84 THETARPON 



how he has caught many tarpon on a fly rod with flies. 

 They are caught wi1;h flies at the Gatun Dam in the 

 Canal. 



Mr. Joseph W. Stray of Brooklyn has written re- 

 cently of his methods of harpooning these fish. He 

 uses the smallest size harpoon, equipped with one fluke, 

 attached to a 3-foot hronze wire leader with a spliced- 

 in eye swivel at the far end. The reel line is attached 

 to this and the rod is placed where it may be readily 

 grasped after the harpoon is fast to the fish. About 

 25 feet of reel line is coiled in the boat. The harpoon 

 which has a handle 6 feet long and %-inch in diameter 

 is thrown as a javelin. Every fish so harpooned, is, in 

 fact, foul hooked and fights its best because it is not 

 partially drowned in the struggle and impelled by the 

 strain on the line to swim toward the boat. This 

 method of capture must require great skill and a quick 

 eye. 



In the event the angler is fortunate enough to cap- 

 ture a heavy fish and wishes to authenticate the catch 

 he should take the length and greatest girth together 

 with the exact weight. In order to measure the fish it 

 should be laid on a level surface and the mouth firmly 

 closed. The length for record is the distance from the 

 extreme end of the snout to a point midway between 

 the tips of the caudal fin. If one tip of the caudal fin is 

 longer than the other, which sometimes happens, the 

 angler is entitled to record the longer tip in the meas- 

 urement. A naturalist records the length of the fish 

 by taking the distance from the end of the snout to the 

 last caudal vertebra excluding the caudal fin from the 



