236 Big Game Fishes 
is much a question of taste. It will be noticed 
that the men who have courted fame by bringing 
their fish to gaff in a short time use “club” rods, 
built, as a certain boatman sententiously said, for 
“snatching a tarpon bald-headed.” But there are 
others who temper their methods with a modicum 
of humanity, and use longer rods and the lightest 
line that the conscience of the true sportsman will 
allow. Such a rod may be of snakewood, noib 
wood, or greenheart. It has a single long tip with 
a short butt, and when jointed is seven or seven 
and a half feet in length. The line is a number 
fifteen or eighteen, and the hook a 10/o Limerick, 
a Van Vleck, or an O’Shaughnessy of similar size. 
The snood, or snell, is a debatable question of vital 
importance along the tarpon belt. Some anglers 
use wire, but it is a shark country, and there are 
groupers, channel-bass, and various game which 
become vermin when the mind of the angler 
is concentrated on tarpon alone, hence a soft 
snood is preferred, that the shark may sever it and 
cause no delay in the real work cut out for the 
day. The hard jaw of the tarpon easily files off 
a slender line, so a compromise is effected, and 
a stout cod-line snood is used by some; others 
again employ a moose-hide snood, and there are 
