lers who visit there go
back again. Only the queer ones--and there are many--who want three
kinds of boats, and nine kinds of bait, and a deep-sea diver for a
boatman, and tackle that cannot be broken, and smooth, calm seas always,
and five hundred pounds of fish a day--only that kind complain of Long
Key and kick--and yet go back again!

Sailfish will draw more and finer anglers down to the white strip of
color that shines white all day under a white sun and the same all night
under white stars. But it is not alone the fish that draws real
sportsmen to a place and makes them love it and profit by their return.
It is the spirit of the place--the mystery, like that of the little
hermit-crab, which crawls over the coral sand in his stolen shell, and
keeps to his lonely course, and loves his life so well--sunshine, which
is best of all for men; and the wind in the waving palms; and the
lonely, wandering coast with the eternal moan out on the reefs, the
sweet, fresh tang, the clear, antiseptic breath of salt, and always by
the glowing, hot, colorful day or by the soft dark night with its
shadows and whisperings on the beach, that significant presence--the
sense of something vaster than the heaving sea.

_Light Tackle in the Gulf Stream_

In view of the present controversy between light tackle and heavy tackle
champions, I think it advisable for me to state more definitely my stand
on the matter of light tackle before going on with a story about it.

There is a sharp line to be drawn between light tackle that is right and
light tackle that is wrong. So few anglers ever seem to think of the
case of the poor fish! In Borneo there is a species of lightning-bug
that tourists carry around at night on spits, delighted with the
novelty. But is that not rather hard on the lightning-bugs? As a matter
of fact, if we are to develop as anglers who believe in conservation and
sportsmanship, we must consider the fish--his right to life, and,
especially if he must be killed, to do it without brutality.

Brutal it is to haul in a fish on tackle so heavy that he has no chance
for his life; likewise it is brutal to hook a fish on tackle so light
that, if he does not break it, he must be followed around and all over,
chased by a motor-boat hour after hour, until he practically dies of
exhaustion.

I have had many tarpon and many tuna taken off my hooks by sharks
because I was using tackle too light. It never appeared an