June 3, 1905.I 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
439 
The Log of a Sea Angler. 
X .— The Rob 1^0— A Gamy Fish— Taking a Large One 
to Lose It— Fight with the Sharks— A Tiger uf the 
Sea— Subd ing a Man-Eatei— Size of Sharks— Danger 
from Shaifcs — Tarpon Taken. 
by charles frederick holder^ author of big game 
. fishes/' "adventures of torqua/' etc. 
I FIRST met the robalo in the old market at New Orleans 
along the jetty, and thought it a pike perch ; its trim ap- 
pearance, its powerful tail, its large and voracious mouth 
suggesting a game fish; but the market man vvhen ques- 
tioned as to its habitat waved his hand in the direction of 
tetisacola and said they Came ftom "down yander" some- 
where. So when I found niyself "dowtt yander," some 
five huiidred miles to the south, on. the reef, 1 be^an to 
ihquire for robalo. Boh alid Chief had heard of it, but 
had never seen it. Long John, wheii thtee sheets in the 
wind, dilated upon his catches of robalo, so fifing rriy 
appetite for the fish that I thought of little else. _ But 
when morning came, and Long John saw through a single 
barrel, his pictures of robalo were not so highly colored, 
and there was a vagueness about it that was suspicious. 
The certain channel where he had played a robalo for an 
hour could never be found, though he spent hours at 
night in the second story of the old slave quarters telling 
about it, displaying an especial nicety in detail. In a 
word, Long John shook out all the reefs of his imagina- 
tion under the influence of the pain killer of Mr. Davis, 
but furled all sail the following morning. 
By this it should not be inferred that anything in these 
records is to be considered as criticising my loyal boat- 
nien. Better men, truer hearts did not exist. My reputa- 
tion was as safe in their hands as though I had attended 
to it myself. Every fish I took with the magic rod they 
weighed mentally in a royal and beneficent fashion. I 
heard Chief telling a visitor that I had taken gray snap- 
pers that weighed sixty pounds with my eight-ounce trout 
rod, while Long John and Bob cheerfully swore to it. 
All my catches grew after death, and o' nights, so that I 
began to think that I really had taken these monsters. 
This faithful trio may not have been rod fishermen, and 
they knew very little about fine tackle reels, or the ethics 
of modern sport, but their imagination filled an eminent 
domain, it was limitless. No angler could ask more with 
such historians. What more could anyone wish? 
But I caught and landed a robalo, an event which 
proves that everything comes to him who has the patience 
to wait, and it was many months after I saw the shapely 
fish on the levee that I felt one on the rod. Surely pa- 
tience is the essence of angling. Othello must have been 
an angler. He says, "How poor are they who have no 
patience," and as the wealth of the angler is the game, 
he is poor indeed who lacks this essential to success. In 
Troilus and Cressida we find the suggestive lines, "He 
that will have a cake of the wheat must needs tarry the 
grinding" ; and so he who would fish and land his game 
must sit and sit and sit. 1 have seen Long John when 
tarpon fishing lie on the sands all the afternoon, one leg 
crossed over the other, the hand-line between his large 
and second toe with a half turn about the former. And 
there he remained, a recumbent drowsy patience that 
came into its ultimate reward; time was not a factor in 
life in those halcyon days on the outer reef. 
When the days were hot and water clear as glass, we 
often took the dinghy and sculled down to the south end 
of the lagoon where an old wreck lay, the last of a great 
ship that had been blown in here by some terrific hurri- 
cane, carried far over the outer reef and landed in shallow 
water. ' She was a monument to the energy of the teredo 
and limnoria. Her wood-work had nearly disappeared 
and had been replaced by the tubes of the shell teredo 
that is possessed with such a sensitive touch that it avoids 
the tubes of others. So the hull stood, resisting the wind, 
and where the hold had been was a marine aquarium 
filled with coral, forming a fascinating seclusion for num- 
bers of fishes. 
It was my habit to scull up to the old wreck, carefully - 
climb aboard to lie on the deck and peer over into this 
home of the fishes. I have spent many hours here, watch- 
ing them unseen and unsuspected. One morning I reached 
the wreck at sunrise intending to grain some crawfishes 
for the day's fishing. As I came near, enough to see the 
edge of the hull I saw the head of a robalo back to the 
first fin. The grub staker, or the worker in a diamond 
mine who after years has made a strike, can appreciate 
the sudden relation of .the angler at the discovery of a 
game he has long searched for. There was no mistaking 
it_. The long, tsraight under jaw, the sharp muzzle, the 
big black hypnotic eye, the arched back. Robalo it was, 
and so closely did it resemble the sand upon which it 
seemed to rest that I almost fancied it the ghost of a 
robalo, a "phantom of delight." 
It appeared not to notice me, so I backed away and go- 
ing aboard peered down through the hold hoping to see 
the entire length of robalo. Ah ! there it v/as. The long, 
slender body, the striking sail-like dorsals, the' big forked 
tail emblematic of power, a dark line-like stripe, and 
what was better than all, it was a giant, the vision that 
met my eye being three times the size of those I had seen 
in markets and promising a 
"Sport that wrinkled care derides." 
I had seen almost such a fish in the St. Lawrence when 
bass fishing, as it appeared to me to be the image of a 
herculean wall-eyed perch, the resemblance being more 
than remarkable. As I watched it I could see the grace- 
ful screw-like motion of the tail, suggestive of the im- 
perceptible twitching of the tail of a cat, or a great 
spring, ready at the second to leap into action, and I 
knew at the slightest alarm the fish would dash from 
cover and not stop until it reached the deep waters of 
the lagoon some distance away. So I drew back care- 
ful ly,_ got into the dinghy, shoved oflF, and began a search 
for live bait. Mullet were omnipresent here, and in a 
short time I had located a school and secured a dozen 
with my cast-net, then carefully baiting one through the 
lips, I returned to the wreck. Robalo was still there, but 
had backed in under the shelving roof so that only its 
muzzle coud be seen. I retired thirty feet away and made 
a 9ticcessful cast; dropping^ my silver muikt about twenty- 
feet beyond the robalo, then dragged it slowly and care- 
fully across its line of vision. The water was so clear 
that I could see every object with perfect distinctness. 
I saw the sudden action of the fish forward when it 
noticed the struggling bait. I saw it move back several 
inches actuated by a second thought, a suspicion, and 
then saw the splendid fish settle nearer the ground like 
a cat about to spring. 
I had reeled the mullet to a spot exactly in front of 
the fish and not five feet from it, the long wire leader 
sinking into the sand and becoming invisible, the mullet, 
performing its part by struggling fiercely and, being held 
by the lips, presented a perfect pantomime of a mullet or 
carp feeding, now turning its silvery sides which caught 
the sun's rays, making a most enticing lure. 
The robalo had hs black eyes upon it, and crouching 
low, moved in and out for several eternities, so it seemed. 
Then it began to creep out, its big body coming into view 
like a car or a torpedo coming out of a tube or barn. It 
almost appeared to be creeping along the bottom,_ and I 
fancied l could see it pale, so marvellously did it simulate 
the sand. It swam slowly up to the mullet, stopped, then 
seized it so suddenly that I could not follow' the motion, 
and rose upward, dragging the wire leader from the sand. 
A convulsive movement, and the mullet disappeared. Im- 
pressed that the psychological moment had arrived I gave 
the robalo the butt, and the merriest fight that I had in- 
dulged in for many a day was on. 
I feared that the fish would take to the wreck, but not 
he. With a leap to the surface he turned and dashed 
for open water with only Yucatan before him, and that 
he would reach it I had little doubt. I had been standing 
on the bow of the light dinghy, and as the reel whistled 
and screamed I stepped back and with an oar turned the 
bow of the light craft to the fish that was flying down 
the gradual slope of the lagoon over a clear sandy bot- 
tom, the home of the queen conch, the promenade of the 
giant ray. 
It was a splendid burst of speed, and despite my pres- 
sure upon a leather thumb-pad brake for the right hand, 
and the fact that I broke the line with my left fore finger 
and thumb above the reel as occasion offered, the robalo 
took at least three hundred feet of my line in that one 
leap. Some finny Hamlet must have cried, "Come, give 
us a taste of your quality," as I had it served — well and 
strong. 
There are few fishes that can contend against a long 
twenty-one thread line. It is a cobweb in appearance, but 
deadly after all, and it stopped the robalo, rounded him 
up, curbed his fancy so that he shot around in a great 
circle, the line cutting the water, the rod vibrating, and 
all that virile magnetism, I can call it nothing else, run- 
ning up the line and rod like a series of electric shocks. I 
do not believe my robalo weighed over fifteen pounds, yet 
it hauled the dinghy on over the gray water, and when I 
forced the fighting it turned and came in to rush away 
again as we bowled along. 
I believe I fought this fish fairly. I gave it a full and 
fair chance for its life; I did not force it, or endeavor to 
"snake it in." I employed what diplomacy the exigencies 
of rod, line and occasion demanded. I did my best, yet 
the robalo did not reach the gaff within thirty minutes, 
and then when I held it on the quarter and looked for the 
gafif it was not there; so I was forced to grain the fish — ■ 
a murderous act for which I hope I am forgiven ; then I 
drew it in, still struggling, lashing the boat and gaping at 
me with his enormous mouth with supercilious leer. 
I have given this robalo's weight as fifteen pounds, I 
believe it was nearer twenty-five, but cannot prove it. I 
lifted it out, took in its beauties, its dark green back, its 
silvery belly, then as it was bleeding badly I ran a line 
through the gills and dropped it over a-stern, and taking 
the oars, rowed slowly in. I had the robalo and proposed 
to demonstrate the fact to my men without waste of time. 
I had a mile of reef to cross where the coral was so 
near the surface that I almost grazed it, then a deep but 
narrow channel. When midway in the latter, I stopped 
to watch a radiant jelly fish, one of the most interesting 
of all these dainty animals of the sea. Its myriad 
pumps were all working. Its mercury-like rod was 
pointed upward, and the wonderful colors — red, yellow, 
pink and rose — made it a thing of beauty against the 
vivid turquoise of the channel. I sat gazing at this 
charming vision when something jerked the stern of the 
dinghy down at least six inches. I sprang to my feet, 
and amid the swirling waters of a mimic maelstrom, saw 
the tawny striped body of a tiger shark, longer than the 
dinghy. The robalo and I had parted company. There 
are occasions when words fail utterly, and this appeared 
to be one. The shark circled about the boat while I took 
the grains and prepared for my revenge. I sculled up 
and down, I tossed over other and luscious bait. I lin- 
gered until the sun was overhead, and dogged this tiger 
of the sea up and down in the hope of recovering my 
robalo and incidentally taking him, as I knew the story 
of my catching a twenty-five-pound robalo without the 
fish to show, would be received by my men with certain 
stolid looks which they assumed only when they con- 
sidered that virgin truth had been outraged. 
But the shark, though always in sight, kept too far 
below the surface, even following me in, and as I landed 
I saw the monument of my robalo, the dorsal fin of the 
tiger shark, sailing out the northwest channel. I had the 
experience and the shark had the fish, but I did not men- 
tion it, nor did I ever again catch so large a robalo. The 
audacity of the shark has passed into proverb. I have 
pJayed a tarpon until I was weary to feel a sudden rush 
that told of a new enemy, and in a moment seen a man- 
eater rise and literally shake the fish in my face; doubt- 
less all tarpon anglers have had the same experience. 
Sharks were omnipresent on the reef, and I frequently 
fished for them for the sport and. in a sportsmanlike man- 
ner. I nearly always used a light boat and handled the 
shark myself, my man steering; and I found that I could 
with an abundance of time, line and staying quality out- 
play a shark up to thirteen or fourteen feet; but I fre- 
quently hooked monsters that I never saw, that would 
have carried us out to sea or capsized the boat. Sharks, 
like honnds, are clever on the scent but slow, and one of 
th',^ disagreeable sights, at least to my mind, was a . so- 
called man-eater coming up, literally beating, to find a 
scent or following it. 
The sharks on tht reef, were of diyers kinds. There 
was a real man-eater that I occasionally saw on tb« ©u4«r 
reef in fairly deep water, a big, even colossal brute, ttie 
Carcharias or white shark, which attains a length OS 
twenty-five or thirty feet. I believe I have seen one ap- 
proximating this, though it was some distance off. _ I can 
perhaps better illustrate its size when I say that it had 
what might be called a retiring effect on me. I stood not 
on the order of going. When that grim menacing shape 
turned and came directly toward me I pulled for the shal- 
low reef. I recall no more disagreeable vision of the sea 
than this big shark, its tawny sides, its black attendants, 
the remoras, either swimming alongside or dangling frGWB 
it, and the little school of striped pilots at its head. 
The inner channel of this growing atoll was a famous 
ground for sharks, and all were colossal or of enormous 
bulk. I have caught sharks in various seas, some ten feet 
in length in the Pacific, but they were long and slender, 
lacking the ponderous bulk of those of the hot waters of 
the Gulf. I sometimes had my boatman collect the debris 
from the turtle slaughter house and other rejectamenta 
and dump it at a certain point five hundred feet from 
Garden Key. In half an hour the water would be fairly 
alive with sharks. Anchoring my boat to the reef by a 
coral hook, so that she swung off into blue and deep 
water, I have often in looking down, seen twenty or more 
large sharks circling about, tipping upward occasionally 
to see what it was all about, while twenty feet away 
others' would be on the surface. 
On one of these shark conventions I fastened a large 
dead loggerhead to a float, watching the brutes as they 
rushed at it and tore it apart As the blood drifted aw^ay 
other sharks would scent it and come beating up, crossing 
and recrossing the line, with their fins at the surface like 
miniature sails. The suggestiveness with which these big 
fellows came on was distinctly unpleasant, but it pro- 
duced a singlar result. I became so habituated to the 
presence of sharks in and about the camp that they were 
disregarded as a possible menace to human life. I think 
there was hardly a half hour in the day that a large shark 
of some kind did not swim along in plain view in the 
channel a few feet from the shore visiting a slaughter 
house; yet with others I went in swimming, sometimes' 
several times a day, owing to the terrific heat in summer, 
and even swam across the deep channel to the opposite 
key with the knowledge that sharks were all about. I 
had a springboard rigged so that we dived from it directly 
into deep water from the shore, and it was not uncommon 
to dive as sharks swam by. At such times I have seen 
them under water always in retreat, as the moment a 
diver plunged in the shark would dart away evidently 
terrified. 
Commissionef Whipple. 
Albany, N. Y., May 23. — One of the first acts of James 
S. Whipple, in assuming office as State Forest, Fish and 
Game Commissioner, to-day, was to make an appeal to 
sportsmen for co-operation. The Commissioner said: 
"A tree should not be unlawfully cut, a fish should not 
be unlawfully caught, a deer should not be unlawfully 
killed. If the laws are kept and observed by all, the value 
of these great interests will rapidly increase, and the 
pleasures of all our people will be greater, the fish and 
game will multiply, the water supply in our great rivers 
and streams will be protected and maintained, and the 
large annual outlay of money by the State for these 
things will be justified by results obtained. 
"To this end, I ask every guide, every hunter, every 
fisherman, every lumberman, every summer visitor to the 
woods and streams, every poacher — if there are such — 
and all people generally, to assist this department in 
maintaining and enforcing the law in relation' to the 
forests, fish and game, that the best interests of all may 
be conserved." 
Fishmg: on the Erie* 
Reports of May 24 chronicled good catches of trout at 
Middletown, Otisville, Woodbury, Narrowsburg and De- 
posit, N. Y., and Shohola and Clifton, Pa., all reached 
by the Erie Railroad. The worm was used in every case. 
At Lackawaxen Saturday last Charles Frohlich caught 
thirty fine trout ; they were not weighed. Jiin Grening 
(guide) said Lewis Hissam caught 17 pounds on the 
same day. Tannersville reports water too low for trout 
fishing. Dr. S. Demarest, of Suffern, on the Beaver Kill 
at the Lew Beache place, near Middletown, May 12, 
caught twelve trout that weighed 9 pounds. On May 15, 
at same place, he caught eighteen trout, averaging in 
length 14 inches, weighing from i to i^ pounds each, 
the total weighing just 18 pounds. 
Points and Flushes. 
"The Dog Book," by James Watson, is to be published 
in ten parts. Parts I. and II. have been issued. The 
work treats of the popular history of the dog, with prac- 
tical information on the care and management of house, 
kennel and exhibition dogs. All the important breeds 
are described. Profuse illustrations are a feature of the 
work. Mr. Watson's long and varied experience as judge 
and critic qualify him specially for this admirable work. 
Each part is $1.00. Published by Doubleday, Page & 
Co., New York, 
Wand^Trlost. 
Beyond the east the sunrise, beyond the west the sea, 
And east and west tlie wanderlust that will not let me be; 
It works in me like madness, dear, to bid me say good-by! 
For the seas call and the stars call, and, ohl the call of the sky! 
I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are, 
But a man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star; 
And there's no end of voyaginar when once the voice is heard. 
For the river calls and the road calls, and oh! the call of the bird! 
Yonder the long- horizon lies, and there by night and day 
The old shins draw to home again, the young ships sail away; 
And come I m.ay, but go I must, and if men ask you why. 
You may put the blajne on the stars and the sun and the white to»d 
aH<J fhe sky! 
