While there's a strong northeast wind pushing against a flood tide, it's pleasantly warm. You were last here, on this spot ten years ago, as the Victorian Era was ending and the Edwardian period began. And it shouldn't come as a surprise, at the beginning of the twentieth century, that you are among a growing army of American adventurers in search of new places to explore. Not just fisher-folk and sailors and vacationers seeking out places like the southwest coast of Florida but across the nation. New arrivals are, well, arriving everywhere. Three years ago Robert Perry arrived at the North Pole; and speaking of cold, it will be another year from now before the first electric refrigerator will arrive in a showroom in Chicago. And closer to home, just last year a new owner, John Kerr's nephew, arrived on this island. The same year Punta Gorda got its first movie theater, but a year too early for the first theater newsreel to report the event.

Plus the sport of tarpon fishing is about to see a dramatic change. The release hook. Catch and release not only stopped the need for a kill, but dramatically changed tarpon fishing. Scanning the years from 1912 to 1916, 472 were caught in 1912, followed by 289 in 1913, then 352 in 1914, almost the same in 1915, 340. And in 1916 1,301. Edward vom Hofe, the inventor of the now-famous tarpon reel, like clockwork, arrived on the island with his wife in January. In March, Barron Collier, his wife and two sons were here. And a little over a week later the man Collier bought the island from, J.M. Roach, came back for some tarpon fishing. In May 27, a record 58 tarpon were caught; two days later 63. A record catch on the ninth of May was 77. And also because of catch and release a new word came into the fishing lingo. 'Liberate.' Just this month Ben Crowninshield in one day "liberated" 11 fish. A 145-pound tarpon was the largest.