FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 103 



annual summary of big salmon, published in the 

 columns of the Times, know that the heaviest 

 specimens are taken in the nets and not on the 

 rod. It is conceivable that all fishes would con- 

 tinue to be taken in nets long after they had grown 

 too heavy or perhaps too wary to be caught on the 

 rod, and it is therefore to the nets that statisticians 

 look for records of big salmon. For the tarpon 

 there is no net fishery. Even were there a regular 

 market for its flesh it would be no easy matter to 

 construct a trawl or gill-net capable of taking such 

 huge fish in large quantities. We are therefore 

 thrown for our records on the takes of anglers, in 

 all probability an unsatisfactory guide to the truth. 



So far as I know, the heaviest tarpon taken in 

 this way scaled something like 210 lbs. Mr W. 

 T. Hornaday in his large Natural History alludes 

 to one of 300 lbs. (.''), but without giving the source 

 of his information. It is, however, incredible that 

 so careful a writer should have named that figure 

 without sound authority for the statement. As 

 regards the fish of 210 lbs., I have been told that 

 its weight was calculated from a generally-accepted 

 formula, which will presently be given, based on 

 the cubical contents, and that the " record " tarpon 

 was never actually put on the scales. Without any 

 wish to cast a doubt on the validity of the record, 

 I will only add that of hundreds of tarpon weighed 

 on the scales at Useppa and the Pass during a 

 number of years, not one has approached that 

 figure, Mrs Turner's best fish in 1902 (178 lbs.) 

 being, I believe, the Useppa record to date. 



The average fish captured in Boca Grande would 

 be about 100 lbs. Rather more than twenty-five 



