Big Game at Sea 



equipped with a powerful leather pad and I was using 

 a little wooden lever ; yet that splendid leaper carried 

 away five hundred feet or more of line as it went 

 dancing into the air and over the pass. It towed us 

 into midstream and away to the south, ran into seas 

 which were piling in. I saw it take a last splendid 

 leap on the crest of a big wave, fall in the hollow, and 

 had just concluded that the game was up, when I 

 stopped it by a miracle. With extraordinary rapidity 

 it went coursing in a big circle around across the 

 channel again, ever and anon making a wild leap 

 into the air, a menace to any boat, a living catapult 

 that could have killed a man with a single blow of its 

 powerful tail. 



In a few moments the fish was in the breakers on 

 the north side of the pass, and while my man held 

 the skiff head on, to prevent foundering, I played the 

 splendid game and by great good luck brought him to 

 the boat, from which he soon swam away free. It 

 is the honored custom to cut away all tarpon caught 

 at Aransas Pass after the length has been obtained; 

 and as the rod catch here last year was eight hundred 

 and fifty, the lives of many splendid fishes are saved 

 and a high standard of sport sustained. 



Aransas Pass is without question the finest location 

 for tarpon angling in America, as the catch is abso- 

 lutely sure. You can fairly count on four or five a 

 day from April or May until October, subject of 

 course to the ordinary hard-luck times. My fishing 



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