OF FLORIDA FISHING--OF THE TIGERISH BARRACUDA AND THE SURPRISED-LOOKING
DOLPHIN--OF THE UNCONVENTIONAL HABITS OF THE WHIP-RAY AND THE VARYING
ESTIMATES OF CAP’N CHARLEY THOMPSON--AND OF THE CONSERVATIVE RAVING OF
THE MIAMI PROSPECTUSES
The Florida keys drip down from the end of the peninsula on which Miami
beach is built, and would doubtless be compared by Senator Lodge or the
late Robert Browning to a necklace of jade and gold, or to mango on
mango that o’erlace the sea, or something similarly poetic. Among,
between and around these keys is found the greatest fishing in the
world. Florida fishing is about as much like the ordinary conception of
fishing as prize-fighting is like fox-trotting. Instead of sitting
contemplatively over a rod and reel with a pipe in his mouth and a
dreamy look in his eyes, and occasionally snaking a small fish out of
the water in a leisurely manner, the Florida fisherman crouches over
his rod with taut muscles and enters knock-down and drag-out fights with
bundles of concentrated energy that leave him as sore and limp and
blistered as though he had been wrestling with the Twentieth Century
Limited.
Speedy motor-boats slip away from Miami landing-stages and reach the
fishing grounds in an hour. Over the reefs, on whose rocky peaks lie the
skeletons of many an ancient wreck, wait the barracuda, sometimes known
as the tigers of the sea. They are long, slim, silvery fish, rather like
enormous pickerel, and their jaws are set with heavy dog-teeth. They
average between four and five feet in length; and as the fisherman sits
in the stern of a motor-boat with his bait spinning along thirty yards
astern, he can see the barracuda following, following along behind the
bait like a thin gray shadow. The barracuda is always there and always
hungry; so when all other game fish fail, the fishermen turn to him.
When he finally decides to take the bait, he takes it with such vigor
that the fisherman feels that a steamer trunk has fallen on the tip of
his rod. The rods are stiff as iron and the big reels have drags on them
that would stop a race-horse in a hundred yards; so the average
barracuda seldom fights more than ten minutes. All game fish, of course,
are caught by trolling from the back of a motor-boat traveling from six
to ten miles an hour.
Out a little farther toward the gulf stream are the golden dolphins,
thin and surprised-looking fish, much smaller than the barracuda, but
better fighters. There, too, is the husky amberjack, that fights for
twenty minutes and more in spite of the heavy drag on the reel. The
prettiest welter-weight fighter of the Florida waters is the sailfish, a
blue and silver torpedo, five and six and seven feet in length, with a
spear for a nose and a lateen sail for a dorsal fin. He is a finicky
striker; and when he is at the bait one feels only a slight jar. The
lightness of the touch usually means sailfish; and when it comes, the
fisherman releases his drag and lets his line run out fifteen or twenty
or even thirty feet. Then he snaps the drag back into place and hoists
his rod with a mighty heave without further inquiry. Frequently the
sailfish is at the end of the line, in which case the fun begins--the
sensation being about the same as holding a bucking bronco at the end of
a fifty-yard rope. If an amateur is holding the rod, the end of the
thirty or forty-five minute fight finds him calling in a weak and
trembling voice for a large drink of varnish or some similar
restorative, and he spends the remainder of the trip pricking and
caressing the blisters on his hands.
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