, once in a great while, permit- 

 take plugs. These are fish which feed in shallow water, showing 

 caudal and dorsal fins as they do so, and stirring up mud. They 

 too are stalked by rowboat or even by an angler in waders. Crab, 

 shrimp, bits of conch, and the like, are the proper bait for them 

 but it is no mistake to try a cast at one when you encounter him, 

 excepting of course for the tackle risk involved. 



Bonefish and permit are commonly alleged to be the fastest 

 fish alive; fishing for them gives thousands of savvy anglers an 

 extended, slap-happy old age; it is a cult but anybody with 

 ambition and a few bucks can join the cult. 



The channel bass, alias redfish, alias red drum, is a potent 

 swimmer who often grows up to weigh twenty-odd pounds, and 

 he too haunts the shallows and feeds nose-down, tail-upso that 

 he may be approached cautiously by poling or rowing, and set 

 into violent motion by feeding him a plug with an easy cast. 



To stalk the channel bass is to enjoy a particular sport. On 

 reddish, greenish, or violet banks, where an incoming tide pro- 

 vides inches of water, enough to float his skiff, the hunter prowls 

 like a man with a gun. He takes care not to flush his game. And 

 once a redfish is spotted once the cast is made and the plug 

 taken a contest follows in which, as a rule, the angler has his fish 

 in sight the whole time and, no doubt, the fish has the angler in 

 his alarmed view. 



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