Big Game at Sea 



large log which an unseen monster dragged out to 

 sea, and would have taken me also had I not retired. 



The shad fishermen and pilots of Mayport, on the 

 south shore, were an interesting people, many being 

 descendants of the Minorcans who came to Florida 

 a century ago. They all knew tarpon, but could not 

 produce them, so I drifted down to New Smyrna, and 

 so on down the Gulf to the jumping-off place, where 

 I found tarpon, or sabalo as the man called it, while 

 at another key the Conchs called it Grande Scaille, 

 but it was all the same fish, the finest jumper in the 

 world. 



I was wading along shore one day at Bush Key 

 when I saw, I believe, a dozen tarpons go into the 

 air at once. One ran upon the beach, where I could 

 have caught it, but I was interested to see the cause, 

 and grains in hand, as I had been wading along the 

 beach after crayfish, I ran down and found that a 

 school or bunch of Silver Kings had been trying to 

 go through a little channel and had been charged by 

 a big ten-foot nurse shark, a harmless crab-eating 

 beast, doubtless as frightened as themselves, but send- 

 ing them into the air in a blaze of silver. Here was 

 my tarpon ground, and at flood tide the following 

 day I returned to the island, which I tried to find 

 years later, but a hurricane had literally blown it into 

 the sea. 



The water here ranged from six to twenty feet in 

 depth, and while the heat was extreme, raising great 



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