The Groupers 219 



of joy of the angler at the supreme moment of 

 vantage gained ; and so it is worse than useless 

 to argue with the man who does not care for 

 angling; he cannot understand that the angler 

 is, as a rule, born, not bred. 



One cannot philosophize with a wild unknown, 

 battering and hammering at your arms, plunging, 

 then rising to the surface with convulsive bound 

 to turn and plunge again. There is a "second 

 wind " in sea angling, and if the fish secures it, it 

 is a sorry day for the fisherman, and seeing that 

 the fish must be fought without cessation, I 

 played it, hauling and giving with all my power, 

 and in a few moments had the pleasure of sight- 

 ing a magnificent fish at the surface, where it 

 turned and beat the blue water into foam, tossed 

 the Portuguese men-of-war into pearly fragments, 

 and ground up scores of delicate jellyfishes 

 which swarmed the warm waters of the Gulf. I 

 held the game while Chief cleverly inserted his 

 big gaff-hook beneath the head, and we held the 

 monster hard and fast and rested our eyes upon 

 the beauties of the black grouper, Garrupa ni- 

 grita, which, when towed in and hauled upon the 

 beach at Long Key, was estimated to weigh three 

 hundred and fifty pounds. 



