The Tarpon 239 



the big reel, overhauling the line, paying out, 

 ze-ze-ze-ze! until perhaps twenty-five or even thirty 

 feet have gone. This is the method of many 

 successful tarpon anglers, but not my own. By 

 this time you fancy that the tarpon has bolted 

 the bait, and you give it the butt as the line 

 comes taut, forcing the hook into its big throat. 

 Up into the air it rises, looking so big, shaking 

 so fiercely, that you wonder if such a monster 

 can be caught. At such a moment a tarpon 

 has tossed the baited hook yards away, dropped 

 to the water with a crash and leaped, wild 

 with fear, pain, or astonishment, still believing 

 itself hooked. A tarpon in such a frenzy has 

 been seen to throw itself an estimated thirty feet 

 along the water. Sometimes it rises near the 

 boat, again fairly alongside. But your fish is 

 headed away, and as your boatman has hauled up 

 the anchor, you are off behind this silvery king. 

 Now it threatens to take you out into the surf in 

 its wild rush for the Gulf now it is in the air, 

 a splendid glittering object, the type of activity. 

 Two or three hundred feet of line have been 

 taken in the succession of rushes, and despite 

 your utmost exertion, your pumping and fighting, 

 the tarpon holds its own, is still king ; but in the 



