330 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 14, 1912 
PELICANS IN TAMPA BAY. 
Photo by Thos. H. Jackson. 
amberjack, three kinds of grouper and mutton- 
fish. One kingfish must have weighed thirty- 
five pounds, and an eighteen-pounder that I 
hooked in the back put up a most wearying fight 
before coming to gaff. There were some large 
barracouda also, but as usual the biggest one 
hooked got away. Leonard had it on and 
brought it near the launch, which had an un¬ 
fortunate habit of going slowly backward, when 
it was not moving ahead. The fish ran under 
the boat and tangled the line and snell in the 
revolving screw, escaping of course. It took a 
full hour for our boatman to clear the mess, 
and as he had to go overboard to do it, and as 
he swallowed considerable salt water during the 
operation, his temper—a disagreeable one by 
nature—was by no means improved. 
How much the pleasure of an outing depends 
upon the disposition of one’s guide or boatman! 
A disagreeable fellow can almost entirely spoil 
one’s sport by his surliness. No man who is'not 
blessed with a cheerful disposition and a pleasant 
address should ever aspire to guide or handle a 
boat for sportsmen, because he will surely fail 
to make a success of his calling. 
In the five days that we fished at Long Key 
we worked faithfully and tried every fishing 
ground within reach, going as far as the light¬ 
house on Alligator Reef, some fourteen miles 
distant from camp, but no place was very good, 
and the other sportsmen had similar luck, ex¬ 
cepting that one day one of the boat brought 
in twenty-two fish, mostly kingfish, and good 
ones. The kingfish are generally found from 
one to three or four miles from shore, the jack- 
fish close to land, and the other fishes out on 
the reefs, which are five or six miles from the 
island. 
We caught but one amberjack, and this I took 
on light tackle, as the tarpon reel that I had 
been using failed me. This fish weighed be¬ 
tween thirty and thirty-five pounds, and put up 
a tremendous fight for its size. I believe it is 
a harder fighter than the yellowtail of the Pac fic. 
What it would have done on the tarpon, outfit I 
cannot say, but it gave me all I could do to bring 
it to gaff with light rod and line, especially as 
the reel was not fitted with a drag of any kind, 
but merely a simple click. 
I was specially glad to take this amberjack— 
my first—as it settled in my mind a question of 
seven years’ standing, for that long ago I had 
caught in the Panuco Ricer at the mouth of the 
Pumisi, some four miles above the city of Tam¬ 
pico, both within an hour, two jackfish which 
were so much larger than any that I had ever 
seen that I imagined them to be amberjacks, but 
they were not. I now know that they were only 
overgrown jackfish. They were both of the 
same size, an even four feet long, and very 
chunky. I estimated their weight at fifty pounds 
each, and I am prone to underestimate a little 
the weights of fishes instead of overestimating 
as many do. 
The muttonfish I caught at Long Key was a 
beautiful fish—yellow body, pink fins and tail, 
and bright red eyes. It is one of the choicest 
table fishes in those waters, being considered 
quite as good eating as the red snapper. -We 
caught also two Nassau groupers, a mottled 
variety of the pargo having a pinkish tinge. 
After five days of this fishing, Leonard and I 
concluded that we could get better sport else¬ 
where for twenty dollars per day, but before 
seeking it, we decided to go to Havana, where 
I have a number of old college friends, and see 
what we could of the island of Cuba in a week’s 
visit. We were pleased to have had the experi¬ 
ence at Long Key, although the sport there is 
nothing like as good as I have had at Aransas 
Pass, Texas; Tampico, Mexico, or La Jolla, Cal. 
Moreover, it is by no means as good as certain 
writers in the sporting papers of late have 
claimed. The camp is prettily located among 
cocoanut palms, and is comfortable enough, al¬ 
though the table leaves much to be desired— 
possibly because all the food except fish is 
brought from a long distance and has a chance 
to become stale before being served. The rooms 
are all that any sportsman could ask for, and 
each camp house.is provided with a salt water 
shower bath that is simply a delight. The hotel 
rates for room and board run from $3.50 to $5 
per day. Nevertheless, the resort is a place best 
suited to millionaires, as boats, bait, tackle, etc., 
are very expensive. Later in the season.—April 
and May—the fishing is better, and there are 
some tarpon to be had, but it is hot there in the 
summer, and I imagine the mosquitoes must get 
pretty active then. We saw but few of them. 
The whole place is kept scrupulously clean and 
very attractive. 
As our doings in Cuba did not involve any 
sport, there is no need to say much about them 
here, except that Leonard and I had the time of 
our lives there, seeing my old friends, making 
new ones, entertaining and being entertained, 
taking long automobile rides into the country, 
inspecting the wreck of the Maine, seeing the 
sights of the city and s'teaming around Havana 
Harbor on a Government vessel. After a week 
of it we tore ourselves away, took steamer to 
Key West, another from there to Tampa, and 
train to Bartow, where, after a day spent in 
clearing up accumulated business correspond¬ 
ence, purchasing supplies, hiring vehicles, secur¬ 
ing dogs and making other preparations, we 
started on our trip to Lake Kissimmee. 
There were four of us in the party besides the 
negro teamster, viz., my old friend, Mr. W., to 
whom we are indebted for having planned and 
organized the trip; Mr. R., the proprietor of 
the livery stable, who is a good sportsman, an 
excellent shot and a first-class fellow, and our¬ 
selves. Mr. R. contributed three excellent hunt¬ 
ing dogs—two pointers, Lass and Di, mother and 
daughter, that were great fielders, and a setter 
called Max. Mr. W. took his old setter Joe, a 
good retriever and a fine worker on single birds 
or scattered coveys, but rather old for ranging. 
Max had an excellent nose, but was inclined to 
come to a stand on birds too far distant. How¬ 
ever, he found us a number of fine coveys by 
means of his supersensitive power of smell. Di 
was a good dog, but being young was not quite 
so staunch as the others, requiring an occasional 
correction from her master. 
Lass was our main standby, for she ranged 
afar, and when she found a bunch she held it 
until we hunted her up, which sometimes was no 
easy matter in the high palmettos. 
Our teamster left town about seven in the 
morning with instructions to camp at some con¬ 
venient spot in the sandhills near water and have 
a fire to guide us and a meal prepared for our 
arrival after dark. We did not leave town till 
after ten, and drove some fifteen miles in about 
three hours before stopping for lunch, passing 
over territory that had been shot out and not 
seeing a single quail on the way. However, we 
kept the dogs in the buggies all the time, which 
may account for our failure to see birds, because 
during the entire ten days spent on this trip we 
found only one bevy of quail without the aid of 
the dogs. 
Soon after lunch we left the well traveled road 
and took a more unfrequented one, letting the 
dogs run ; and in the course of three hours we put 
up seven bunches, some of which, though, were 
mere remnants. Our friends very kindly left 
practically all the shooting to Leonard and me, 
with the result that we bagged twenty-four—not 
a very good record for so many bunches. As I 
had not put gun to shoulder for two and a half 
years, I anticipated doing some bad shooting, 
but I found that although I missed some easy 
shots, I had not forgotten how to shoot, and 
that I could hold my own with Leonard and his 
