There have now been some seven strikes, with only two tarpon landed, and sport is somewhat slack. A fair angler carelessly trailing her bait over the side is suddenly startled by the magnificent leap of a thirty-pound kingfish, a mighty mackerel, which all but wrenches the rod from her hands. Away it dashes, taking out line at an appalling pace, foul-hooked in the eye, but unable to free itself, and at last duly brought to gaff. What a handsome fish! Particularly noticeable are the knife-edged, conical teeth, that can cut baits just below the hook as with scissors, and the small proportion of its fin to its swimming power.
The kingfish is one of the swiftest swimmers in those seas, and the Spaniards recognise this by calling it “cavalla,” or the horse. I have shown two figures of kingfish, the one chasing a skipjack, its favourite food, below the surface, the other leaping in the air and throwing up a newly-hunted skipjack, an almost invariable habit. Indeed, a kingfish breaking water always appears to have a skipjack in readiness to throw up, and this, its next meal, accompanies it for about a third of its flight. Although the skipjack appears to be knocked out of the water by the kingfish, and sometimes shows bleeding rents in its sides, it may be that the leap is a voluntary one to avoid capture, for it is
A KING ACCIDENTALLY FOUL-HOOKED.
WITH LIGHTNING SPEED THE KING FISH CHASED THE LIVELY SKIPJACK.