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Updated: May 14, 2025
It took me an hour to tire out this sailfish, and when we got him in the boat he measured seven feet and six inches, which was four inches longer than any record I could find then. At eleven o'clock I had another in the boat, making four sailfish in all. We got fourteen jumps out of this last one.
Sailfish were observed in the East Indies by Renard and Valentijn, explorers of that region from 1680 to 1720, and by other Eastern voyagers. No species of the genus was, however, systematically described until 1786, when a stuffed specimen from the Indian Ocean, eight feet long, was taken to London, where it still remains in the collections of the British Museum.
"Not at all," was the reply, "the spear-fish is a variety of the great sailfish, which you see in West Indian waters six or seven feet long, with a huge dorsal fin, blue with black spots, looming above the water like the sail of a strange craft. But the real difference is in the spear or sword.
The Atlantic fish are very much smaller than those of the Pacific, and are differently marked and built. Yet they are near enough alike to be brothers. There are three species that I know of in southern waters. The Histiophorus, the sailfish about which I am writing and of which descriptions follow. There is another species, Tetrapturus albidus, that is not uncommon in the Gulf Stream.
An enormous sailfish dazzlingly metallic blue and silver broke from the calm water just ahead, and whirled high in air, smiting the bay again with a splash that sounded like a gunshot. "That fellow must have been close to seven feet long," commented Milo as the two men watched the churned water where the fish had struck. "He's the kind you see when you aren't trolling.
This is a gruesome tale of the sea and I put it here only to illustrate the incomparable savageness of these tigers of the Gulf Stream. The captain put the fish away and cleaned up the boat and we resumed fishing. I ate lunch holding the rod in one hand, loath to waste any time on this wonderful day. Sailfish were still jumping here and there and far away.
The name given to the Brazilian sailfish by Marcgrave, the talented young German who described the fish in the book referred to, and who afterward sacrificed his life in exploring the unknown fields of American zoology, is interesting, since it gives a clue to the derivation of the name "boohoo," by which this fish, and probably spear-fish, are known to English-speaking sailors in the tropical Atlantic.
Presently my boatman yelled, "Sailfish!" We looked off to port and saw a big sailfish break water nine times. He was perhaps five hundred yards distant. My boatman put on speed, and, as my boat is fast, it did not take us long to get somewhere near where this big fish broke. We did our best to get to the exact spot where he came up, then slowed down and trolled over the place.
We ran out to the buoy and found the Gulf Stream a very dark blue, with a low ripple and a few white-caps here and there. Above the spindle we began to see sailfish jumping everywhere. One leaped thirteen times, and another nineteen. Many of them came out sidewise, with a long, sliding plunge, which action at first I took to be that made by a feeding fish.
Then in fifteen minutes more R. C. had him up where we could see his purple and bronze colors and the strange, triangular form of him, which peculiar shape came mostly from the waving sail. I thought I saw other shapes and colors with him, and bent over the gunwale to see better. "He's got company. Two sharks! You want to do some quick work now or good-by sailfish!"
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