THE FINEST SPORT IN THE WORLD 



self could have done. It was on the same day 

 that my needle fish bait, thrown high by a tar- 

 pon, was caught in the air by a man-o'-war hawk. 



Tarpon fishing "acquaints a man with strange 

 bedfellows." I have fished with a Doctor of 

 Divinity and with Matt. Quay, although not at 

 the same time. Near the same place I sat on the 

 deck of a palatial yacht, its dilettante owner 

 smoking and chatting, while his boatman fished 

 for tarpon fifty yards away. When a strike was 

 made the yachtsman was rowed to the fishing 

 skiff and completed the capture of the tarpon. 

 Beside the yacht was another fisherman, a boy 

 in a leaky skiff with ventilated garments, whose 

 entire outfit wouldn't have paid the yachtsman's 

 expenses for fifteen minutes, yet the boy caught 

 more fish and perhaps had more fun. 



Tarpon may be found, not only in the places 

 of which I have written, but throughout the 

 broad, shallow waters and deeper channels of the 

 whole Ten Thousand Islands. I have seen them 

 far out in the Everglades, in lagoons in the Big 

 Cypress Swamp and even in a deep little lake, a 

 hundred yards in diameter and ten miles from 

 any other body of water. 



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