CHAPTER IV
A LIVELY MORNING IN THE PASS
I will now endeavour to describe a typical morning’s tarpon fishing in the Pass, and one such morning will, with varying results, be found much as another. The tides of Boca Grand are erratic, yet the guides must have an accurate knowledge of their vagaries, since on them depends the duration of the fishing-time. Only in slack water can tarpon be fished for with any comfort. The tide is, in fact, slacking, as four and twenty boats drift rapidly down through the Pass and out towards the Gulf, to row back close in shore and out of the current, and repeat the process.
Presently, as the tide is all but done, some one gets a strike; up comes a hundred-pounder a second or two later, eight feet in the air, shaking his head in fury until his gills rattle loudly, then, with a plainly audible grunt, shaking free first the leads, then the bait, and finally the hook, all in about a second of time. This performance, however disturbing to the novice, barely attracts the notice of the old hand, for he is well accustomed to such treatment, and does not regard his hook as fast until the fish has made its second jump in vain. Still, the sight of the fish acts like a magnet on the other boats, which are now being rowed towards the favoured spot with all the strength of their guides, who well know that, like most of the herring tribe, tarpon feed in shoals.
And now I see that the lady-angler who yesterday landed four tarpon, is fast into another. Up it comes and dashes straight into old “Orange Blossom’s” boat, all but knocking the old man overboard, and wetting him through and leaving abundance of slime and scales on his coat; then, with a couple of kicks that break an oar and knock a crack in the boat, the tarpon flounders over the side. She must have lost it! No; it is still on, and there is no doubt about its being well hooked. The guide is now making frantic efforts to get his boat out of the press and towards the shore.
Meanwhile there have been two other strikes; one of the fish got away at the first jump, the other is playing the deuce all round, and now it is steering straight for “Dibbler’s” boat. “Reel up!” yells the guide, but that is more than “Dibbler” can do, for is he not fast in his customary jewfish? About three of these great fish “Dibbler” hooks every day, and always in the same spot, losing them all with unfailing regularity through
A GOOD CATCH OF TARPON FOR A LADY.