February, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
55 
with the change. Of course, the short 
snell gives a hooked shark a chance to 
chafe the line with its rough back; and 
possibly when the leaping sharks are 
plentiful I shall revert to the long snells. 
I note, too, a tendency to use smaller 
tarpon hooks than formerly; and they 
appear to be effective. One advantage 
they possess is that they hang the jack- 
fish more readily than do the larger 
hooks. Some tarpon fishermen might 
deem this to be a disadvantage, in that 
they are not fishing for jacks and do not 
want to be bothered with them. Except, 
though, for the fact that it does not 
leap from the water, the jackfish, pound 
for pound, puts up a much stronger fight 
than the tarpon. There is no fish that I 
have ever hooked which, considering its 
weight, beats the jack in fighting quali- 
ties. Its first cousin, the amber jack of 
Florida or coronado of Cuba, possibly 
ties it; but the yellow- tail of the Pacific 
Coast does not. The albicore is nearly its 
equal, and, possibly the tuna also, but 
never having hooked one of the latter, I 
cannot say. The leaping shark of the 
Gulf waters makes the jackfish look out 
for its laurels, but, pound for pound, he 
cannot beat it. The long runs of the 
kingfish are truly exciting, but that fish 
is quickly brought to gaff ; and the 
grouper or purgo mulato puts up a 
strong fight of a similar order. For real 
excitement, though, there is no fish that 
I have ever seen which equals the leaping 
tarpon — the king of all game fishes. 
Some of your readers may remark that 
thus far I have been doing a lot of talk- 
ing without telling them anything at all 
about our outing : consequently it may be 
time to drop dissertation and take up nar- 
rative. 
I N one sense I was quite fortunate in 
the date of my arrival, because until 
the day before it had been blowing 
hard constantly for two weeks. It had 
let up on that day, just enough to per- 
mit the tarpon fishermen to reach the 
fishing grounds, but only one tarpon was 
landed, although there were three boats 
out, one of them being occupied by a lady, 
who, I learned later, was a very skilful 
Shark caught with tarpon outfit by the 
author 
fisherwoman. The number of tarpon 
landed in 1918 at Port Aransas up to 
the time of my arrival was only 14. This 
was due not only to unfavorable weather, 
but also to a paucity of visiting sports- 
men. Many of the younger visitors of 
previous years had gone to the war ; and 
in those troublesome times the older ones 
could not leave their business for any 
great length of time. 
There had been reserved for me a 
young boatman by the name of Charlie 
(I have forgotten his surname) , and on 
the morning of May 23 we went around 
the end of the South Jetty in the motor 
boat, anchored it, and fished close to the 
jetty from the skiff. The first thing I 
noticed in starting out was that Charlie’s 
skiff was rather narrow; thirteen-foot 
yawl, and that it was provided with an 
arm chair, while I had been acustomed to 
a wide, sixteen-foot, flat-bottomed boat 
with a chair having a back but no arms. 
I did not like the innovation in boats and 
remonstrated. Charlie confessed that he 
had a fifteen-foot, flat-bottomed skiff, but 
stated that it was out of order. He said 
that the small yawls are now being used 
in tarpon fishing because the larger boats 
are too difficult to handle outside, where 
nearly all the tarpon fishing is done. I 
did not say anything about the chair, 
much as I dislike the interference of the 
arms when playing a fish; but it was 
not many minutes before I learned that 
the objectionable arms were really a 
necessity, for, had it not been for them, I 
should certainly have been pulled over- 
board by a heavy tarpon which I hung 
and landed. With a wide boat one can 
brace himself by spreading his feet, but 
in a narrow'-sterned yawl it is imprac- 
ticable to secure in that way any pur- 
chase worth mentioning ; hence the neces- 
sity for the arm-chair. 
My first strike was a five footer, but 
a very heavy fish for its length; and it 
gave me considerable work to land it, be- 
cause of my not being used to such a 
small boat in a rather heavy sea. Again, 
the rented tackle was not so good as my 
own, and the reel handle nipped me hard 
two or three times. Finally, however, I 
brought the fish to gaff, and Charlie took 
out the hook and released it. 
My second strike gave me a single 
jump, but the instant the bait touched the 
water after being thrown off by the tar- 
pon another one seized it, and I soon suc- 
ceeded in landing it — a heavy fish about 
5 feet 8 inches long. After that I had 
three more tarpon strikes, but failed to 
score. Two of them occurred when I was 
letting out the line, under which condi- 
tions one seldom succeeds in striking in 
the hook. The other one gave me eight 
jumps; but when Charlie was about to 
gaff it, the hook pulled out. 
The jackfish that morning were both 
plentiful and large. They generally 
stayed near the end of the jetty, conse- 
quently it was practicable, to a certain 
extent, to avoid them. I hung seven of 
them, but landed only three, varying in 
weight from 15 to 22 lbs. They cer- 
tainly did fight hard! 
We had started out with only 13 mul- 
let for bait, and at 11:20 A. M. the last 
one was gone, which necessitated a rather 
early return to the hotel. After lunch- 
eon, Charlie having secured some more 
bait, we returned to the end of the South 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 88) 
Port Aransas, Texas, looking south before the great tidal storm of 1919 wiped it almost completely out of existence 
