FOREST AND S T R E A M 
551 
* 
An Illustration of “Do it Yourself” and Do it Successfully 
A Florida Fishing and Hunting Paradise 
Here Is a Little Spot that offers Winter Relaxation and Recreation 
for the Northern Sportsman and His Family 
By W. F. Rightmire. 
I n a recent letter you asked me why I “do '<ot 
send in for publication for the entertainment 
of my brothers of the rod and gun some ac¬ 
counts of my fishing and hunting trips from my 
home in Florida.” 
Which question I can only answer by saying 
that I have had no hunting trip in my nearly two 
years’ residence here, for when I first located here 
the fishing was so good that for nearly three 
months I did nothing but get bait, fish and give 
fish away if I could—if not to turn my catch 
loose for others to catch. 
And as the fishing was right at my door I gave 
no thought to hunting, but at the opening of the 
hunting season last November I secured a state 
hunting license, cleaned up my shotgun and ride, 
and was ready for big game, just as soon as the 
work of the office would let me get away for a 
few days. Every week one or more parties would 
go out from Stuart about eight miles and camp 
for two or three days, and return, each one having 
secured his legal quota of deer and wild turkey 
for the year, besides wild hogs, squirrels, coon, 
and for the party a bob-cat or two, and one or 
more black bear. While their accounts would 
make me more determined to go, yet the amount 
of work that accumulated in my office was so 
great and I kept postponing my trip, so that >he 
hunting season closed and I had not even fired die 
rifle or the shotgun, not even to go out for an 
afternoon, to get my limit of one day’s quail, 
twenty, under our Florida laws. Therefore I can¬ 
not tell my brother sportsmen about any of ny 
personal hunting trips in Florida. As for the 
fishing I have only been out once after black 
bass, and then I went with another party for an 
evening and morning of fly-fishing, but the bass 
would not rise to the fly, as the lake is full of 
bluegill sunfish (“Brim” here), on which the 
bass were feeding. 
The next morning we broke open the leaves 
and stalks of the water lily, and in some of the 
stems we found a white worm about one and one- 
half inches long, which we used on small hooks 
and caught nearly a dozen small sunfish which we 
used for bait in still fishing. We caught six large 
mouth black bass, that would weigh from four to 
seven pounds, and quit and came home. A few 
days afterwards a darkv wa; “fishing for Brim” 
in a nearby lake with a darkey’s outfit, a long 
cane pole, heavy line and large hook, and while 
pulling in a “Brim,” caught, at the full length if 
his line and pole, a big-mouth, (the local name 
for our black bass) took the brim, and he pulled 
it in, and brought is to town and sold it to St 
Lucie Hotel—a large-mcuth black bass, thit 
weighed a few ounces more than seventeen pounds. 
Therefore my partner on my trip and I concluded 
that we were not first class black bass fishermen. 
The fish are in such plenty that within one fourth 
of a mile of the office 1 can catch in an hour i le 
very best of salt water game fish that my family 
can use, and I have lost the zest for the sport, 
since I with another man in one hour caught off 
of the railway dock, three jew fish weighing re¬ 
spectively 480, 425 and 350 pounds, that othe-s 
helped drag up on the wharf, where we hung the 
fish up and weighed each one, and then gave them 
to a farmer, who hauled them out home and hur¬ 
ried them in his compost heap, to be made into 
fertilizer. One other morning two of us went 
out and in one hour’s troll got nineteen large 
bluefish and five three pound Spani h mackerel. 
Salerno, four and one-half miles by rail south 
east of Stuart, is only one mile by water from the 
ocean at the mouth of St. Lucie Inlet, and last 
week two men from Salerno went in their motor- 
boat through Manatee Bay to the Inlet, and 
trolled around in it for a half day and caught 155 
bluefish, many brouper, red snapper, and a few 
Spanish mackerel. On three separate days last 
week my daughter and I went out in my boat and 
fished by the end of a railroad bridge pier for 
