FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 151 



six others that I consider were properly hooked. The 

 river is full of tarpon, and, with any luck, you are bound to 

 catch them here. One day I had eleven strikes, but only 

 got two fish out of them. I caught three in one day, and 

 to-day a man called Powers caught four, ten tarpon having 

 been taken to-day altogether. 



The mode of angling for tarpon here may not appeal 

 to you. It certainly does not appeal to me in the very 

 least. Indeed, I loathe it, having been accustomed to fish 

 for salmon and trout, and one feels no better than a 

 Sunday angler on the Thames, sitting all day long in a 

 boat instead of on the bank, holding a line in one's hand 

 and waiting for a tarpon to take the bait. From all I can 

 hear, however, when once hooked, the tarpon here will 

 give you far better sport than in the Pass. I have talked 

 to several people who have fished in both places, and they 

 are unanimous in the opinion that fish hooked in the river 

 give one far more sport. Here, you see, when you have 

 hooked your fish, you play him from your boat till you 

 have tired him enough to bring him up to the gaff. In 

 this way you get the advantage of seeing all his amazing 

 leaps and dashes, which, from all accounts, you must miss 

 at the Pass. . . . You get the tarpon really in his element* 

 as from your boat you have to fight him till he comes in 

 belly upwards to the gaff. . . . If nothing is doing down 

 at Useppa, I should certainly recommend you to try the 

 river here, as it is just in full swing now, and I hear that 

 the Passes are always better later. I know perfectly well 

 that you will hate the mode of angling here, but when 

 your fish is hooked, he gives you the grandest sport, and 

 you forget the mean way in which you caught him." 



In the course of his interesting comparison 

 between the two methods, gorge-fishing and trailing, 

 my correspondent raises more than one debatable 

 point on which, if I had actually tried the method, 

 I might have liked to join issue. In the absence of 

 first hand knowledge of the river at Fort Myers, I 



