In fishing with worm for bait, good fishermen say, it is better to choose a still, cloudy day indicating rain, as the fish are then hungry for insects. An expert trout-fisher will begin at the head of a stream and fish down it, always keeping some distance from the bank to avoid alarming the fish.
The speckled beauty, as the brook trout is universally called, as a food fish is by many considered unsurpassed, the flesh being firm and well flavored. Others, however, regard it as only an occasional delicacy.
CUBA AND THE SPORTSMAN.
DEER, WILD BOAR, AND MANY SPECIES OF GAME BIRDS FOUND IN ABUNDANCE—WATERS TEEM WITH FISH.
WHILE Cuba offers such a haven to the invalid, it is a paradise to the sportsman, wild game and fish of all kinds being abundant.
Parties of gentlemen on horseback, with their pack of hounds, hunt the fleet-footed deer. It is a common thing for a small party to kill eight or ten deer in a day.
The wild boar is plentiful, and sometimes, if cornered, dangerous, especially the old master of the herd, called "un solitario," which will tear a dog to pieces or make a green hunter climb a tree; but a Cuban easily kills him with a machete. The island boar sometimes weighs 200 or 300 pounds and has huge tusks, often five or six inches in length. The meat of the female is much relished by the natives. Wild dogs and cats, wild cattle, horses, and jackasses abound. But the jutia, peculiar only to Cuba, which looks like a cross between a squirrel with a rat's tail and a rabbit, and which lives in the trees and feeds on nuts and leaves, is the great delight of the Cuban.