I have seen more pompano about the beaches of Big and Little Gasparilla Keys of Charlotte Harbor, on the Gulf coast, than elsewhere in Florida. On their outside beaches, during the flood tide, the beach-fleas and pompano-shells come rolling in on every wave. The little mollusks disappear beneath the sand in the twinkling of an eye, but the crustaceans are again carried out by the receding wave. And this continues during the first half of the flood tide, during which time schools of pompano are feeding on them. On one such occasion myself and a friend were "flea-fishing" for pompano; that is, we were using fly-rods and very small hooks baited with beach-fleas, which we cast in the same manner as artificial flies. My friend, fishing at the water's edge, often forgot in his eagerness to step back to avoid each "ninth wave," which would wet him to his knees. However, in that warm, sunny clime the involuntary bath did him no harm, and he had his compensation in a basket of fine pompano, which were duly planked for dinner and eaten, bones and all,--for their bones are very soft and semi-cartilaginous. The head of a broiled or planked pompano is a _bonne-bouche_ that once eaten will ever be held in grateful and gratified remembrance. CHAPTER XVII THE CHANNEL FISHES The channels among the reefs and keys from Cape Florida to Key West and vicinity abound with a number of percoid, or perchlike, fishes, belonging to several families. They are mostly of small size, comparatively, but afford good bottom fishing. They are all good food-fishes and find a ready sale in the markets of Key West. Most of them are remarkable for their gay and brilliant coloration. The coralline formation of the keys and reefs renders the use of seines and nets impossible, so that all of the fishing for market is done with hook and line,--usually with sea-crawfish bait, though a few are taken in traps formed of heavy wire. The fishes consist of grunts, snappers, groupers, porgies, etc., and are carried to market alive in the wells of the small vessels known as "smackees." A fleet of larger vessels, mostly schooner-rigged, troll along the keys and reefs for the larger surface-feeding fishes, as kingfish, cero, Spanish mackerel, bonitos, large groupers and snappers, etc. The troll is usually a piece of bacon-skin cut of an elliptical shape to simulate a fish, and is impaled on a codfish hook with a snell of copper wire, and a laid cotton codfish line of a size nearly as large as a lead-pencil. The hooking and hauling aboard of the fish, while under sail, so disables it that it is killed by a blow on the head and carried to market on ice.