Evening star., 1901-05-20
THE SILVER KING
One of the Most Beautiful of All
Game Fish.
PUTS Up A SPLENDID FIGHT
Exciting Sport in Florida and Texas
Waters.
TRIES THE ANGLERS SKILL
Written for The Evening Star by Charles Frederick
Holder.

Written for The Evening Star by Charles Frederick
Holder.
Mentally viewing the procession of fishes,
game and otherwise of many waters which
it has been my good fortune to see and
catch there is one. the Grande Escaiile,
tarpon or silver king" which stands out
in lines of silver. strong. distinct and beau
tiful. Imagine a herring or saTdine-he of
the tin-box variety-lengthened out TO five
or six feet; pour molten silver over half of
the two by two and half inch scales of
the under surface and sides, enamel the
back steel blue, now endow your creation
with a fierce and determined spirit,
agility to cleave the afr thirty feet in a
horizontal direction and ten feet vertically,
and YOU have the SILVER king of Florida
and Texas. the fish of mystery, whose
young have never been seen, and who
comes from no one knows where in spring,
returning to no mans land in winter,
after having garnered hundreds of dollars
worth of tackle and toyed with scores of
luCkleSS anglers.
first saw the fish far out on the Florida
reef. l had habit of crawling out under
a wharf on platform to fish and watch
quietly eyeing the motley thrOng mighty
tarpOn came slowly in and stopped not five
feet from me, in water so shallow that its
tall, spiked dorsal waved in the air. 1 al
should fade away, and there | feasted my
eyes upon his gOodly proportions. The fol-
lowing day | cOnfided TO my black boat
man. Sandy. of happy memories that
l proposed TO take a tarpOn with a line.
''lor, mdrster. yuse done gone crazy, .sho'.
Why. catcher fish nebber has been cotched"
was his rejoinder. Not that day, nor the
next. did the tarpOn appear; but regularly
Sandy waded around the key with his cast
net garnering fresh mUllets for bait and
daily cast a line on the edge of blue
channel and waited. Sharks, rays, mur-
rays and many more came in, and finally
one hot morning, Sandy lay asleep on
the beach my line between his uplfted big
and second toes, something seized the line
and carried 1t slowly out. l took il in
hand. and thinking il a shark hooked the
unknown, when there rose into the air six
feet Of molten silver, that threw broad
east myrladS of rainbow hues shaking a
massive head and pugnacious jaw to the
castanets Of the wire leader then falling
with tremendous crash.
Worth Fighting For.
The end of the line was fastened about
Sandy's ample waist. and at the apparition
he grasped a pile embedded in the sand
and held on while 1 played the fish on
the right was shallow lagoon-the bench
OF the shallow coral key; to the left the
deep channel. The tarpon took TO the shall
lows; now surging away like raw of sill
very liSht-now in the air-a splendid spec-
tacle. starting a flock of laughing gulls
and some demure pelicans, and taking me
up the beach on the run. Suddenly the fish
turned and went directly out. and as my
line was very light ! was urged into the
water, step by step. until l was waist deep
two hundred feet from shore. More than
once | was almost carried off my feet by
the fish. In this unique and unusual way
i played the tarpon for half an hour; now
gaining. now losing; Sandy running up and
down the beach. adjuring me TO keep him
ftIf a Fh 81 md
sharks; praising me when / turned the
fish and hurlins anathemas at it when it
urged me toward the channel. But in time
i Wore the great game out, gradually back
ed in shore, and Sandy gated it by taking
it by the gills and hauling it up on the
beach, where it pounded about like an In
dia rubber ball.
Later ne informed his companions on the
reef with cvmmendable zeal that he had
done tOIc marster how TO do it and thus
became . hero. the size of thexfsh increas-
ing with each telling until THE tarpon
which weighed five hundred pounds had
dragged him from the beach into the water
and two hundred yards over the reef mean
time leaping from forty to fifty feet into
the air. / finally dropped out of the story
altogether. and Sandy and his tarpon be-
came the piece de resistance of every gath
ering on the outer reef.
The remarkable agility of the tarpon rem
cers II fish to be handled with care.
have been told that a well-known angler
while fishing had a tarpon leap into the
Sir and in falling pass completely through
the bottom of the boat. Along the Louis
lana coast fishermen hauling seines have
been killed by the tarpon striking them in
the breast while trying TO escape from the
Eet; men have also been stunned and
knocked overheard by them.
Where They May He Found.
The tarpon fishing extends not only
up the gulf coast of Florida and on the
eastern shore. but some of the finest fish
ing is 10 be had at Aransas Pass, Texas.