GULF STREAM FISHING 



fish. After some steady deep plugging lie came 

 up again and set my heart aflutter by a long surface 

 play in which he took off one hundred yards of line 

 and then turned, leaping straight for the boat. 

 Fortunately the line was slack and I could throw off 

 the drag and let him run. Slack line never bothers 

 me when I really get one of these fish well hooked. 

 If he is not well hooked he is going to get away, 

 anyhow. After that he went down into deep water 

 and I had one long hour of hard work in bringing 

 him to the boat. Six hours later he weighed fifty- 

 eight and a half pounds, and as he had lost a good 

 deal of blood and dried out considerably, he would 

 have gone over sixty pounds, which, so far, is the 

 largest sailfish I know of caught on light tackle. 



The sailfish were still leaping around us and we 

 started off again. The captain called our attention 

 to a tail and a sail a few yards apart not far from 

 the boat. We circled around them to drive them 

 down. I saw a big wave back of R. C.'s bait and 

 I yelled, "Look out!" I felt something hit my 

 bait and then hit it again. I knew it was a sailfish 

 rapping at it. I let the line slip off the reel. Just 

 then R. C. had a vicious strike and when he hooked 

 the fish the line snapped. He claimed that he had 

 jerked too hard. This is the difficulty with light 

 tackle — ^to strike hard, yet not break anything. I 

 was standing up and leaning forward, letting my 

 line slip off the reel, trying to coax that sailfish to 

 come back. Something took hold and almost 

 jerked the rod out of my hands. That was a mag- 

 nificent strike, and of course I thought it was one of 

 the sailfish. But when I hooked him I had my 



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