262 Big Game Fishes 
boatman, — it may be forty and it. may be fifteen. 
I hooked several tarpons with the latter length, 
and saw the magnificent leaps close aboard, too 
close for actual comfort if the truth were told. 
The angler now holds the rod across his lap, point- 
ing over the quarter to port and slightly up, never 
astern, and at its best nearly at right angles to the 
boat. His right thumb rests upon the thumb- 
brake, the left grasps the cork-grip above the 
reel. The boatman is rowing at a speed of about 
two and a half miles an hour, and if he is the man 
I take him to be, he is rich in expedients in ward- 
ing off ennui. At the exact moment the novice 
begins to be discouraged he invariably sees a tar- 
pon, or hears one grunt or puff, and thus deftly 
carries the angler along, keeping him on the alert 
until the strike really comes. This is an epoch 
in the angler’s life, a bright moment in what Byron 
terms that “solitary vice” of angling. What to 
do and how to do it well is the question. If the 
angler follows my suggestion, he will sway the 
point forward, then strike at once; but if he accepts 
the dictum of many others with possibly far more 
experience, he will give some line, on the ground 
that as the interior of the mouth of the tarpon is 
hard and bony, it must swallow the hook, which 
