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Updated: June 14, 2025
My boatman, Captain Sam, and I kept a sharp watch on all sides for sailfish. I was using light tackle, and of course trolling, with the reel free running, except for my thumb. Suddenly I had a bewildering swift and hard strike. What a wonder that I kept the reel from over-running! I certainly can testify to the burn on my thumb.
The sailfish saw the shark and, waking up, he fought a good deal harder than before the sharks appeared upon the scene. He took off line, and got so far away that I gave up any hope that the sharks might not get him. There was a heavy commotion out in the water. The shark had made a rush. So had the sailfish, and he came right back to the boat. R. C. reeled in swiftly. "Hold him hard now!"
I know of one gentleman who told me he hooked a fish that he supposed was a barracuda, and while he was fighting this supposed barracuda he was interested in the leaping of a sailfish near his boat. His boatman importuned him to hurry in the barracuda so there would be a chance to go after the leaping sailfish. But it turned out that the sailfish was on his hook.
The morning of my greatest day with sailfish I was out in the Gulf Stream, seven miles offshore, before the other fishermen had gotten out of bed. We saw the sun rise ruddy and bright out of the eastern sea, and we saw sailfish leap as if to welcome the rising of the lord of day. A dark, glancing ripple wavered over the water; there was just enough swell to make seeing fish easy.
One fisherman out of a hundred will get his sailfish, but only one out of a thousand will experience the wonder and thrill and beauty of the sport. Sailfishing is really swordfishing, and herein lies the secret of my success at Long Key. I am not satisfied that the sailfish I caught were all Marlin and brothers to the Pacific Marlin.
R. C. was now handling the light tackle pretty roughly. It is really remarkable what can be done with nine-thread. In another moment we would have lost the sailfish. The boatman brought my rifle and a shot scared the shark away. Then we got the sailfish into the boat. He was a beautiful specimen for mounting, weighing forty-five pounds, the first my brother had taken.
This is one of the handicaps of light tackle. We went on fishing. Sailfish would jump around us for a while and then they would stop. We would not see one for several minutes. It is always very exciting to be among them this way. Presently I had one take hold to run off slowly and steadily, and I let him go for fifty feet, and when I struck I tore the hook away from him.
This one thing, then, I believe I have proved to myself that the sailfish is the gamest, the most beautiful and spectacular, and the hardest fish to catch on light tackle, just as his brother, the Pacific swordfish, is the grandest fish to take on the heaviest of tackle. Long Key, indeed, has its charm. Most all the anglers who visit there go back again.
We covered several places where we had seen the sheetlike splashes; and at the third or fourth I felt the old electrifying tap at my bait. I leaped up and let my bait run back. The sailfish tapped again, then took hold so hard and ran off so swiftly that I jerked sooner than usual. I pulled the bait away from him. All this time the boat was running. Instead of winding in I let the bait run back.
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