ed down the boat and got our baits
overboard at once. I was using a ballyhoo bait hooked by a small hook
through the lips, with a second and larger hook buried in the body. R.
C. was using a strip of mullet, which for obvious reasons seems to be
the preferred bait from Palm Beach to Long Key. And the obvious reason
is that nobody seems to take the trouble to get what might be proper
bait for sailfish. Mullet is an easy bait to get and commands just as
high a price as anything else, which, as a matter of fact, is highway
robbery. With a bait like a ballyhoo or a shiner I could get ten bites
to one with mullet.

We trolled along at slow speed. The air was cool, the sun pleasant, the
sea beautiful, and this was the time to sit back and enjoy a sense of
freedom and great space of the ocean, and watch for leaping fish or
whatever might attract the eye.

Here and there we passed a strange jellyfish, the like of which I had
never before seen. It was about as large as a good-sized cantaloup, and
pale, clear yellow all over one end and down through the middle, and
then commenced a dark red fringe which had a waving motion. Inside this
fringe was a scalloped circular appendage that had a sucking motion,
which must have propelled it through the water, and it made quite fair
progress. Around every one of these strange jellyfish was a little
school of tiny minnows, as clear-colored as crystals. These all swam on
in the same direction as the drift of the Gulf Stream.

When we are fishing for sailfish everything that strikes we take to be a
sailfish until we find out it is something else. They are inconsistent
and queer fish. Sometimes they will rush a bait, at other times they
will tug at it and then chew at it, and then they will tap it with their
bills. I think I have demonstrated that they are about the hardest fish
to hook that swims, and also on light tackle they are one of the gamest
and most thrilling. However, not one in a hundred fishermen who come to
Long Key will go after them with light tackle. And likewise not one out
of twenty-five sailfish brought in there is caught by a fisherman who
deliberately went out after sailfish. Mostly they are caught by accident
while drags are set for kingfish or barracuda. At Palm Beach I believe
they fish for them quite persistently, with a great deal of success. But
it is more a method of still fishing which has no charms for me.

Presently my boatman yelled, "Sailfish!" We looked off