FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 149 



a tarpon so close to a friend's boat that it fell on 

 the oar and smashed it off short, but no other 

 damage was done. The mishap which befell Mr 

 Otis Mygatt, who was badly injured by a porpoise 

 falling on him one night, is also among the annals 

 of Pass fishing. The only case of actual fatality 

 that has come to my notice was when a boat was 

 found drifting in the bay off Galveston containing a 

 dead tarpon overlying a dead fisherman, a horrible 

 discovery that could have but one explanation. 

 The unfortunate victim must have been fishing 

 without employing the services of a guide, a fatal 

 economy, for the latter would, with a stroke of the 

 paddle, have dodged the fish in its fall. 



2. Still- Fishing. 



OF the other methods by which tarpon are 

 commonly taken, one only need be described in 

 detail. In the West Indies, as has been stated, the 

 fish is taken on the fly, prawn and other baits. At 

 Captiva Pass, where the water is shallower, and 

 where, at any rate in 1906, sharks were too 

 numerous to make fishing either comfortable or pro- 

 fitable, it is found best to troll near the surface 

 without leads, a sporting method, but one entailing 

 a great proportion of lost fish. 



The other method with a wide vogue, particularly 

 in estuaries and on the shallow mud-flats up the 

 creeks and rivers, where indeed no other style is 

 practicable, is that known to Americans as " still- 

 fishing," and to ourselves by the more tell-tale name 

 of " gorge-fishing." It is in no sense a sportsman- 

 like method, but it catches fish. It is the mode 



