ON THE EAST COAST OF FLORIDA. 273 



the Gulf of Mexico, and none of them had any personal knowledge 

 of this much-talked-about fish. It seems to have fallen to the good 

 fortune of an intelligent and observant, but anonymous, writer to 

 herald its superiority as a game fish. He wrote : 



" ' For the past two winters, skillful fishermen among the North- 

 ern tourists, whom I knew personally or by reputation among mutual 

 acquaintances, have been reporting with enthusiasm the discovery in 

 Biscayne Bay of a new game-fish which is to surpass all the other 

 ministers to piscatorial amusements. Some went so far as to say that 

 the Tarpon is superseded as the king of fish ; as expressed by one of 

 them, who kills annually more than fifty tarpon, ' the tarpon is not 

 in it.' 



" Being inflamed by this story of the ' new planet which swims 

 within our ken,' I took a day at Biscayne Bay, returning to-night 

 with three of the fish. 



"The Bone-fish is new to me, and, so far as I can ascertain, is 

 taken only in Florida, at Biscayne Bay and probably southward, 

 though as to this I have no information. A guide did tell me that 

 it is abundant in Cuba, where it is called what he pronounced leetha, 

 or ' the swift. ' 



"The three specimens taken by my friend and myself, weighed 

 (by estimations) six, five, and four pounds respectively. The bait is 

 surf-bugs or sand-fleas, such as are used occasionally on the Jersey 

 coast for sheepshead when that capricious fish declines his ordinary 

 diet. They are taken in the same manner as there, by a scoop or 

 net, or digging with the fingers, when the breaker recedes. 



"The cast — two hooks, No. 7 O'Shaughnessy, above a small 

 sinker and one foot apart — is made seventy feet or more from the 

 boat, along a sandbar, on the rising tide. Three inches of water on 

 the top of the bar are preferable, but the day I was fishing was at the 

 tail end of a ' norther,' and I had to fish the shallow channels next 

 the bar in three or four feet of water. The strike is a slow nibble or 

 mumble, and it requires quickness and discretion to hook the fish. 

 But when he is hooked, which is by a sudden slight motion of the 

 wrist, the aspect of the contest changes from apathy to fierce activity. 

 There is a lightning-like run of perhaps one hundred yards, then a 

 return nearly to the boat, then an equally extensive run which cannot 

 be checked, and then zigzag rushes and flourishes here, there, and 

 everywhere until the fish is exhausted, and finally lifted into the boat 



