jaw, and its own weight must have stretched it by at least three inches. He is not, however, content with measuring it with the mouth open; he must needs add another four inches “for luck.” This is only a fair example of the manufacture of long and heavy fish, and a little study of such cases will go far to explain not merely the extraordinary shrinkage in the hands of the taxidermist, but also the otherwise incomprehensible fact of some sportsmen getting so large a percentage of the heavy fish, while others score only the average.
CHAPTER V
Ladies Who Love the Sport
CHAPTER V
LADIES WHO LOVE THE SPORT
There are generally some ladies in the company, indeed the gentler sex seems to have taken to tarpon fishing to an extent quite unforeseen when first men introduced the sport. It is wonderful, too, how ladies manage to hold on to these mighty fish, and to husband their strength, the department in which, in their excitement, they might reasonably be expected to fail. I have already mentioned the feat of the lady who killed her four tarpon in one morning. Considering that these fish weighed close on 100 lb. apiece, this was no mean achievement. This same woman, while beaching one of her first heavy fish early in the season, fell backwards over a few straws. She was too exhausted to stand upright again for some moments, but so excited was her imagination that she was firmly persuaded, until convinced by the evidence of her own eyes, that she had fallen over a log.
There were many other successful lady anglers. One of these caught and landed a jewfish scaling 137 lb., and this must have called for all her strength, for these jewfish have enormous power of resistance so long as they sulk at the bottom, which they do as if they were rocks. I have watched a man fighting with a 350-lb. jewfish, which he eventually succeeded in killing, though not without a severe tussle, which taxed his patience and his tackle in no small degree.
For a long time we thought he was playing a rock, after the manner dear to “Dibbler,” so little did the object in which the hook was fast seem to yield to his persuasions, and it was only the fact of his being too old a hand to be taken in by any such makebelieve that convinced us that big game was really in question. For a good twenty minutes hard pulling he cannot have moved that jewfish through more than fourteen feet of water, and all his labour would seem to be undone next moment, for the monster simply sinks to the bottom again and is doubtless trying to cut his line against some sharp coral edge. Yet his skill and patience have not in fact been thrown away, for the great fish is tiring. The next steady strain brings it appreciably nearer to the surface, and at last, after a giant’s contest lasting fully two hours, the three hundred and odd pounds of fish float blown and helpless on the top of the water, the vanquished monster looking more like a barrel than a fish.