I was miraculously lucky in never losing a fish through breaking the line, but the danger of letting your reel over-run has been very strongly impressed on me, and you quickly find out how much strain you dare put on the rod. The great point to be remembered is always to keep the rod as upright as possible, and your thumb on the brake.
I think very few things can equal the keen excitement of playing a tarpon. You may have been sitting in the boat perhaps for hours, on the look-out for the bubbles on the water, and the sound of the "puff," which show a tarpon is feeding near. Your line, of which twenty yards or so have been coiled loosely in the bottom of the boat, suddenly begins to creep out, gently, almost invisibly. You think, as you see it, "it is those wretched cat-fish again," but no, it is too determined and continuous for that. You watch the line, breathless with excitement, till nearly all is gone, and the pace gets quicker and quicker, then you take the rod up carefully, so as not to interfere with the line, for at this stage the very slightest jerk or stoppage of the line will cause the tarpon instantly to spit the bait out. Now the line is whizzing out. You strike with all your might and main, and have a confused feeling of having hooked an avalanche, an earthquake and a thunderbolt all in one, for instantly a huge mass of shining silver leaps yards high into the air, falling with a mighty splash, to leap again, and again, and again. Your reel is screaming as the line whistles out, but long before the tarpon has finished his first leaps the guide has hauled up his anchor and is away, rowing with all his strength down on the fish, which soon settles down to a long, steady, dash downstream. You do your utmost to make him leap again and so exhaust himself, by reeling up a yard or so of slack at a time, then pausing with both thumbs hard on break and line as he throws himself wildly out of the water. But away he goes again, taking out perhaps every foot of line on the reel, and again you reel up, working him hard. Slowly and by degrees his leaps become shorter and fainter, you work him nearer and nearer the boat till he lies exhausted on his side, but with one wary eye on the gaff, ready to slew round and make another dash for life and liberty. But you hold him tight. One skilful blow with the gaff, and another gallant fish has met his fate.
MRS. MURPHY-GRIMSHAW
ON BOARD THE TARPON BOAT.
A rope is passed through his gills, and in triumph you return to the sailing-boat, there to tie him up. This all sounds very simple and straight forward, but there is no end to the tricks of which a tarpon is capable. He will dash backwards and forwards beneath the boat, till you think no power on earth can ever prevent your line becoming hopelessly entangled with yourself or the oars, he will double up and down, and round and round, he will even leap clean over the boat, often threatening to land himself inside it, and so swamp you. On one occasion a fish I had hooked started away up stream, then suddenly turned in his tracks, met the buoy of our anchor, took three clean turns round it, and continued his mad career towards the Gulf. I thought all was over, but Santi by some marvellous tour-de-force somehow unwound it, shouting as he did so "Let your line out as hard as you can," and away we went. All this with a tide running about seven knots an hour, and the boat swinging wildly in mid-stream. We killed that fish, which greatly surprised us both.
One hears wonderful stories of fishermen being towed many miles by tarpon, and one Englishman we met had been over four hours one day having a desperate fight with a very large fish, which I believe he lost in the end. After we had been at Fort Myers some time, we heard great accounts of the sport to be had at a place called Captiva, an island in the Gulf of Mexico. We were also told it was a very dangerous form of tarpon fishing there, as the place where you fish is a very narrow pass between two islands, where there is always a tremendous sea running, so that you are liable to be swamped. They also told us it would be quite impossible for a woman to attempt to land a tarpon there, as owing to the rapid tide you must land in order to play your fish, and this entails running up and down the beach after him, which is very hard work with a heavy fish. All this naturally made us much keener to go, so we made our preparations, which had to be considerable, as the only accommodation on the Island consisted of two or three fishermen's huts. We laid in a couple of small camp bedsteads, while sheets, pillows, blankets, and the ever necessary mosquito curtains were lent us by our host at the hotel. We also invested in a tin plate, mug, knife and fork each, a few cooking utensils, the largest tin bowls we could find to tub in, a large supply of tinned provisions, chickens, ice, in fact, all we could think of. Then we found a coloured cook, a vast and very cheery young man, who turned out an excellent chef. Finally we started, with our guides and tarpon boats—and towing our sailing-boat—on the steamer which plies every other day between Punta Gorda and Fort Myers, and which passes within a mile of Captiva Island.
Captiva is a dream of loveliness, lying like a pearl on the sapphire-blue, ever changing waters of the Gulf of Mexico—an enchanted garden where all the ordinary troubles and cares of life seem to have no place. As we landed for the first time on its snowy beach, where the brilliantly green trees and vegetation come down almost to the water's edge, and cast intense violet shadows on the low-growing cactus, with its yellow, starlike blossoms and redly purple fruits, and gazed out on the wondrous waters of the Gulf, where every exquisite shade of palest and brightest emerald green gradually deepened into softest yet most vivid blue, we felt we had indeed chanced on the Land of the Lotus Eaters, and that here we could spend our days in dreaming blissful dreams, far away from the multitudinous cares of civilisation. Life was so simple there, one's requirements narrowed down in a remarkable way. The climate is so exquisite, with the blazing sun tempered by breezes from the Gulf, and the hut we had was a simple structure of two or three poles thatched with palm leaves, into which you entered by a square hole in the wall. Guiltless of furniture was the hut, beyond two trestle-like tables, on one of which I erected my bed, to escape the numberless cockroaches which infested the thatch.
Our meals we had in the other hut, where cooking went on, and what delicious repasts they seemed to us. They generally consisted of fish, soup or chowder, a sort of "olla podrida" of bits of chicken, vegetables, green corn, anything our chef could lay his hands on, or fried fish fresh caught, and such delicious varieties of these there were too, and bananas fresh or cooked. We always marvelled at the inventive genius of our coloured Soyer. But in reality you never think of being hungry, or thirsty, or tired, or anything else at Captiva, you feel quite superior to all bodily wants.