The Art of Big Game Fishing

By Read Country Books

"The Art of Big Game Fishing" is a detailed and profusely-illustrated handbook on catching large fish, with a particular focus on fishing in American waters. Although old, this volume contains a wealth of timeless information and is highly recommended for modern readers with an interest in fishing for big game. Contents include: "The Tarpons and the Gar-Fish", "Tarpon and other Big Fishes of Florida", "The Masheer and the Bola: Natural History and Classification", "Masheer Fishing", "Fishing-Rods and Tackle for Masheer". Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in a modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on the history of fishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Country Books
• Release date: Sep 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473343559

Book preview

CHAPTER I

THE TARPONS AND THE GAR-FISH

By G. A. BOULENGER, F.R.S., V.P.Z.S.

THE TARPONS (Elopidœ).

THESE fishes belong to the sub-order Malacopterygii, of which we have given a short definition in dealing with the salmon family, and they have often been associated with the herrings in zoological classifications. But they differ from the herrings in several important characters, such as the presence of an intergular bone, situated between the branches of the lower jaw, and the very high number of branchiostegal rays (over 20) supporting the gill-membranes, and of rays in the ventral fins (10 to 16), characters by which they approach the ganoid fishes which flourished in Mesozoic times. From the point of view of the evolution of fish types, the Elopidæ are a group of particular interest, being the survivors of a family very richly represented in Cretaceous seas, and now reduced to two genera, Elops and Megalops, each with two species, which may be regarded as the most archaic Teleostean fishes living.

The tarpon (Megalops), distinguished by very large scales and the prolongation of the last ray of the dorsal fin, is represented by the well-known species, M. atlanticus, in the West Atlantic, and by M. cyprinoides in the Indian Seas. The genus Elops, which differs in the smaller scales and the normal form of the dorsal fin, contains also two species, one of which, E. saurus, is distributed over all the warm and tropical seas, whilst the second, E. lacerta, is confined to the west coast of Africa, entering rivers. The young, at least those of the Elops, undergo metamorphoses somewhat similar to those of the eels; they are for a time elongate, band-shaped, and more or less transparent, after which stage they become gradually shorter and more compact, until they assume the proportions of the perfect