ELTINGE F. WARNER
RAY P. HOLLAND
Publisher
Editor-in-Chief
SONT FIGHT YOUR FISH AND CAME
Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1
MAY, 1933
GIVE THEM A FIGHTING CHANCE
oixteen-root Foot Jjoat B Fr om a Si Thrilling battles with big game fish fought from a tiny launch
By HAMILTON M. WRIGHT \UT how are you going to man
B
age?" said a bystander, looking at our cockle-shell craft. "If a
squall blows up while you're out in the Gulf Stream, you'll have to come in. And if you hook into a big fish, he's apt to sink you!" Nevertheless, I was going to try it. For seven years I had been fishing the Florida reefs and the Gulf Stream, under practically all weather conditions and in every kind of craft, from highpowered launches to those beamy com mercial fishing boats capable of stand ing out a hurricane. I had had sport— plenty of sport—but it always seemed to me that
the odds were too much
against the fish and that I wasn't getting all he had to give. The boat was too big, the motors were too powerful. It seemed to me that a light boat would even things up a bit. It might be dangerous, but it would certainly be thrilling. With these thoughts in mind, my friend Eugene and I chugged out into Biscayne Bay one bright February morning, bound for Key West, the reefs and the
shoals. Then, too, we were close to the
ocean. In a small boat, it opens up to you like a clear blue crystal, revealing the wonderful marine life below.
That afternoon, until we managed to make a landing on the northern tip of Key Largo, we weathered the tail end of one of the worst storms of the winter.
It had tied up shipping in the North and reached great force even in the Florida keys, drowning two boys who had ventured out to Cape Florida. The Berengaria, we later learned, had reached New York forty-eight hours behind time, after buffeting wild seas. In the Caribbean, the cold blasts be numbed countless tropical fishes which A'o/ tt torpedo, but a speeding barracuda
were cast ashore and often gathered up by the frugal natives and sold. At Key Largo, about fifty miles south of our starting-point, I saw a jewfish weighing 147 pounds so paralyzed by the drop in temperature that it had drifted ashore, to be found and towed to a fish house.
There, on the beach, I also picked up a grouper weighing about six pounds which was benumbed and threw it into the boat.
The weather being still too heavy outside, we went through one of the channels into the Gulf of Mexico and
dropped anchor to still-fish in a channel about a mile offshore. But the fish were
not biting. It was too cold. So I baited the grouper to a heavy shark hook with a chain leader, to which was attached three hun
dred feet of quarter-inch Manila rope, and threw it overboard. After the rope had paid off for 150 feet down the channel, it started to move swiftly, then tautened, swirling wildly. The boat swerved to port with a sudden list that threw us from our seats. Now the line was
pulling from the forward port
Gulf Stream. Our boat was six
thwart, but the anchor held. The
teen feet long and open. She
bow dipped deep, the boat was listing over. In a moment it would be overturned. Leaping to the bow, I cut the anchor
was
decked
forward
for
32
inches, and had a 4-inch coam
ing above the gunwales, giving her a little advantage in choppy weather. The power consisted of a one-cylinder 2l/>-h.p. motor, supplied by a seven-gallon gaso
line with a fish-knife, and we were off on a wild race.
deck. The little craft was very
KNEW from the heavy, swerving pull that it was a shark. Thrice in quick succes
strongly built of -;4-inch cedar
sion
strips, one inch deep. She took the waves like a duck, and could hang on the side of a big sea like a fly on a wall. Not a boat
pulling forward and sideways and forcing the boat at a tan gent to his course. Eugene then
to play in. to be sure; but shal
slack and attached the rope directly to the bow. Before we realized it, the shark had pulled us fully three miles from shore, taking our
line
tank
under
the
forward
low enough of draft to go up to any of the keys—a certain guarantee of thrills if we hooked a sailnsh in the Gulf Stream or
speared
a
large
ray
on
the
I
he almost
overturned us.
took the tiller. I worked in some
boat much faster than the seven