Tarpon

I love to catch Tarpon. For a short period in 1999, we had a Tarpon hole identified that almost guaranteed one or more large fish. It was not flyfishing, nor really sightcasting. But you could hook up and fight big fish until you were too tired to continue, usually about 2-3 fish. Understand that they will run about 200 yards or more  pulling enough drag to move the boat along behind them! A typical tarpon fight is about 20-30 minutes of hard work.

The fish shown on the left is one of a dozen or more I caught that year. A neighbor of my brother's is holding the fish as I unhook it. This one had really shaken his head as I pulled him out of the water. I found out later that the head shaking had torn many ligaments in my thumbs and left me in a cast for weeks!

My wife Ann has caught large tarpon like this, and Stuart hooked one on our last trip. It's my fault that it broke off, as we had been catching huge sharks, and I had tightened his drag up thinking it was a shark. Applying more pressure caused the fish to surface enough that we could see the "Silver King" just before the line parted. The whole family was annoyed at me for that! (Hey, I had a good excuse, Ann had just fought a huge shark to the boat. It was the width of the boat, which means it was over 8' long. Needless to say, we broke it off intentionally once we had a good look at it. )