248 Big Game Fishes 
with a thirty-seven cotton line endeavoring to trip 
or throw it in the air. 
At times, when a dozen or more boats have 
been fishing here, six or eight tarpons have been 
seen in the air at the same moment, and the lofty 
tumbling productive of much entertainment. A 
large fish hooked by a member of the Tarpon 
Club leaped over the boat of Judge Houston; 
and a fish hooked by another angler leaped into 
the air and struck the chair of the occupant of 
another boat, almost knocking him overboard. 
In such a whirl of excitement it is evident that 
angler and boatman must be on the alert, not only 
to secure their own fish, but to avoid the air rushes 
of the frenzied game of some one else. 
The second tarpon I hooked was kept at short 
line especially to observe the leap, in a hope to 
photograph it; but when the splendid creature 
went into the air higher than my head, not ten 
feet distant, hurling the spray over me, I confess 
that all thoughts of the kodak vanished. When 
in the air, the fish was apparently headed for me, 
but it dropped alongside with a crash, and as the 
warning of the boatman came, fearing that the 
fish would come aboard, it dashed by me three 
feet under water, canted upward at an angle that 
