Jan. 5, 1895.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
3 
an englishman's experience op 
Florida fishing —t. 
BY ALPKBD C. HABMSWOBTH. 
It should be a source of pleasure to all who are 
interested in the unity of the Anglo-Saxon race^ to 
know that the number of British sportsmen who visit 
the United States each year is increasing. English 
big game shooters no longer visit the States for buffalo 
and have turned their attention to Africa and Asia, 
but it is inevitable that the United States, which is 
One of the best and certainly the cheapest angling 
country on earth, must in future years attract vast 
crowds of Englishmen in search of sport with rod and 
reel. 
Salmon fishing of England, Scotland and Norway 
has become so expensi ve as to render it impossible sport 
for all save people with more money than they know 
what to do with. The competition, too, for merely 
average angling in these countries is preposterous. 
The rent of trout streams in England has quadrupled 
in the past few years. 
Tarpon fishing has for some years aroused consider- 
able interest in England. I met a goodly number of 
British anglers in Florida last winter. More than one 
of our makers supplies complete outfits for the. sport, 
and I hear that a great deal of business is being done 
for next season; Since my return to England and the 
publication of some papers on Florida fishing, I have 
received letters from Englishmen in all parts of the 
globe anxious to try for tarpon, and considering the 
relative cheapness of a trip to Florida, where all sport 
is free, and a corresponding visit to India, where, 
though mahseer fishing is open to all, expenses of 
travel are great, I feel disposed to think that some of 
the tarpon records will come to this side of the water 
for a good many years. One or two I believe are 
already held by us. A winter holiday that will com- 
bine the maximum amount of sunshine with good 
fishing has not hitherto been considered easy of attain- 
ment "by Englishmen. And thus it is that of the 
scores of thousands who exchange frost and fog for 
blue skies and flowers every Christmas, few, even 
though their angling proclivities be of the keenest, 
take their rods with rhein. 
I have tried most of the popular winter quarters of 
iny Own people, and have usually found that fishing 
§itlier with fly oi* float is rarely, enjoyable in any of 
tliti Egyptian 'or Mediterranean holiday places'. As 
many American readers will know, there is sport to 
be had on the strfeams in the Italian Riviera ; Cyprus 
has fairly good sea and river fishing if one happens oh 
thg right place, and. the Nile has_ fish in plenty, though 
few seem game, and So far as I am aware, only two 
kinds rise to the fly". 
I was almost in despair of getting any sport last 
Winter within, a fortnight's distance when a friend 
reCommendecl Florida* Upon this ,1 wrote to head- 
quarters, that is to say. to a member of the staff Of 
the London Fishing Gazette, and asked him for 
information. - The editor verv kindly, referred me to 
Mr. Ai % Cheney of Glens Falls, N. Y. His name is 
alniost as well known in the old country as in the 
new, and with that generous desire to assist the 
Britisher which I found among all American sports- 
men, Mr. Cheney, though a stranger to me, went to 
vast trouble in obtaining information, 
I Cannot thank him too much for his exertions on 
iny beltaif. His kindly task was all the more difficult 
because iFiorida is a State of the Union about which 
comparatively little seems to be known in America. 
It is true that ,a number of Northern . people, go there 
iwery Winter, but as a rule they sit about the hotels, 
and taik money, politics or dress, as may be. Mr. 
Cheney had not himself been to Florida, but he imme- 
diately placed himself in communication with a 
number of gentlemen who. had, fished there, and these 
alsd-took mf amount of trouble on my behalf. . 
Fi-om Tampa we went to Puuta Gorda, and here I 
had my first day's fishing. Punta Gorda is a day's 
journey further south. The pleasant and extremely 
cheap hotel there was filled with tarpon fishers, who 
sat patiently out in their boats all day and discussed 
every possible phase of tarpon fishing at night. It 
was pleasantly reminiscent of home to sit round a 
blazing wood' fire (for it was chilly in the evening) 
and hear sportsmen exchanging experiences in the cap- 
ture of what is undoubtedly the finest game fish in 
the world— and that the tarpon is the finest game fish 
in the world is admitted by every salmon fisher I have 
met who has ever taken both fish. 
Tarpon fishing is quite a new sport. Up to March, 
1885, no iarge tarpon had ever been captured with rod 
and reel. In that year, however, a Mr. "Wood of New 
York city was successful in bringing to gaff a tarpon 
weighing considerably over one hundred pounds, a 
scale of" which is on my desk as I write, a present 
from Mr. Cheney. fcseaEa 
The fish itself is in reality a gigantic herring. 
The finest salmon I have ever seen must yield to it in 
point of looks, strength, activity and cleverness. One 
of the best authorities on the tarpon is Colonel W. N. 
Haldeman, editor of the Louisville Courier Journal. 
Mr. Haldeman told me that the tarpon is essentially a 
sea fish, but that for the pursuit of small fry it will 
ascend rivers for a considerable distance. Very little, 
however, is known as to the habits of the fish, and I 
find that many experienced anglers contradicted each 
other flatly on many points with regard to its capture. 
On the morning following my arrival at Punta 
Gorda I arose early and put in a couple of hours 
"trout" fishing. The fish I caught were not trout, 
but as they had spots on them and were fairly game 
they were therefore so regarded. 
The clearness and warmth of the atmosphere at 6 a. 
m. was equal in every respect to that of Egypt, and I 
thoroughly enjoyed my experience. Before breakfast 
I had landed half a dozen, weighing anything from 
half a pound up to a couple of pounds. They seemed 
to take live bait, phantom minnows or fly with equal 
avidity. After some experiments with a bamboo pole, 
I used an foot greenheart rod, with an ordinary 
light reel, and from the head of a small jetty about a 
quarter of a mile out in the creek I found, to use a 
very common expression in these parts, that "one 
could get all the fish one wanted" (pronounced 
"wornted" ). 
That this particular salt water fish is not a trout is 
obvious from many points, not the least of which is 
that it is a scaled fish. It has silver sides, a dark 
bluish, greenish back, with rows of black spots above 
the lateral line. The head is small, mouth fairly 
large, and for a minute or two it fights well. 
My fly was a silver doctor, to which I had added a 
largish white feather. What parti cnlarly surprised 
me in Florida fishing was the enormous amount one 
could catch on favorable days. Using a small local 
fish known as the minnow, but resembling what we 
call a king carp, a local urchin had, I was assured, 
captured over a couple of hundred of these sea trout, 
weighing between half a pound and six pounds, in 
one day. I mvself, on more than one occasion, cap- 
tured nearly 100 pounds of fish in a morning, and all 
of them fighting fish. 
These southern sea trout are most delicious eating, 
and for anyone who does not get tired of catching the 
same kind of fish hour after hour afford very satis- 
factory sport. 
The hotel people at Punta Gorda and the kind- 
hearted American visitors, anxious that the Britisher 
should get the best possible chance at tarpon, had 
accorded me one of the best guides, Fulton McGuire 
by name. Maguire is a colored man, and though 
experience has taught me to beware of trusting any 
but white people in cases of emergency, I found him 
to be thoroughly reliable in every respect. 
He came early to the hotel to overhaul my tackle, 
concerning which I now propose giving a brief 
description. Expert tarpon fishers will please kindly 
skip these details and excuse any of the errors that 
will inevitably creep into the rough notes of a traveler 
with regard to my views of what I saw on your side. 
The tarpon rod is t a 7 foot Conroy, made all in one 
piece ; the guides are circular eyelets, and at the top 
of the rod the line passes through and out of a brass 
hole lined with agate. The butt is stringed like that 
of a cricket bat, and the method by which the reel is 
attached to the cord is particularly strong, though for 
safety sake every Other tarpon fisher whom I met in- 
var iablv lashed ' the reel with string, or better, with 
ieather'boot laces, in order to make it yet more secure. 
The reel is a VomHofe "Silver King. " It cost, I 
think. £6, but it is worth it. It runs on ball bearings 
and With marvelous freedom, is comparatively light 
and has stood the strain of catching half a dozen sharks 
measuring from 7 feet to £) feet in length. 
Attached to the reel is a Small leather guard, which, 
in addition to the check, can bo used as a brake by 
pressure of the thumb on the reeled line. 
I need scarcely say that it Would be almost impos- 
sible to fight a fish weighing from 100 pounds to 200 
pounds unless one had some rest for the rod. 
You may kill your tarpon in ten minutes if you 
are very lucky. On the other hand, he may fight you 
for five' or six hours, in order to afford more security 
it is well to wear", a butt rest— a substantial leather 
belt, worn around the waist, having in front a stout 
leather cup into which the biitt of the rod fits. 
To press the rod against the otherwise unprotected 
abdomen mav result seriously, and I would impress 
upon all those who go out to battle with tarpon not to 
neglect this simple protection. I would Suggest also 
the taking of india rubber finger tips, such as are used 
by photographers who do not wish to soil their fingers 
with chemicals. Frequently, in the excitement of a 
run, one may forget to apply the leather brake. On 
one occasion' I unconsciously applied my bare thumb 
to the line oh the reel. It was running out at a tre- 
mendous pace, and the friction took the skin from my 
thumb and made it painfxd for niahy a long day. 
Upon the reel was wound 600 feet of 18 line. At 
the end of this is attached a hook. This hook is at- 
tached bv a strap, or snood,, of raw hide, two and a 
half to 'three feet in length. It is concerning these 
snoods that so much difference of opinion occurs. My 
hook was first attached to a swivel and then to a 
snood. I found some who objected to the swivel. One 
man believed in snoods made of stout blind cord with 
thin piano wire running up its center. Some used 
plaited snoods of cotton ; others again adopted snoods 
made of simple unprotected wire. Colonel Haldeman 
describes a good snood as absolutely necessary as a 
safeguard against the scissor -like jaws of the tarpon. 
The fish's teeth injure only by abrasion, but his 
jaws are massive and powerful enough to crash the 
back of a hardshell crab with ease. Therefore the 
snood should obviously be of a soft and pliable texture 
rather than such as to offer any resistance. There 
are many other kinds of snood, and there are various 
kinds of 'hooks. In tarpon fishing in some parts of 
Florida one needs a large supply of snoods and hooks 
for reasons I will describe presently. Next time I visit 
Florida I shall take a couple of hundred with me at 
least, for my own use and for the many folk who go 
insufficiently provided. 
The rest of the equipment for a day's tarpon fishing 
is a very large sized gaff. Those with the telescopic 
handles seem popular. 
With a good lunch on board we left the Punta 
Gorda Hotel for Tarpon Camp about 9. We are running 
up Peace river. Picture to yourself a wide inlet bordered 
on each side by mangrove swamp or great reedy 
grasses, filled with all manner of wild f owL The sky 
is dazzling and cloudless, and round about us myriads 
of mullet jump, sometimes singly and sometimes in 
shoals. The mullet is one of the most familiar f eatures 
of Florida waters. It is quite unlike our mullet, 
weighs, I was told, up to three pounds, though I never 
saw one over one and one-half pounds, is caught, it is 
said, by fishing with light tackle and paste, and has 
most remarkable powers of jumping. As a rale, a 
mullet skips out of the water three times in succes- 
sion. In the intervals of tarpon fishing I have counted 
the jumps of hundreds of them. On one occasion one 
jumped four times, another five, but nine times out 
of ten there were three distinct jumps. Florida 
anglers often wonder why the mullet jumps : but I 
heard of no satisfactory reason, It is certainly not 
after any kind of fly or insect visible to the human 
eye. Sometimes, no doubt, they leap when chased by 
larger fish, but usually they appear to be merely dis- 
porting themselves. To tarpon fishers mullet are 
essential. They form his bait. 
Our little naphtha launch travels gaylyup the wide 
river, and we amuse ourselves by takinsr a flying shot 
at an alligator as the great mass of his long dark body 
glides from the bank into the stream. 
On this particular day my companion shot a hand- 
some "gator" nearly ten feet in length, and the brute, 
stuffed by our London big game naturalist, looks at 
me as I write. It was a particularly good shot, as he 
was only armed with a revolver and it is not easy to 
kill an alligator with a revolver from a boat traveling 
at six or seven miles an hour. It is not easy to kill an 
alligator at all at a distance. I sometimes put as many 
as seven shots into one of them with a rifle without 
effect. The old delusion about hitting them in the eye 
is a mistake. Except on the back a rifle bullet will 
penetrate anywhere. On the other hand, an alligator 
will carry as much lead as most creatures. 
One sees all sorts and conditions of strange fish and 
fowl in these Florida waters. Not the least curious is 
the horse shoe crab, of which I brought several speci- 
mens home. It resembles no living thing that I had 
hitherto seen, and it has the honor of possessing the 
most ancient descent known of almost any creature of 
life, for it is found in the earliest geological deposits. 
The turtle, too, is a queer thing to set eyes on for 
the first time. As we were gliding up the stream I 
saw what I took to be the head of a dog occasionally 
popping out of the water, snapping its jaws the while, 
and presently a large dark mass appeared. That it 
was a turtle did not occur to me, for I had imagined 
turtles to lie lazily floating at ease on shallow shores, 
but here was an animal that traveled as fast as we 
against stream. I was raising my revolver when he 
caught sight of us and disappeared. 
All the hotel world at Punta Gorda were going 
tarpon fishing that day. At Punta Gorda most of the 
visitors are from the Northern States. The traveling 
Englishman is there of course, as everywhere else, 
but we had just managed to miss some of our country- 
men, for which we were not sorry, for the Englishman 
abroad is often a most unpleasant creature unless you 
can devote a considerable portion of your life to get- 
ting to know him. 
Some six miles from the Punta Gorda Hotel was a 
little camp consisting of a single tent and a log fire, 
a small pier and a dozen tarpon boats It was here 
that we said goodby to the naphtha launch, and Fulton 
Maguire and I removed our tackle (and our lunch) 
into one of the boats. They are simply ordinary 
small rowing boats with flat bottoms. In the center 
is a revolving chair upon which the tarponer sits. We 
pulled up about a mile, the anchor was cast overboard, 
and then Maguire cut off the head of one of the mullet 
we had brought, attached a long skewerlike handle to 
a snood, threaded the flesh on to the hook, fixed the 
snood to the line, and standing on the boat cast out 
the bait with considerable dexterity. As a rule, such 
tarpon or other fishers as I saw were not remarkable 
casters from our point of view. 
Maguire was quite the best of them. He threw the 
bait with unerring accuracy in any direction. Then 
began my first moments of tarpon fishing, and monot- 
onous as the sport may seem I am bound to confess 
that I was never for one moment tired of it. The 
check is taken off the reel and some spare line is kept 
coiled up in the boat so that in case of a run the fish 
may be. able to take the bait without feeling any 
weight.' But here is one of the points upon which 
tarpon fishers appear to divide. I was assured over 
and over again that should a tarpon feel the least 
resistance he will drop the bait at once, and my experi- 
ence teaches me that this opinion is the correct one. 
It appears ridiculous to suppose that a monster fish 
weighing perhaps 200 pounds should be shy, but in a 
peculiar way the. tarpon is certainly most timorous. 
The bait being cast and some spare line in hand, 
you sit back in the boat and bask in the sun. Some 
tarpon fishers read, others write, all smoke and one or 
two sleep. One's whole surroundings are so peaceful, 
the mere chance of a run so exciting, that boredom 
was out of the question. 
From Maguire I heard much, that was interesting 
concerning the status of the negro in America, and, 
that apparently without the least prejudice on his 
part. He is a man of intelligence above the average. 
He understands the relative positions of the European 
States, and appreciated the difference between the 
English and American character, has a good sound 
commercial head, has read a good deal, and is as good 
a companion for a day's sport as any Thames boatman 
or Scotch gillie of my acquaintance. Naturally our talk 
turned upon tarpon.' It is, as I have said, the great 
subject for conversation, not only at Punta Gorda, 
but at Fort Myers, St. James City, Punta Rassa, 
Naples, and other places in the Gulf of Mexico. The 
element of luck that is part of the charm of all fishing 
is particularly in evidence in the pursuit of tarpon. 
There are authentic cases of men Who have fished 
steadily for a month at the right time of year without 
getting a single fish. On the other hand, a Mr. 
Mygatt, an Englishman, I was told and hope, caught 
no' fewer than eight in one day ; and a delightful old 
gentleman, a certain Dr. Prime, author of a particu- 
larly delectable book, "I Go A-Fishing, ' ' who is a 
well known figure at Punta Gorda, caught 26 in a 
little more than a fortnight. 
When Usay that more than once a tarpon has com- 
pletely out-tired a fairly strong man, it will be 
understood that the feat of catching eight tarpon in 
one day betokens not only luck and skill, but also im- 
mense strength. 
As I sat there I placed my rod across the boat and 
lazily watched the slack line. Now and then it wordd 
tighten ; and at first my heart began to jump with 
pleasurable anticipation when it crept out some 10 or 
15 yards. This, however, meant nothing, that is to say, 
a catfish. These catfish are the curse of sport with 
rod and line, in Florida. I am not sufficient of an 
ichthyologist to know to what species of fish the cat- 
fish belongs, sufficient to "say that it iP the"' most 
