“Look out! There’s a shark after your tarpon. Where’s your gun?”
“Now, then, you there; where are you shooting?”
And so on, and so on. Six mad tarpon, six mad fishers, six mad guides, and six quite unmanageable boats dashing about in confusion among near a score of others. This it is that makes tarpon fishing so fascinating once you get the true spirit of the thing. In those two hours that we have been out just nineteen fish were landed out of fifty or sixty strikes, and more than one boat never got a touch.
As soon as the tide runs too strong boat after boat is pulled ashore, and every one seeks a shady nook for luncheon, generally under the lighthouse. Here in the cool we munch our sandwiches and talk tarpon, every other subject being tabooed at Boca Grand. And how wonderfully has that big fish of yesterday increased in the night! It was really a fine fish, scaling, as a matter of fact, 171 lb., and needed no editing. Yet the man who weighed it called 181 lb. The fortunate angler added a matter of 10 lb. for loss of weight in transport to the scales. This somewhat generous allowance for wear and tear brought its already respectable weight up to 191 lb. That was last night. To-day he speaks of it as “close on 200 lb.,” and we can infer what that will mean as soon as he gets back home.
Then, as to its measurements, he left it hanging out last night, and measured it alone this morning. It hung by one
THE KING FISH LEAPT SOME 20 FEET INTO THE AIR, AND UP WITH HIM CAME A SKIPJACK DEEPLY GASHED ALONG THE SIDE.