The bait used, is the soft part of the silver mullet, and the providing of this bait was one of the greatest troubles we had. Each person requires at least one dozen mullet a day, and the natives are very lazy about catching them. We used to be down on the pier sometimes, with the tide just right for starting, only to be told that the bait had not come, and then we had to wait, fuming and fussing, for nearly an hour perhaps, with all our chances of getting off on the flood tide disappearing. At last a coloured man would come sauntering along with the long-looked-for bait, and would meet all our remonstrances with the most hopeless and exasperating good humour, and probably the same thing would be repeated the next day. At Fort Myers however, we had less trouble about it, our guides being white men, who very often caught the mullet themselves. Such nice, cheery fellows these guides were, most amusing and interesting companions, and real sportsmen. After we had been at Fort Myers a few days, I caught my first tarpon. He was a fine fellow, 6 ft. 7 in. long, and weighing 147 lbs. He gave me a very hard fight indeed, lasting for an hour and twenty-five minutes. I never felt so sorry for anything in my life as I did for that tarpon as I played him. He made such a plucky struggle for life, and was worthy of a better antagonist, for he could not know that it was no skill on my part that finally conquered him, but a sheer determination to get the better of him. I was thankful indeed when at last I succeeded in working him near enough for Santi to gaff, for my arms and thumbs were absolutely numb with the enormous weight and strain. One very quickly learns the knack of playing the fish and tiring them out, and I rarely took longer than twelve or fifteen minutes, and sometimes less, in killing my fish after a little practice. The tarpon were late in coming up the river the year we were there, owing to the water being very cold after the dreadful "freeze" which devastated so many flourishing orange plantations, so that the fishing was not really good till about the middle of April. From then till we left, however, about the 15th of May, we had splendid sport, killing forty-eight tarpon between us, of which seventeen fell to my share. My husband's biggest kill in one day was five, mine was three, and I found that quite enough, for though it does not take long in point of time, to kill your tarpon when once he is hooked, the strain on all your muscles is enormous. It calls all your faculties into play, as may be imagined, to kill a 150 lbs. fish on a small rod, and a line no thicker, if as thick, as a salmon line. The one thing to avoid is letting your reel over-run. If that happens, and it easily does, for the reels are on ball bearings and run at a touch, your fish is practically lost, you can rarely clear the line again.