I was born in 1974, so I missed the peak of Andy Mills’ skiing career and I tend to think of him as a tarpon angler first.
Monte Burke (a real writer, not a hack like me) wrote up a great piece about Andy in Garden & Gun, which is the weirdest title for a magazine that I actually want to read.
This has me thinking about tarpon, one of the other fish I share some brain space with. Tarpon. Mostly, tarpon have kicked my ass. I’ve landed one adult tarpon and three juveniles. I’ve broken a rod on a lost fish, probably jumped 5, fed 20 and nearly wet myself on several more. My interest in tarpon is in direct contrast to my success in angling for them.
Next May I have a conference in Ft. Lauderdale and I’m going to tack on a few days on the back end to try to add another to the tally. My most haunting failures in angling are pretty much all tarpon related.
I envy Andy Mills his talent and his success. I won’t be Andy Mills. I won’t be Nick Mills. I don’t need a thousand fish to the boat, but I would like to hold one more by the lower jaw and look into that massive saucer-sized eye.
Martin tells me they also come in Men’s sizes.
- If you liked the story above, check out these stories below
- The two handed strip for tarpon (1.000)
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Tags: Andy Mills, Florida, Tarpon
Cool read. Met him in Aspen last week and got to cast a fly rod with him for a bit. He was hired for a company thing my wife won and he hosted the fishing group. He gave me a couple pointers in improving my cast, but he focused more on the people who were novice to average casters and just told me to go start fishing. Cool guy. His son was there too but I didn’t recognize him until I talked to him as we were leaving.