24 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jxst. 12, 1895. 
AN ENGLISHMAN'S EXPERIENCE OF 
FLORIDA FISHING.— II. 
BY AI/FBED 0. HABMSWOBTH. 
It had been our intention from the start to see some 
of the wilder life of Florida, and I may here say for the 
enfit of some Boston or New York knownothings of 
their own country of Florida unmapped and indeed, 
unexplored. A very small portion is inhabited by the 
Seminole Indians — inoffensive creatnres enough, and 
still adhering in places to their picturesque costume. 
Pnnta Gorda is abont as far sonth as most people go on 
the Gulf of Mexico coast. A few may visit Pnnta 
Rassa ; others St. James City on Pine Island ; and a few, 
very few, our own destination, Naples. We left Pnnta 
Gorda very early one morning on one of the quaint, old- 
fashioned American tugboats plying in those parts. 
In some 25, 000 miles of sea travelling I remember no 
more delightful voyage than that perfect February day's 
trip, in which we glided past the fairylike palm-covered 
islands and down into the treacherous Gulf. Like the 
Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico is often 'perfection ; 
equally often its bad temper displays itself in sudden 
squalls, known as "Northers, " in one of which our 
little party, some weeks afterwards, was to have a nar- 
row escape of death. At sundown we came to Naples — 
not the Naples of Byron and Shelley, but a newer, 
sweeter, if less interesting spot, and one destined, I 
think, to form a great winter resort of our American 
cousins within the next few years. 
The township of Naples belongs to a certain charming 
old American gentleman, Colonel W. N. Haldeman. 
Outside these extremely comic, if hospitable, folk, the 
"400, " most of the people in America seem to me to be 
presidents of some corporation or another, or connected 
with newspapers. Colonel Haldeman is both. He is 
the president of that well-known Kentucky publication, 
the Louisville Courier- Journal. At Naples he answers 
to our English notions of a squire, and does it remark- 
ably well. Far away down there, on the shores of the 
great Gulf, miles from civilization (I forget how many 
scores of leagues from the railway train or telegraph 
wire), he bas built for himself a comfortable little 
home — not the ordinary American frame building, but 
just such a house as one would see between Genoa and 
Mentone. Close by he has put a hotel, wooden, it is 
true, but comfortable nevertheless. 
" The hotel stands back some three hundred yards from 
the sea, and from the verandah — or the piazza, as you 
are fond of calling it over there — of the little hostelry- 
there runs a wooden tramway, which extends from the 
door to the wooden pier that juts out perhaps one 
hundred yards into the Gulf. 
A little company of daintily attired maids and matrons 
was gathered at the head of the pier 'as we arrived, anc. 
without any of the inexplicable aping of last year's 
Anglicisms we encountered when they knew we were 
English, a particularly warm welcome awaited us. 
Indeed the warmth of the welcome extended by the 
Americans to the English folk all over the United 
States is most puzzling to me. That yotir people as a 
rule dislike us there cannot be the least doubt in the 
world One rarely sees an American newspaper with- 
out reading some attack on the old country. Candid 
American friends will tell us that we are not lover). 
Canadians told me over and over again that the Ameri- 
cans were always in a state of irritation against England. 
I asked the reason of numberless people over there. A 
distinguished Presbyterian minister of New York, on 
our way down from Naples, told me that it was envy. 
There is obviously some truth in it, but "John Bull" is, 
I fear, overbearing and purse-proud in a manner that 
does not go down with people of our stock like you, 
though it works profitably if unpleasantly enough with 
inferior races. 
P "While we spend months of time on the acquisition 
of Hawaii," remarked the clergyman in question, "you 
grab half a continent and say nothing about it. " A 
very distinguished banker in New York told me that the 
reason can be directly attributed to our vast. investments 
in the United States, more especially to our great 
holdings of American railway bonds. "You are denud- 
ing the country of gold, and our people"do not like it, " 
he observed. 
Whatever may be the cause, there can be no doubt as 
to the fact, and it is a pity. The Americans as a nation 
and individually are so popular with us that one feels 
sorry to think that the feeling is not returned. Perhaps 
it is between the Americans and the English as it is 
between the English and the Russians. We regard the 
Russians as our enemies, they, on the other hand, seem 
to know nothing of such a feeling. 
But to Naples again. There are practically only two 
houses, Mr. Haldeman's and the hotel. A few wooden 
cottages are dotted about, but within fifty yards of the 
hotel door you can lose yourself in the palmettos. Quite 
close to the hotel they found panther tracks one day. 
The gardener coming out of his cottage killed a rattle- 
snake on the threshold, and deer have been shot at the 
very doors. For sport, therefore, Naples is distinctly 
the place. For health, sleep, and appetite I have found 
nothing to equal it outside my own little sea girt home 
in Kent. 
Between ten and fifteen miles south of Naples is 
Marco. At Marco is the only shop or store in a couple 
of hundred of miles of coast, and in the creeks there- 
abouts are thousands of tarpon. 
Mind you, Marco is not a fashionable tarpon resort at 
present. It is at Fort Myers that most fish are killed, 
and as I write this I learn from an English friend there 
that the tarpon record has been beaten this year bv a 
fish weighing over 220 lbs. Sometimes, as I thrash a 
Kent or Hertfordshire stream in the endeavor to master 
the art "of dry fly-fishing, and m the hope of perhaps 
killing a two-pounder, I look back regretfully at one 
narticular day in Florida when I was surrounded by 
hundreds, I believe I might say thousands, of finny 
gentlemen weighing anything between fiftv and a couple 
of hundred pounds. On my next visit to Florida I shall 
make NaDles my headquarters, and do most of my 
tarpon fishing at Marco, for, though arrangments J are 
primitivelthere, the fish are innumerable. 
u 'All the people staying at the Naples hotel ha&^come 
for sport, and before""we retired that night we knew 
what to do and where to go. There were four guides 
in the neighborhood, two negroes, who did not prove 
satisfactory, two Americans, one a Georgia man. Hart 
by name, and a well known character, "Everglade Ned. " 
who originally hailed I believe from Pennsvlvania The 
party divided itself into two portions. My wife and 
I formed the fishing contingent, our companion shot 
most of the time. 
My first day's fishing at Naples took place in the 
Gordon river, and it was a distinctly successful begin- 
ning. I tried English tackle at the start. An ordinary 
phantom minnow attached to a lieht gut cast was my 
first idea. I had scarcely thrown the minnow from the 
boat, which was being pulled up the stream, when a fine 
fish rose. I struck him hard and the line came back at 
my face. Friend Hart — and «I say friend advisedly, 
because he and I grew great chums before I left Florida 
— smiled a smile as who should say, ' ' British tackle is not 
much good for a, free-born, independent, 'bully for G. 
Washington' American fish," but I had other phantom 
minnows with me, and in a few moments I had altered 
the gut trace to one of wire. Then I cast diligently 
from side to side of the boat for half an hour, and 
presently my reel gave a great scream of delight, and I 
had something at the other end churning the water like 
a screw propeller. Of a sudden a beautiful silvery fish 
leapt out of the water, not such a leap as one would see 
at home in a fish, of this size, but a distinct jump into 
the air of at least three feet. 
"A lady fish, " remarked Hart. "I guess you will see 
some sport. " 
He was right. I was fishing with a, light fly rod that 
had been rather smiled at by the people at the hotel, a 
plain, rather short greenheart. We were in the middle 
of the river where it widened out into a small lake, and 
my victim went away at a tremendous pace. It is char- 
acteristic of Florida fish to require more line than I 
have ususally found necessary in our own waters. For 
tarpon fishing, as I have pointed out, six hundred feet 
is usual, and it is often not enough. This particular 
fish required all the line at my disposal, for I feared to 
s?ive it too much butt. A light greenheart top is, as 
I daresav most anglers know, occasionally treacherous. 
When all my line ran out, the fish was apparently at 
bav. It amused itself by leaping out of the water at 
intervals. Presently I began to tire it. My first Florida 
fish took twenty minutes to kill. With heavier tackle, 
of course, I could have settled it at once. 
I have hardly ever seen prettier fish than those 
"lady," or "bone" fish, as they are called. They are 
not'good to eat, but are most beautiful in appearance. 
The bright silvery sheen of their scales is equalled only 
Dy those of the tarpon. My pocket scale pointed to six 
and three-quarter pounds, the best lady fish I caught in 
Florida, though I heard of them running up to sixteen 
and eighteen pounds. 
Immediately after I hooked a cavallio, sometimes 
known as the jack fish, and also, I believe, called the 
horse fish. In shape they are not unlike our bream, of 
a dainty yellow color, and game as one could wish. 
With heaiver tackle I could have landed twenty or 
thirty in an hour sometimes. 
R It was hot work I can assure you, standing up under 
a blazing sun, with the temperature at ninety, and the 
glare off the water hot enough to take, as it did, the 
skin completed off the face and hands. 
""And such thirsts as those at Florida ! It is well that 
the wisdom of the inhabitants has, in a great portion of 
the State, prohibited'the consumption of alcohol, or the 
consequences might otherwise be too terrible" to con- 
template. 
It seemed to me that Belfast ginger ale is the great 
temperance drink throughout the general part of the 
State. The boatmen and I occasionally'got throu gh a 
dozen bottles between us on a fishing expedition. 
Playing" r a big fish on a light line in that weather 
became no" joke after five or six hours' sport, and, but 
for the novelty of the thing, I doubt whether I could 
have kepfitfup as patiently as I did. 
" The variety of the fishing in Florida is one's great 
incentive to"regular work with the rod. That morning, 
in the Gordon river, my wife remarked that all the first 
five'fish were'of entirely'different kinds. 
After I had'brought to creel my jack fish there came 
at my phantom minnow something that looked remark- 
ably like a pike, and a big one. I confess I am not one 
of those who are able to tell the weight of fish bv its 
amount of pull. Had^I guessed the weight of No. 3 
when I struck him I "should have said that he scaled 
considerably over 20 pounds. He fought 'doggedly and 
brilliantly. ' Many times"" in my tussle with him did I 
tremble for my rod ; many times was my guide prepared 
for the "I told you so" as the light greenheart doubled 
and strained. After a time "he came in easily and 
stupidly, as a grayling will occasionally ; but, when I 
thought I had him, he. like the grayling, made his best 
rush of all. He was off and away, and I thought it best 
to let him work his wicked will. As he slowed down I 
wound the line against him, and gave'him all the butt I 
could. Hart backed the'boat towards him ; I reeled up 
rapidly, and, before he - " knew where" he was, he was 
gaffed. As a rule, I do not think if fair to gaff a fish 
under 10 pounds ; this gentleman 1 ' weighed barely 8 
pounds. 
^""RovaUio, " remarked Hart." J 
'That is what you ealled'the other, " I replied »• 
r "No, that was cavallio. '• 
Though the names are similar the fish are^quite 
different. He was indeed aMjeauty. On" closer inspec- 
tion he still maintained his resemblance to a pike. 
My phantom minnow was played one, and so was % 
We resolved to"row further up the river and take lunch 
in the shade of 'some'mangrove'trees. 
"Perhaps" 1 if "you trail a spoon bait behind'the boat 
you might v pick up7something"going 'along, ""observed 
Hart. 
^ Happy thought! Trailing, as a rule, is poor sport, 
but in this climate a rest "was very welcome. I "was not 
however, to rest long. I attached a mother-of-pearl 
spinner, purchased in New York, to my trace, and 
trailed it about thirty yards behind the boat. We had 
barely started when a splendidly joyous song from my 
reel (is there sweeter music in the world?) told of some- 
thing 'good, What it was I could notjtelilyet. 
He had his own method of fighting, and a determined 
one at that. Occasionally I wound in a little, but he 
seemed to fear the boat, and was apparently able to see 
us better than most fish, for directly Hart began to row 
toward it he was off again. We finally determined to 
stop still and play it. With three previous fish I had 
fought rather norvously. I had not been quite srae of 
my tackle, despite my patriotic assertion that an 
English reel will stand anything. I felt confident now, 
and I thought I would be able to kill him in a minute 
or two, but it was no good, he was able to travel 
against all the butt I could give him and did so. I 
gained on that fish nine or ten times. On one occasion I 
had him within three yards of the boat, but it was no 
good it was not until Hart rowed against stream for a 
quarter of a mile or so that I drowned him. As Ave 
drew him in, we found him to be a channel bass, pro- 
nounced bv all to be the best small game fish in Southern 
waters. For his size," I believe him to be as good as the 
tarpon. He runs from 11 pounds (when he is known as 
a school bass) up to 40 pounds, I think. I give all these 
extreme sizes on hearsay, I did not see a 40 pound bass, 
but I heard oi them,- and I am bound to say that I did 
not find much exaggeration among Florida anglers. 
With game fish scaling up to 200 pounds, it is unneces- 
sary and difficult for them to exaggerate. 
Black bass fishing 1r have not tried, but was assured 
by those who had caught most of the basses that the 
channel bass is as active as any of them. In color it is 
a dark coppery red. The changes in its tints when 
dying are most beautiful. Presently our guide, Hart, 
rowed us under a mangrove tree, where, in the intervals 
of killing mosquitoes, we consumed vast quantities of 
grape fruit, bananas, Florida oranges and venison. We 
erew rather tired of venison, by the way, at Naples. 
The local steamer broke down twice, the wind would 
not permit sailing boats to approach, and we were out 
off from civilization for nine or ten days, and only an 
occasional wild turkey varied our diet. 
After lunch, Hart proposed we should pull slowly 
down to the mouth of the Gordon river and try f or 
tarpon. We had brought some mullet with us for bait, 
and truly, as he suggested, playing game fish on a light 
rod was a good deal too hot for a day of that kind. As 
we glided gently down stream we found that the only 
way of keeping cool was to sprinkle ourselves and the 
boat with water. Every now and then we dipped our 
wide felt hats in and soaked them thoroughly. A very 
few minutes of the hot sun was sufficient to completely 
drv them. 
In pulling down we passed a school of young tarpon. 
Their dark fins appeared every now and again on the 
top of the water and told us they had arrived in full 
force. I was greafly tempted to troll for them with a 
minnow, but my guide did not think it good enough. 
"It is much easier, " he said, "to catch a large tarpon 
than a small one. " 
That seemed a curious statement.' Most fish, I think, 
are captured more readily when young than when fully 
grown. Colonel Haldeman says in American Game 
Fish: "I should not forget to mention one remarkable 
characteristic of the tarpon. Comparatively few of fh^ 
smaller ones are caught with rod and line. The young 
fish seem, contrary to the general rale, to be more wise 
and wary than the older ones. In my experience ten 
fish weighing 75 pounds are caught to one weighing 
less. " 
After making this quotation I need scarcely say that 
it was a young tarpon I Caught on the following day. I 
should not have reproduced Colonel Haldeman's words 
had I killed a 100 pounder. That, however, as Mr. 
Kipling says, is 1 ' another story. ' ' Suffice it to say that 
I marked those tarpon down, and resolved to try for 
thenTon the next morning after a method of r my own. 
(To be continued.) 
THE MEAT OF THE COCOANUT. 
* We townspeople who take to the brush only now and 
hen are a little prone to write all round the story when 
we come to write about, it. We see so many things 
along the path that the life and action of the scene 
loiters and is left behind, at times, simply because^the 
by-play is so novel and strange to us. 
* And yet if we write about what we have actually 
experienced, despite the slight tendency to self con- 
sciousness, the life and reality is there and sufficiently 
apparent at all times to stamp the tale as genuine, in 
contradistinction to the elaborate compilation of the 
gushy space writer of the newspaper syndicates. In the 
internal evidence of truth consists the whole charm of 
the tales of Forest and Stream, whether written with 
or without the capitalization. Lots of the gentlemen of 
the gun have read with absorbing interest the tale of a 
warrior bold who never fought a fight ; but there is the 
hunter who will waste his time reading of a- hunt that 
never was hunted, written by a sportsman who never 
chased anything but a Faber lead pencil. 
** Our dear friend Hough knows this, hence, when he 
would write us out a little entertainment, he first hies 
him down out of the Security Building, Chicago, 111. , 
to the woods, circumambient or otherwise, even if he bas 
to travel on snowshoes to get there, and then, when the 
thing has happened, 'Bismillah ! it has happened. And 
now and then he gets a line from one of 'the fellows who 
live in the'midst of the fun all the time, it is brief 'and 
sometimes it is misspelled, but when you read if'you 
can smell the damp odor of the forest and you can' feel 
in your bones the vigorous sparkle of the frontier, and 
with his good literary perception he sees that "we all" 
will be pleased to read it, and he pops it into'his letter. 
All of which is by way of preamble to'Blanton's 
letter to the Colonel, which foUovvfe. 
Geobge Kennbdt. 
' ' Our boys went hunting yesterday out where we made 
our first"" drive. Ran two old bucks off of that moun- 
tain, one' red fox, r one large gobbler. Tims was" too 
fast with his drive. Ran the 'biggest deer, so Bennie 
says, he ever saw out before he got to his stand, that'is 
where Mr. Kennedy stood r down by the field. Well,' I 
came along after awhile with the hounds, bringing a 
red fox to'the first stander he stopped him. I blowedTa 
few blasts on^myold horn 'and 'thought, yhere's'to^you 
and Kennedy ' m "*""' " ^ """""^ 
-J' Then I dropped back r a little and [started up the 
