262 Big Game Fishes 



boatman, it may be forty and it may be fifteen. 

 I hooked several tarpons with the latter length, 

 and saw the magnificent leaps close aboard, too 

 close for actual comfort if the truth were told. 

 The angler now holds the rod across his lap, point- 

 ing over the quarter to port and slightly up, never 

 astern, and at its best nearly at right angles to the 

 boat. His right thumb rests upon the thumb- 

 brake, the left grasps the cork-grip above the 

 reel. The boatman is rowing at a speed of about 

 two and a half miles an hour, and if he is the man 

 I take him to be, he is rich in expedients in ward- 

 ing off ennui. At the exact moment the novice 

 begins to be discouraged he invariably sees a tar- 

 pon, or hears one grunt or puff, and thus deftly 

 carries the angler along, keeping him on the alert 

 until the strike really comes. This is an epoch 

 in the angler's life, a bright moment in what Byron 

 terms that " solitary vice " of angling. What to 

 do and how to do it well is the question. If the 

 angler follows my suggestion, he will sway the 

 point forward, then strike at once ; but if he accepts 

 the dictum of many others with possibly far more 

 experience, he will give some line, on the ground 

 that as the interior of the mouth of the tarpon is 

 hard and bony, it must swallow the hook, which 



