The Silver King 



just ahead, and more than once I have stood ready 

 to dodge or jump overboard to avoid the mad leap 

 of a wild sabalo which went into the air alongside 

 my boat, but on the hook of a fellow angler ahead. 

 Tarpon fishing is without doubt the most sensational 

 and exciting of sports, and one of the most dangerous 

 when persistently followed, but the writer has been 

 fortunate. I have seen my boat swept by a mad 

 tarpon, while hanging on over the stern to keep out 

 of reach of the tail, my boatman as far forward. If 

 you have the field, or are not near any one, you are 

 fairly safe, but to give an idea how much room a 

 wild tarpon wishes, I was fishing once at Aransas 

 Pass, and as near as I can recall there were ten 

 anglers, all in little skiffs, and a line of five near the 

 jetty, of which I was in the middle. Another line of 

 five, a quarter of a mile long perhaps, held the mid- 

 dle of the channel. I hooked a tarpon not twenty 

 feet from the jetty. He went into the air ten feet 

 from me, came down almost hitting the boat. I 

 remember I dodged, then I saw him bound into the 

 air over my shoulder, going so high that I had to 

 look up at him, and then I saw him go bounding over 

 the channel in a series of marvelous leaps, nearly 

 hitting one boat and missing another by a miracle. 

 I was using a nine-foot rod of heavy greenheart, a 

 big reel of the Vom Hofe make, one which I had 

 tested on tuna and black sea bass, and which held six 

 hundred feet of a 2i-strand Cuttyhunk line. It was 



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