PART II

Pass the Salt

“This salt-water fishing, it is for men with hard stomachs—like sex after lunch.”

—Charles Ritz, To Me, At Lunch

“. . . there is great pleasure in being on the sea, in the unknown wild suddenness of a great fish; in his life and death which he lives for you in an hour while your strength is harnessed to his; and there is satisfaction in conquering this thing which rules the sea it lives in.”

—Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“It is easy to tell tourists from tarpon. Tarpon have a narrow, bony plate inside the mouth on the lower jaw. Tourists (especially in St. Petersburg) have both upper and lower plates.”

—Ed Zern, How to Tell Fish from Fishermen