478 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[June 23, 1887. 



WORM VERSUS FLY. 



PISECO, tliou reasonest well ! Penitent, hopeful, trust- 

 ful, come my son, into the confessional and listen 

 to rue; an atom, a worm of the dust, and not fit to catch 

 even a trout with. Nevertheless listen patiently to the 

 teachings of an old worm fisherman. Success will crown 

 your efforts, and whereas you have fished with the care- 

 less "who of the dozen trout that come for their hooks, 

 have taken the worms, and they no fish," I will show you 

 how to tak?s the conceit out of such fishermen or fish, aid 

 scoop up the .greater part of those that bite. I know who 

 you are by old acquaintance in Forest and Stream, and 

 gladly welcome you among the worm fishermen, and I 

 will partially reveal myself that you may know I am an 

 old-time fisherman. Question me. "Art thou a sailor f 

 No. "A sea captain ?" I am not. " Who are you, then ? 

 give an account of yourself , that I may know whether 

 you can fulfil your promise. Cheek you must have, to 

 tell Piseco anything, let alone fishing." I have always 

 "loved the ocean, and my delight." "Stop, stop, I've 

 heard that before!" I am an old friend of Capt. Shu- 

 feldt's and Dinwiddie Bullock. So, too, did I meet with 

 great kindness from "Poly Harrison" at Hilton Head 

 during the war. I was in Charleston Jail with Prender- 

 gast and Paymaster Billings of the Water Witch. I 

 came home from China before the mast hi a clipper bark. 

 Have been an old Seventh Eegiment man and wear the 

 bronze Cross of Honor of that dear old regiment. Have 

 been mistaken for a captain of a North Eiver steamboat; 

 was a captain in the Army of the Potomac, and have 

 fished for trout with worms for many and many a year. 

 So not to keep you any longer in this box (a bad box for 

 a fisherman) I will explain and unfold to you the possi- 

 bilities of worm fishing, that may perchance interest you. 



There are niceties of execution undreamed of by a neo- 

 phyte. Though I have caught trout with a fly, 



"It is good to be off with the old love 

 Before you are on with the new." 



It is good and very good, O "Piseco." to discard such 

 profanation as "poles," "chunks of lead." and "yanking," 

 "slinging." "snaking 'em out." These are terms used by 

 the worldly. Put your worm on scientifically, so shall 

 you save your fish, your money and your temper — three 

 things well worth saving. 



Let us give the trout a chance, and get all the good we 

 cau out of the worm. Tadpoles may do; bloomers or dob- 

 sons are very good; so are bumble bees and grubs; but for 

 steady work give me the "diet of worms." 



["Piseco," sotto voce — "Will this old fellow never stop 

 talking? Does he think I don't know all th's?"] 



Fust and foremost, you want a good, strong three- 

 jointed 9-foot rod. 1 will give you a reason for the faith 

 that is in me as I go along. With a stiff rod you can drop 

 into all sorts of most inaccessible places, and your line will 

 not continually tangle nor your hook catch. You want 

 your tip strong enough and stiff enough to spring the fish 

 but; observe, my penitent friend, "spring," not "yank." 

 When the fish is thus hooked and sprung out he does not 

 often get away. I have caught thousands on my Conroy 

 rod, and hope to go fishing again. A half-pounder is readily 

 enticed out in this way and landed on bank or beach. 

 Lift, him up tenderly, take Mm with care, deal gently, 

 persuasively with him, coax him , entreat him, let him 

 feel and see it is for his own good; so shall you save him, 

 not lose him, nor frighten other fishes in the pool. 



Your hooks should be of large size, say double 0, round 

 bend Carlysle ; they will catch any size, and you will not 

 have to behead the fish to secure your hook. Take plenty 

 of them with you. Choose a reel large enough to hold 

 100ft. of silk braided line, with a click, for large fish. 

 Let your line be large, so you may the more readily see it 

 shine on any water, dark though it may be, white of 

 course. Your shot (not sinker) ought to be No. 5 shot, 

 split and put on in numbers to suit the strength of the 

 current ; your casting line or leader of the very best gut 

 and about 9ft. in length, thoroughly tested, and looped on 

 with what you would call a "topsail sheet tie." (Ah me ! 

 my thoughts are miles away). And a basket holding 

 about 121bs., with a broad strap to go over the shoulder. 

 These patent gimcracks and folding up cre>ls are a delu- 

 sion and a snare, let them all be. Anathema maranatha. 

 Last of all you must dig a plentiful supply of worms and 

 — dont whisper this secret— Ah, this is the rub, if possible 

 get some one else to do this for you ; so shall you avoid 

 unseemly language, and the straining of your back. But 

 worms you must have at any cost, and they must not be 

 made of guttapercha. Patience, O "Piseco," if you have 

 borne with a garrulous old man so patiently, you will 

 soon be relea ed. Everything provided, present and ac- 

 counted for, repair to the nearest trout stream, such as I 

 used to find in Connecticut; take up your worm gently, 

 and let him be of ordinary size, (not similai - to a small 

 sized garter snake), and fresh and lovely. Put him head 

 on, first, last, and all the time, this is the golden rule and 

 this the golden secret. Nature hath given him a head 

 and also a tail. What instinct is it that prompts all fight- 

 ing animals to dash at head and throat? "They all do it, 

 and sometimes they rue it." And so does the trout. 

 Softly now pass the 'hook this side of the band that goes 

 round his body some way below his head, and let it run 

 down, and up to his head. Don't let your hook show at 

 all. When properly put on. the worm hangs suspended, 

 as does the sword of Damocles. Now wade quietly into 

 the stream (look out for your shadow) and toss the worm 

 from you quietly, quickly, gently, deftly. 



In springtime when the snow water is not yet out, and 

 the fish bite sluggishly, use your shot. When you can 

 dispense with shot by all means do so and let your worm 

 float away. Fisbing down stream the worm will always 

 float head first down, the trout will always grab him head 

 first, and you can handle thi ee times or more your length 

 of rod in line. Besides this, you roil the stream a little, 

 which is a very good thing. Toss it to him as you would 

 a fly. Play your line criss-cross. Skitter it. Keep your 

 worm moving. Do all this with a firm, light hand. "You 

 are not heaving the log, you are dealing with a very wide 

 awaVe customer; treat him accordingly. Fish with a 

 loose line; that is, pull your line up toward you and le^ it 

 float at leisure down, not at its full length, in the stream. 

 When you get a big fib on, of course play him a little, do 

 not propel him into space like a sky rocket; hang on to 

 him; fight him for all he is worth, as Jack would say, 

 "go for him," and "trust to your sticks," he will soon give 

 in and you can land him without frightening the others. 

 The moment your worm is injured throw it away and put 

 on a fresh one. Never use the same worm twice — well, 



hardly ever. Even the much abused eel likes pure sweet 

 bait; all the old North River fishermen know this. So 

 provide yourself with plenty of worms, and as to where 

 you shall carry them; in your pocket, certainly; never in 

 your hat, leave that to the fly man; nor in your vest, nor 

 trousers. Provide yourself with an old shotbag, turn 

 down the top all around, put in a sufficiency of loose 

 dirt and stow them away in the pocket on the port side 

 of your coat. 



My friend, I hope you have enjoyed your for*ty winks. 

 What do I hear! "I have told you an oft-repeated story?" 

 Nothing new or- strange? Well, I suspected as much. 

 Let us leave this box and seek fresh fields and trout 

 streams new. I, too, will now confess that this of course 

 is intended only for young fishermen, and that I pray 

 them to bear in mind Sydney Smith's receipt for salad 

 and not try to experiment with these receipts, except in 

 a thunder shower; then you may try; 1 don't believe 

 you'll catch any fish then. If I can give my readers one- 

 half the pleasure I have derived from "Worm versus 

 Fly," fully satisfied will be Capt. Clayton. 



THE LEAP OF THE SILVER KING. 



WE left Philadelphia Feb. 20 for Punta Gorda, arriving 

 there in two days and nights by railroad, Coast 

 Line. Trabuc, the passenger terminus, is a new place; 

 there are several small hotels, and a large one being con- 

 structed; the town is being rapidly built up, and it is ex- 

 pected that Punta Gorda at the headwaters of Charlotte 

 Harbor will supercede Tampa and be the main point of 

 trade, especially for New Orleans, Cedar Keys, Key West 

 and Havana. There is sufficient depth of water for the 

 largest steamers of that trade to come to the wharf; this 

 ie hot so at Tampa, where passengers and freight have to 

 be transferred a number of miles from down the bay. At 

 Trabuc we chartered a sailboat with all appliances to live 

 on board, and sailed down Charlotte Harbor south to Car- 

 los Bay. We stopped at St. James City on Pine Island, 

 which we think a fine winter resort. From St. James we 

 passed Cape Sanibel Light, then sailed into the Gulf. Just 

 south of this cape we fell in with a school of the monster 

 devil fish. It was calm and we could certainly see twenty 

 at once near the surface of the water. Some came within 

 a few yards of our boat, which gave us a fair sight of 

 them. They appeared to be 10 or 15 feet broad, perhaps 

 more; the largest are said to weigh two thousand to three 

 thousand pounds. It was a strange sight to see those 

 monsters swimming on the surface of the water with 

 open mouths, some 2 feet by 15 inches. They are of the 

 ray family, but their mouths are at the head as in other 

 fishes, not under them as with the common ray. They 

 are in no way like the cuttlefish, having no prongs, arms 

 nor anything of the kind. 



We sailed south to Cape Romano, where, with a suitable 

 breeze, there is good trolling for Spanish mackerel and 

 kingfish. Here we first fell in with tarpon , the fish we 

 had come for, and we did our best for two days but 

 utterly failed to get a bite. There appeared to be a mass 

 of sharks that took our bait and hooks about as fast as we 

 could cast out. There a vessel loaded with cattle was 

 driven aground by a storm, where a supply of neither 

 food or water could be got for them. Many dead bodies 

 were about the bay and the lowing of suffering creatures 

 made it painful for us. We sailed back north into Marco 

 Pass, where tarpon were found again. Here we hooked 

 plenty of sharks but not one tarpon. We went nearly 

 three* miles toward the main land into a small bay, where 

 the water was not over 2ft. deep, with muddy and grassy 

 bottom. Here the tarpon were numerous, but here again 

 with our best efforts we did not get one bite from them, 

 and we came to the conclusion that with a hook and line 

 they could not be caught. We could readily have taken 

 them with the grains, but we were determined to catch 

 them with a hook or not at all. We concluded that those 

 caught had been comparatively by accident, as other non- 

 biting fish are sometimes caught on a hook. 



We sailed from Marco into Big Hickory Pass; we were 

 informed that at the head of this bay was an entrance to 

 an inland creek called Surveyor's Creek, where tarpon 

 had been caught with hook and line. We were deter- 

 mined to leave no place nor mode untried. We went to the 

 head of the bay which we think is called Oyster Bay, and 

 found a little nook or opening about 80ft. wide with 18in. 

 of water. It looked absurd to us that big fish like tarpon 

 should come into such shoal and contracted water ; we 

 might have passed it many times without noticing this 

 little opening or imagining that it led to a large body of 

 water beyond. On the flood tide we worked our boat 

 into this little opening and found it much wider when we 

 got inside. We were surprised to find holes 20 to 30ft. 

 ileep, then shoals and more holes for about a mile, then to 

 our increased surprise we came to what appeared to be a 

 river about an eighth of a mile wide and ten miles long, 

 with from 6 to 30ft. of water. The novelty of the roman- 

 tic and mystical, scenery — on one side the five oak stud- 

 ded with thousands of air plants in bloom and draped 

 with long hanging moss and the basket-rooted red man- 

 grove, on the other side the palmetto and pine all in the 

 wild state — fully paid us for our labor the like of which 

 we had not seen before along the coast. We went up the 

 river about a mile, then came to a hut where a lone Nor- 

 wegian lived. His only companions were a dog, a cat 

 and some chickens. He showed us where tarpon were 

 caught in this creek, or more correctly not a creek but a 

 long lake. The next morning with fresh bait we fished in 

 the spot pointed out. We could see plenty of tarpon but 

 not a bite could we get. Moving to where there was 8ft. 

 of water and a clear bottom, we changed our way of fish- 

 ing, and in a short time we hooked a tarpon. It jumped 

 10ft. out of water time after time, ten times in all, and 

 shook its head as if to break loose. We must have played 

 willi the fish an horn-, and it must have towed the boat a 

 mile. It was a big fish 6ft. Sin. long. Then we were sur- 

 prised at ourselves, (for we are considered good fisher- 

 men), having been so stupid and dumb as to fish on mud- 

 dy bottom where the bait becomes so muddied that no 

 game fish would take it. 



After this we had no difficulty in catching all the tarpon 

 we wanted. Our catch of them would measure from 3ft. 

 6in. to 7ft. 7in. in length, the largest being 46in. around 

 the body. When they rose from the water and the sun 

 struck them they shone like silver. 



Tarpon are not used for food; the flesh is something the 

 color of unhealthy beef; soft, flabby and having a strong 

 smell. The only object of fishing is the excitement of 



catching them, and then- very large, white, silvery scales 

 are sought for. 



Our experience in tarpon fishing has taught us that the 

 tackle should be as follows: A stout 8ft. rod and a reel 

 that will take from 500 to 600ft. of fine, 18 or no larger 

 than 21 thread, a cotton snood about twice the size, and 

 a medium sized hook. For bait use a medium-sized split 

 mullet, hooked in the thick part, the tail tied above the 

 shank of the hook with a string so as to keep it in place 

 and to conceal the hook. Cast as short a distance as cir- 

 cumstances will admit, then run off 20 to 30ft. of line to 

 lay slack so as to have the least resistance possible to the 

 bait or they will drop it. The object is to let the fish 

 swallow the bait before it is snubbed. They are the most 

 delicate fish to take the bait of any we came across. 

 Avoid fishing in the inlets and main channels on account 

 of sharks, aud do not fish on muddy bottom. We are 

 satisfied that tarpon, liks many other fish, go into shoal 

 water and grassy bottom on the flood tide to feed. In 

 these fish caught we found shrimps, very small crabs and 

 small fish. On the ebb tide they return to deep water 

 where they digest their food and sleep; one caught then 

 would be taken probably by accident. 



Having succeeded in the art of tarpon fishing, the great 

 hook-fish of Florida and perhaps of America, we cruised 

 along the coast northward. Just south of Cape Sanibel 

 we again fell in with a school of the monster devil fish as 

 before; it is said they are always there. We passed a 

 number of cities laid out on paper, such as the city of 

 Naples, on the Gulf south of Cape Sanibel, one little 

 shanty and a wilderness of pine, palmetto and sand, with 

 at times a dense population of mosquitoes, gnats and 

 fleas, the surface water not fit to drink. We are not 

 aware of any good well water in South Florida. Rain 

 water is the best they have. In the rainy season, from 

 July to October, there is such an abundance of rain that 

 it overflows most of that part of the country, especially 

 on flat land. So with other paper cities we saw. Yet we 

 are told many lots are being sold. How the people who 

 buy these lots to settle on are to make a living is not 

 apparent to us. Many have told us that they were badly 

 disappointed. 



In the passes along the coast in Charlotte Harbor and 

 south of there is fair fishing for grouper, mangrove snap- 

 pers and other small fishes. There is good trolling for 

 Spanish mackerel and kingfish outside. 



We sailed to Little Gasparilla, north pass of Charlotte 

 Harbor, where we had good sport for small fish; thence 

 we went into the different passes to Tampa Bay, where, 

 in the early part of January one year ago, especially at 

 Long Boat and Anna Maria Keys, there was an abund- 

 ance of game fish, but we got scarcely a fish in any of 

 these passes; in the cold snap of that January all local 

 fish of these places were killed; there was 1| to 2in. of ice 

 and lin. of snow; we were there at that time and sailed 

 through stretches of thousands of floating dead fish of all 

 the kinds in these waters. It will take years to replenish 

 the fish supply. 



We sailed up to Palma Sola on the Manatee River, 

 thence went by steamboat to Tampa, took the cars at 8 

 o'clock Saturday evening, and arrived at Broad street 

 station, Philadelphia, Monday afternoon at 3 o'clock. 



We had a very pleasant and interesting excursion, and 

 kept on the move so as not to tire of any one place. In 

 Florida sportsmen miss it by having a boat of too great 

 draft, because they cannot go into shoal bays and other 

 places where the most interesting things are to be found, 

 and where most of the food grows for fish along the 

 coast. P. and W. 



Philadelphia, Pa. 



Tuxedo Park has recently been presented with a 

 mounted, tarpon, which was caught at Charlotte Harbor 

 by Mr. A. M. Jones, of New York. Its weight was 1351bs., 

 length 6ft. 7in. The party of which Mr. Jones was one 

 at the time included Mr. Pierre Lorillard, Mr. Allen 

 Thorndike Rice, editor of the North American Review, 

 and President John G. Heckscher, of the South Side Club, 

 of Long Island. Mr. Rice's biggest catch was a tarpon 

 weighing 1331bs. and measuring Oft. llin. Mr. Heck- 

 scher's was a tarpon weighing 1281bs. and 6ft. 2in. in 

 length, and Mr. Lorillard captured one HOlbs. in weight 

 and 5ft. llin. long. Over 40 tarpon in all were caught 

 by the party, many weighing over 751bs. Each of the 

 largest fish has been stripped and mounted. Mr. Heck- 

 scher will send his to the South Side Club. Mr. Rice will 

 keep his at his residence, and Mr. Loril ard will take his 

 to his office. All the fish were, captured on 600ft. of fine 

 of No. 15 thread, and the hooks used were No. 12-0, Cutty- 

 hunk shape. The panels on which the fish are mounted 

 are about 8ft. long. The success of these gentlemen was 

 so gratifying that they have formed a Tarpon Club to 

 meet every year at Charlotte Harbor in February, when 

 the sport begins. This club includes members of the 

 Tuxedo and South Side Clubs and prominent anglers of 

 Boston, Chicago and elsewhere. 



The Cusk.— Editor Forest and Stream: Will some of 

 your readers give me the proper name of a fish which is 

 called "cusk" throughout the northern parts of the New 

 England States and adjoining parts of Canada? It may 

 be called by the same name elsewhere, and perhaps 

 wherever found, but as I have never seen the fish except 

 in the localities named I am m ignorance of the fact. 

 The fish is f ound in lakes and large ponds and is an in- 

 habitant of deep water. I used to catch them when fish- 

 ing for lake trout with the minnow, and as they are a 

 worthless fish, anathematized them accordingly. They 

 resemble the true "torsk" or cusk of British waters very 

 closely, but cannot be the same fish, as tbe latter are 

 found in salt or brackish waters. I would also like to 

 know the real name of Antoine's "bowfins," as described 

 in "Sam Lovell's Camp." It is new to me by that name, 

 and I fancy to many others of your readers. I hope the 

 delightf ul raconteur of those tales will soon favor us with 

 another dose, and no homeopathic one either, from his 

 skillful pen. — Arefar. [The "cusk" of freshwater is the 

 same fish variously called ling, burbot, lawyer, and eel- 

 pout, the Lota maculosa. The "bowfin" is the Amia 

 calva, and is called dogfish, Grindle, John A. Grindle, 

 lawyer, mudfish, etc., in different parts. Both these fish 

 are worthless for food and are found in the fresh-water 

 lakes and streams, the former in the Great Lakes and in 

 New England waters, and the latter everywhere except 

 on the Atlantic coast north of Virginia.] 



