JAN. 26, 1895. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
63 
herself, but also, deprecated them in others. She was not 
especially strong, and this model husband made a 
martyr of himself throughout one season, heroically 
devoting himself to purely social festivities, while his 
former comrades shook their heads sadly and took to the 
Woods. In the following spring, however, his longing 
for the old delights were too strong to be ignored, 
and he finally persuaded his wife to join him in a few 
houre * quest of trout, where the fishing was good and 
the trSveiing was easy. He studiously pointed out the 
beauties of the scenery, baited her hook and taught her 
how to land the fish properly, taking good care to stop 
before she became satiated or fatigued. With some 
show of reluctance he permitted her to repeat the expert 
ence under less favorable conditions, and craftily allowed 
her to catch more fish than he did. And so he lured her 
along by easy stages, until .she became proficient with 
the rod, and could climb brush fences and wade through 
bogs without any assistance. From that time on his 
deep laid scheme worked beautifully, and the logical 
relation of the gun to the rod was easily eastablished. 
The last I heard of this couple they had gone to the 
Rocky Mountains in search of big game. The little 
lady, who had been somewhat fragile and incapable of 
great exertion, Was then strong and well, and from what 
I heard of her skill with the rifle I have no doilbt she 
gave a good account of herself and made her husband 
hustle for his laurels. 
This case appealed so strongly to me that I decided to 
copy the experiment, not, however, without some 
serious misgivings as to its success. I purchased a 
seven pound Marlin rifle, and other necessary accoutre- 
ments, and sent my wife to a primitive little hotel, far 
in the Adirondacks, where the quarters were comfort- 
able and the game was plentv. Six weeks later I fol- 
lowed her into the mountains and learned to my supreme 
satisfaction that she had killed a fine buck, by very 
creditable shooting, and had acquired a genuine taste 
for camp life. In the reminiscences of delightful days 
Spent together on lake and stream, or still-hunting, in 
the forest, and in the anticipations of similar joys in 
store for us, we have found a double pleasure. I have 
Ventured to relate this bit of personal history in the 
hope that others may profit by it. 
It Was a revelation to me to discover that those of the 
so -called weaker sex are by no means so feeble as we 
think, and that, when properly dressed, they are 
capable of vigorous and sustained exertion without 
fatigue in the bracing air and wholesome Surroundings 
of the woods and mountains. By proper dress in this 
connection I mean plenty of warm woolens, short 
corduroy skirts and leggings. A costume of this sort is 
ample protection against the night air, which, in high 
altitudes, is cold even in summer.- Thus clad the 
woman of average strength can tramp unimpeded 
through the forest and along rough trails which would 
look impossible to the uninitiated in long skirts. As a 
result of wearing strong, comfortable shoes, short skirts 
and easy fitting garments the hampered, mincing step 
so natural to women gives place to a free, graceful 
stride ; the unconfined muscles perform their proper 
functions and Dame Nature proceeds to reward this 
good sense in dress with an elasticity of nerve and 
sinew, a heightened color and a roundness of body and 
limb which are a pleasure to behold and a luxury to 
possess. 
Women are credited with a love for novelty and a 
keen appreciation of the beautiful. They are therefore 
peculiarly qualified to enjoy the lively experience and 
charming scenery which are the usual accompaniments 
and accessories of hunting and fishing. Why, then, 
should they not engage in these sports, to their everlast- 
ing profit and advantage. Why should they deprive 
themselves of pleasures which are productive of healthy 
bodies and sane minds ? If they hesitate to make the test, 
let them remember that 
"Our doubts are traitors 
And make ua lose the good we oft might win. 
By fearing to attempt." 
New Jersey. Arthub F. Rice. 
It must be said that a new element is gradually being 
introduced into the hunting camps of our northern bor- 
der which in the end may work favorably for the big 
game. I mean the presence in increased numbers of 
Sportswomen in camp. The sweet things, having 
learned some time ago that young men of nerve and 
mettle do not frequent the fashionable watering places 
— only the dudes go there— have been on the search for 
the nobler lads they long to win, and they have not been 
slow in discovering that in the numerous sportsmen's 
clubs and hunting camps there some stalwart youths be- 
take themselves betimes. 
To be sitre, they are always chaperoned by somebody, 
and everything pertaining to their scheming is laid out 
in orthodox fashion, but the truth remains that hence- 
forth the boys are going to be hunted by the dears with 
only one result, namely, the dears will bag the sports- 
men and perhaps create a little diversion in favor of the 
an tiered, ruminant quadrupeds. 
Connecticut, C. H. Geeason. 
Massachusetts Luck in Maine. 
Boston, Jan. 9.— My shooting partner, G. J. Brann, 
of Revere, came home last week from a five weeks' 
hunt in the jungles of Aroostook County, Maine. He 
was accompanied by a friend, Mr. Carver, who secured 
two deer and came back to Boston, but Mr. Brann was 
like yoaug Oliver — he yearned for more. He hunted for 
a week and failed to secure a shot ; but he is blessed 
with an abundance of that spirit that makes successful 
hunters. On the eighth day he was gladdened by the 
sight of the noble game he was in quest of. A fine bull 
caribou was the first tribute the woods of Maine offered 
to him. Two shots were required to bring him down, 
and there was a four mile jog back to camp to secure 
help before his prize could be moved to safe quarters. 
He hunted over Mt. Katahdin and ascended to the sum- 
mit. The tramp up the mountain was a bitter one, as 
the cold was intense. He secured three more deer and 
he returned to Boston a happy man. Vickary of Lynn 
has the four heads, which he is mounting. -Tax Pee. 
AN ENGLISHMAN'S EXPERIENCE OF 
FLORIDA FISHING— IV. 
BX ALFRED 0. HABMSWOBTH. 
Next day I was up early, prepared for my attempt to 
capture a small tarpon with a phantom minnow. A 
part of the jaws of the tarpon are of great power, and 
able to cut through any ordinary material, so I attached 
a wire trace to the minnow and fastened that to an 
ordinary Spinning line. 
Our habits down in Southern Florida were primitive. 
The ordinary hour for breakfast was 7.30, but the 
healthiness of the climate was such that even at that 
hour one could tackle a large meal. And here let me 
say a word in favor of your American breakfast. With 
us breakfast, except in country houses, is, as a rule, a 
scant repast, not more than sufficient to carry us along 
till the snack that we call luncheon. Throughout most 
parts of the United States breakfast is a much more 
serious affair. The charming manageress of the Naples 
Hotel, Miss McLaughlin, was a Kentucky lady, and 
Kentucky is famous not only for its fine horses and 
handsome dames, but for its curious and many kinds 
of bread. I never could manage the names of all these 
breads, but I remember that we. had five or six kinds 
every morning, nearly all of them hot, many of them 
sweet, all of them pleasant. Venison was one of our 
Staple dishes, with sea trout, and sheepshead. of which 
fish more anon, grape fruit, oranges, bananas, coffee and 
the inevitable iced water, without which no American 
table is complete. 
Breakfast over we sallied forth with our rods and guns 
to the boathouse by the river side. Naples Hotel is so 
situated as to afford seafishing in front of the house and 
river fishing behind. To-day we were after tarpon, and 
our goal was the Gordon River. We pulled slowly up 
stream, looking about carefully, but could see no sign 
of the school of the previous day. I oast from side to 
side diligently for an hour or so, with here and there a 
lusty trout, and here and there a lady fish, but these 
were not what we wanted. 
For five hours did we toil in the fearful heat until our 
hands and necks were so scorched that they were abso- 
lutely painful. I killed over 35 pounds of fish before 
mid-day, by which time we were quite ready for lunch 
and rest. We drew up as usual under the shade of a 
mangrove tree, and varied the proceedings by a short 
stroll. 
A few yards from the river side we found, snugly 
ensconced under the big cypress trees and the palms, a 
hunter's hut, or shack, as they are called there. These 
Florida shacks are peculiar to the country. They are 
light structures, composed almost entirely of dried 
palmetto leaves. They are cool, self -ventilating and at 
the same time water-tight. Many a man who in better 
days has lived in snug 'varsity college rooms and dined 
in hall is living out his life in a palmetto shack in 
Florida ; indeed, one of the saddest feat ares of Florida 
life is this human driftwood from the whirl of wealth 
and life of the old country. 
The under-gardener at the Naples Hotel was an 
English public school boy ; a youth who ran the post 
boat up the Indian Settlements is a relation of a well- 
known English peer ; a man now well on to middle age, 
who owned a small boat for taking garden produce up 
the coast, had done well at Jesus College, Cambridge. 
One finds these isolated Englishmen all over the 
world, but in Florida they seem to be more numerous 
than anywhere. It is not that they are ne'er-do-wells. 
I can safely say that all I met there could have done 
well at home. One at my suggestion has returned to 
England, and has already proved himself able'^to engage 
in an arduous business. 
We- cannot- too sufficiently blame the parents who 
condemn their sons to such a hopeless country as Florida. 
For a man with a small income and a taste for sport 
Florida is, I admit, unique; but in a country so unnatur- 
ally bereft of capital and natural resources, it is impos- 
sible for a young Eastern man or Englishman to do 
nearly so well as he could in London. 
Over and over again in our journeying through South- 
ern Florida we passed these palmetto shacks, sometimes 
inhabited by living scarecrows, who it was hardly 
impossible to recognize as Englishmen of good birth, 
sometimes deserted and desolate. 
An hour's rest from the noon-tide sun and I was keen 
on killing my tarpon. How often it is in fishing that 
the first cast does it. It seems to me to be especially so 
in the May-fly season. If you can get your fly well 
over your fish at first cast there is that delightful ripple, 
the fascinating strain on the line and all the bending of 
the rod and the disturbance of the water that makes 
angling one of the things best worth living for in the 
world. 
We rode to the center of the stream, when Hart's keen 
eye discerned dark fins heading the stream some fifty 
yards off, looking for all the world like trailing trout. 
We were naturally all excitement, for they were 
unmistakably tarpon. Hart pulled slowly up to within 
seven or eight yards of them. My minnow was out and 
over them in a moment, and then, as I reeled in the 
line, there was a few seconds of delightful uncertainty, 
followed by the most delicious run of line I ever remem- 
ber. I was in for a tarpon at last. One of the great 
charms of angling is undoubtedly one's great anxiety at 
the moment of hooking a big fish. This was one of the 
great moments of my angling life. I was fastened to a 
fish I had come between five and six thousand miles to 
kill, and in the capture of which there was all sorts of 
delightful possibilities. If I had the'fish it would prove 
that after all a young tarpon could be caught on a light 
tackle, and I should be the first tarpon fisher of the 
season on that coast, and there was all the glorious sport 
of paying him in store. Only one horrid, gloomy 
thought came across me. When I saw the mighty jump 
that he gave I knew that no landing net on earth 
would hold him unless he were thoroughly lulled, and 
to kill a tarpon I knew to be a big task. 
Out and out went the line, until it became necessary 
for the sake of safety to stop this reckless extravagance, 
so I checked him, delicately, but firmly. A description 
of a tarpon leap into the air in strong sunlight has been 
written oyer and over again, but; no account that I have 
ever read has done justice to the silvery splendor of the 
king of game fish. Those who have seen a tarpon scale 
will know that it is silvered over with what looks like 
artificially applied metallic paint. 
Pinned on the wall in the room in which I write is a 
tarpon scale from the first tarpon caught with rod and 
reel, sent me by my friend, Mr. A. N. Cheney. Years 
have elapsed since Mr. W. H. Wood captured that fish, 
yet all the friends who see the scale say to me, ' ' but 
surely that is not natural. ' ' Indeed, had I not taken 
scales from tarpon I could hardly have believed it 
myself. This particular scale I may mention, though 
it is by no means the biggest, is exactly seven times the 
superficial area of a 50 cent piece. 
It was not until we saw the silvery mass rise into the 
air some three or four feet that we were quite sure I 
had a tarpon. There was no mistake about it once it 
had come down. In its confusion of falling into the 
water again I was able to wind in a little, when it went 
up again. Hart rowed for dear life that I might wind 
in line, and I did so until we got so close that the fish 
saw us and was off once more in one of his wild rushes. 
On we went after it down stream for a quarter of a 
mile or more, by which time it became necessary to 
either loose him or check him. I checked him, and 
there was the same leap, a higher one this time, show- 
ing that far from being fatigued the fish had awakened 
to a full sense of its danger, and was even more'active 
than at first. All the time the difficulty of landing my 
prize without a gaff was in my mind. About a couple 
of hiindred yards further down stream there was a 
shallow, and we plotted that we should get him down 
there, that Hart should leap out of the boat and try and 
take the fish in his arms. 
It was easier said than done, for again and again he 
rushed and leapt. How my rod stood the strain I have 
never been able to ascertain, but it did so, and is none 
the worse. It seems to me that light tackle will stand a 
great deal if it is not jerked. He had leapt eight times 
by actual count when we got him down beside the shal- 
low bank where we hoped to finish him. His eighth 
leap was a poor one. He was weak. I got him almost 
up to the boat and he was on his back. Hart was out 
into the water in a second. He was up to his waist, 
but he is a sportsman, every inch of him, and would 
have swam any distance after that fish. No sooner did 
Master Tarpon catch sight of this human foe than he 
made one more rush and gave one more jump. This 
last run of his, however, was ill judged, for it took him 
into water little more than a foot deep, and as Hart 
pursued him he ran on to a shallow where he was 
scarcely covered by his proper element. The boat was 
meanwhile drifting down stream, and I was getting 
further and further away from the fish, which presently 
began to follow the strain upon the line. Soon I had 
him up to the boat. Hart had waded after, and seeing 
the tarpon well played out he was ready with his hands, 
which he cleverly passed under the fish's gills, and 
threw him well into the boat. In the excitement of the 
moment I shall never remember how I managed to keep 
him there. He leapt and struggled and leapt again. A 
dexterous use of my hunting knife finished his struggles, 
and I had him there absolutely unscratched and a per- 
fect specimen for mounting. 
After that I had no desire to fish more that day. We 
gathered a large number of palmetto leaves, covered him 
from the sunj pulled him. down in triumph to the boat- 
house, placed him on a board and carried him up to the 
hotel, where, I need scarcely say, his arrival created 
much interest. His size, as I pointed out, did not 
detract from the excitement, for the capture of a small 
tarpon is a rare occurrence. Except, indeed, at Naples, 
I did not hear of them elsewhere, and, as the writer of 
the article on "American Game Fish" says, young tar- 
pon appear to be more wily than the older ones. 
I have been asked over and over again by the salmon 
fishers whether or not tarpon can be caught with a fly. 
I believe it is not possible to kill large tarpon with any- 
thing but a bait that can be gorged. Small tarpon have 
risen to salmon fly, but it was the usually accepted belief 
of all the tarpon fishers I met in, Florida that the mouth 
of a big fish is not strong enough to stand the strain of 
the almost inevitable power of its pulling and leaping. 
The reason the tarpon were not captured with rod and 
line until recently was that early tarpon fishers struck 
immediately the tarpon took the bait, with the conse- 
quence that the line came back in their faces. 
So far these papers on angling in Southern Florida 
have dealt with fly-fishing and spinning. There are 
many anglers who, while they prefer the use of the fly- 
rod, heartily enjoy a day with the float or ledger, and I 
am one of them, though by no means of the "roach 
fishing a fine art" school. Many anglers are devotees of 
fly-fishing, and dry fly-fishing in particular, merely 
because they have not given a fair trial to float-fishing. 
An extremely'accomplished dry-fisherman once told me 
that any one could catch fish with a float. I demurred. 
Not long af terwards the angler in question had a chance 
at some particularly good carp, and though he adopted 
old Izaak'.s special injunction with regard to this branch 
of the sport, he had an absolutely blank day, while a 
friend of his killed some seventeen fine fish. If diffi- 
culty is the point at issue, I am bound to say that, in 
my humble Opinion, carp, trench and some other fish 
require as much ingenuity in their capture as trout. 
Unfortunately, we did not have proper tackle for float 
fishing in Florida, but what we took with us afforded 
very good sport. L One of the most delicious fish in those 
Southern waters is the sheepshead. It is difficult to 
describo this fish, because I know nothing like it on our 
side. In shape it is like a perch with a hump back. It 
takes its name from its mouth, which is with teeth 
exacty like those of a sheep. For the most part it lives 
on shell fish resembling our limpets, and it can bite 
through a shell fish as easily as though it were an egg. 
We found these sheepshead to be capricious creatures. 
As a rale they feed near piers, old stumps of trees, and 
in any place where their favorite food abounds. The 
first, day we tried for them were not successful, because 
we did not know that in order to catch them it is 
necessary to strike very quickly and with great vigor. 
I hired a naphtha launch, which we anchored some 
yards from a place where there were a number of dead 
trees in the water. For bait we placed a small piece of 
mackerel at the end of a large perch hook sunk some four 
