The turtles come ashore in the warm May nights to lay their eggs, and the female, as soon as she touches land, raises her head and peers cautiously around to see that the coast is clear. Satisfied on this point, she scrambles on to the dry sand and above high-water mark, scrapes a hole and therein deposits her eggs, covers them up, and returns to the sea. Three sittings she will lay each season, and many a banquet is thus provided for raccoons. It is at this laying season that so many turtles are procured for the market, and many a loggerhead finds its way into the real green turtle soup.
In their wanderings below the surface they not infrequently get foul of a line, but, so hard is their skin, that the hook seldom penetrates. Some idea of the toughness of the skin may be formed when it is mentioned that even the strongest men can with difficulty pierce it with a gaff. When they chance to foul a line they are generally played for about half an hour, after which they show once and then go free. On one occasion the harpooner of the party slowly and cautiously approached a basking loggerhead, his right arm poised, his weapon ready to strike. Then, slowly, it was lowered; the turtle must have been dead at least a week. Yells of laughter greeted his discovery, for the decaying reptile had drifted down the whole line of boats, reaching him the last, and had even deceived one or two of their inmates into fetching out their gaffs.
CHAPTER IX
Catfish as Scavengers
CHAPTER IX
CATFISH AS SCAVENGERS
With the exception of the sharks, which, vermin as they are, give a measure of sport under favourable conditions, I have now disposed of most of the really big game of the Florida coast waters, and it remains to draw the reader’s and intending visitor’s attention to the number of other sea-fish that on occasion give excellent sport in those latitudes. I have often thought that in the all-absorbing ambition for the record tarpon some of these humbler fish, which would themselves create a sensation in English waters, are too consistently neglected. The sharks shall receive notice where their low standing as vermin relegates them, at the end of the book.
It may be complained, particularly by those who have never been on the spot, that I have passed too lightly over the real art of tarpon fishing, made too little of its difficulties, laid too much stress on the simplicity of success. Well, these are matters of opinion. I never, in my own tarpon experiences, found a single instance where real skill and expert knowledge were nearly so important as brute strength and endurance, and I write only of what I know. Those who like detailed instructions in the art of tarpon fishing should consult the back files of Forest and Stream, the great American fishing paper, and in these they will find innumerable excellent articles and letters on the subject. In a quite recent volume, for instance, I find an admirable series of tarpon papers from the pen of Mr. J. A. L. Waddell, and I append, as a specimen of the detail with which some of these writers lovingly handle their subject, Mr. Waddell’s twelve ways in which a tarpon may be lost by the careless or ill-starred.
1. By failure of the hook to penetrate a soft place.
2. By the cutting of a hole in the mouth, from which the hook drops when the line is slackened.