THE BOOK OF THE TARPON 



one big slippery form dropped squarely into my 

 arms. 



Funny things sometimes happen, as when a big 

 tarpon which I was playing with shortened line 

 rose beside and against the canoe, shaking his 

 great open mouth so near my face that I put up 

 my hand to push him away. An instant later I 

 was struck in the back by the hook which the 

 tarpon succeeded in ejecting as he leaped high 

 on the other side of the canoe, beneath which he 

 had dived. My boatman was taking the hook 

 from the mouth of an exhausted tarpon which he 

 was holding when the fish broke away, dived un- 

 der the canoe, and rising on the other side threw 

 body and tail against the back and head of his 

 antagonist in a resounding spank that nearly 

 knocked the breath out of his tormentor's body. 



The first leap of the tarpon after he feels or 

 suspects a hook is an effort to get rid of it and 

 he often succeeds in sending it with the bait 

 hurtling through the air. Fishing with a heavy 

 sinker on my line in the swift tide at Boca 

 Grande, a tarpon seized the bait and rising in the 

 air, fifty yards from the canoe, sent the leaden 

 weight into my hand as truly as Mathewson him- 



