Sun Hunting by Kenneth Lewis Roberts - HTML preview

CHAPTER XIII

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