The tarpon

The tarpon by F. Gray Griswold is an angling treatise and natural history guide written in the early 20th century. It profiles the tarpon—its habitats, movements, behavior, and feeding—and instructs sportsmen in practical, often conservation-minded methods for finding, hooking, and releasing this celebrated game fish.

The book opens with the fish’s many local names and its warm-water range across the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Florida, the West Indies, and parts of Central and South America. Griswold sketches seasonal movements, notes their fondness for clear, brackish tidewater, suspects spawning near river head-tides, and explains air-gulping, cold sensitivity, and jumping. He interweaves vivid episodes from Florida and Cuba—keeping live mullet, adopting the Wilson spoon, and boating hooked fish in mangrove-lined rivers—while contrasting trolling, bottom, and drift techniques, favoring active hunting in shallow water and releasing mouth-hooked fish. A long, opinionated section traces tackle history, urging short split-bamboo rods, strong lines, and plain reels without drags for humane, skillful fights, and criticizing “coffee-grinding” drift methods and ultralight tackle. Practical advice follows on moon phases, tides, line care, and even insect and sun protection. He explains a girth-and-length weight formula, stresses prompt measuring, and closes with notable catches and statistics that suggest fewer very large fish—an implicit warning to respect and spare the “Silver King.”