144 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



well as positive, and bad luck may mean not only 

 getting no strikes from tarpon, but getting too many 

 from less desirable fish. My own experience with 

 a shark which took possession of me and my boat 

 for over two hours, wasting precious time while the 

 rest were catching tarpon, is a case in point. 



The need of brute strength is perhaps less easily 

 demonstrated, particularly when it is remembered 

 how much of the brunt is borne by the tackle and 

 what immense fish have been safely brought to the 

 beach by ladies and lads. As a matter of fact, 

 many ladies have considerable muscular strength, 

 and one of the most successful in the Pass is 

 endowed with quite exceptional physique. Even 

 in 1906, the member of the party who caught by 

 far the greatest number of fish, often enough by 

 getting each to the beach in half the time that any- 

 one else would have taken, was also without a 

 doubt the most powerfully built. I do not, in 

 urging the importance of strength — in view of the 

 fact that ladies have been so successful, I ask leave 

 to withdraw the offensive epithet used above — I do 

 not lose sight of the fact that fishermen of slight 

 physique can and do kill tarpon. All that is 

 suggested is that a powerful man will kill his tarpon 

 in far less time. Need I go further than quote, to 

 those who know his athletic build, the case of Lord 

 Desborough, who, I suppose, killed the record 

 number of tarpon in three weeks — a hundred fish, 

 if I remember right. It was, I have been told by 

 an eye-witness, simply a question of his winding in 

 the largest tarpon as if it had been a dace swimming 

 past his own lawn at Taplow. 



Conversely I have ventured to express the 



