Farther out in the gulf stream are the kings of the heavy-weight scrappers—tuna; while between the keys and the mainland are the giant tarpon. These fish will fight for two, three and even four hours; and if, in their leapings to shake the hooks from their mouths they chance to fall in the boat, there is never any room for any one else.
The spectacles that one sees in these Florida waters are enough to make Izaak Walton take the pledge.
During one day’s fishing which I had off the keys with President James Allison of the Miami Aquarium and Cap’n Charley Thompson, champion tarpon-tracker of Biscayne Bay, a whip-ray twenty feet from wing to wing shot thirty feet into the air just ahead of our boat, falling back into the water with a crash that must have been heard a mile in every direction. Cap’n Thompson declared that this violent leaping was due to the fact that the whip-ray frequently feeds on clams. When he has gathered a bushel of clams into his stomach, he leaps high in the air and descends on his stomach. The resultant crash breaks all the clamshells and permits the ray to digest the clams. This doesn’t sound exactly right, but one should be careful about disbelieving any of these Florida stories. A little later a giant marlin or spear fish plunged out of the water among our three lines when each line had a dolphin fighting busily at its end. Cap’n Thompson estimated his weight at four hundred pounds, but three hours later he was estimating it at seven hundred pounds. At the end of the afternoon, when the lines were being reeled in preparatory to starting home, an eight-foot shark surged up from nowhere and removed my bait from beneath my hand. Fortunately, he removed the hook with it, and a few minutes later he was lashed fast to the stern of the boat, making a hurried trip back to Miami—where Director Louis Mowbray of the Aquarium spent a happy hour removing pilot fish and parasites from his nose and gills and tongue.
One can never tell what is going to turn up in Florida waters. The prospectuses of both winter and summer resorts usually lay it on a little too thick. The Miami prospectuses always sound very much too much. Starting with the bathing-girls on the front cover and ending with the proud fisherman on the back cover, they always look a little too perfect. The phrasing, too, seems a trifle sappy and fat-headed. “It’s June in Miami,” these prospectuses declare, “where winter is turned to summer.” They seem to rave over-wildly. “Miami welcomes you with the smile of the tropics,” rave these bits of passionate literature, “and the warmth of the unclouded sun is instilled in the hospitality of the greeting that awaits you here. Leave winter behind, fling care to the icy winds, come to Miami and play at being eternally young again. Here in Nature’s most alluring out-of-doors playground, under azure skies, amid fronded palms and riotous flowers, with song of bird, balmy air, and the benediction of glorious sunshine, find health, happiness and contentment.”
It seems like raving before you’ve been there. But after you’ve been there you recognize that the bathing girls and the fish are as advertised. As for the prospectuses, they don’t seem so violent after all. In fact, they seem pretty conservative.
THE END