XXX 



TARPON IN FLORIDA 

 1901 



WE were fishing in the "Boca Grande," the deepest of the 

 several mouths of the twenty-five miles long Charlotte 

 Harbour, opening into the Gulf of Mexico. The " harbour," 

 a shallow expanse of sea, extending to the town of Punta 

 Gorda on the mainland of Florida, is protected gulfwards by a 

 line of " keys," or low mangrove and palmetto-covered islands, 

 and in the deep channel between the two larger ones, Gasparilla 

 and Petrucchio, was our fishing-ground. The deepest part 

 that most frequented by the tarpon, who passed through here 

 chiefly on the flood tide to the shallower feeding-grounds or 

 flats is in the northern half of the "Boca," that adjoining 

 Gasparilla Lighthouse, and here at the turn of the tides, and 

 until these became too strong, were generally twenty-five or 

 thirty boats, each carrying a keen fisherman and an equally 

 keen " guide " or rower black or white. 



About four years ago, when trolling superseded still fishing, 

 the Boca Grande became the Melton of tarpon fishing, for the 

 depth of its waters alone permitted the doubtless superior sport. 

 The former great resort for still fishing the Captiva Pass, 

 south of Petrucchio Island is now almost deserted, only a very 

 few old-fashioned tarpon fishers still keeping to their favourite 

 haunt. Other famous fishing-grounds of former days near 

 Punta Gorda and in the many inlets near Fort Myers have gone 

 out of favour owing to scarcity of fish ; where formerly tarpon 

 abounded they are now rarely seen, banished, it is said, by great 

 impurities in the water resulting from working the phosphate 

 deposits near the coast. 



