236 Big Game Fishes 



is much a question of taste. It will be noticed 

 that the men who have courted fame by bringing 

 their fish to gaff in a short time use " club " rods, 

 built, as a certain boatman sententiously said, for 

 " snatching a tarpon bald-headed." But there are 

 others who temper their methods with a modicum 

 of humanity, and use longer rods and the lightest 

 line that the conscience of the true sportsman will 

 allow. Such a rod may be of snake wood, noib 

 wood, or greenheart. It has a single long tip with 

 a short butt, and when jointed is seven or seven 

 and a half feet in length. The line is a number 

 fifteen or eighteen, and the hook a 10/0 Limerick, 

 a Van Vleck, or an O'Shaughnessy of similar size. 

 The snood, or snell, is a debatable question of vital 

 importance along the tarpon belt. Some anglers 

 use wire, but it is a shark country, and there are 

 groupers, channel-bass, and various game which 

 become vermin when the mind of the angler 

 is concentrated on tarpon alone, hence a soft 

 snood is preferred, that the shark may sever it and 

 cause no delay in the real work cut out for the 

 day. The hard jaw of the tarpon easily files off 

 a slender line, so a compromise is effected, and 

 a stout cod-line snood is used by some; others 

 again employ a moose-hide snood, and there are 



