This comes via Adam Marton, who I actually met in person down at El Pescador while on my honeymoon. Adam, he loves bonefish and tarpon and he loves Belize as well.
This is an opportunity coming up in August at El Pescador. Dr. Jerry Ault and Stu Apt will be there. I’d love to go too, but that is not in the cards. This sounds pretty awesome, I have to say.
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I can say I saw some of the tarpon of Long Island. I cannot say I caught one.
There is basically one, deep cut which holds the tarpon. There used to be a lot more of them around, but the last big hurricane cut through some of the canals and the baby tarpon vanished. The deep cut holds what few adults are still found there.
They come up and roll and then head back down deep. The bend where they are found is a confusion of currents and boils and deep water. I saw a spinner shark glide beneath the skiff, but I only saw the tarpon roll at a distance of 50′ or more.
Dutifully, I pounded out some casts to the general vicinity of the rolls, but the fish were probably 10 feet below the fly and I doubt they ever saw it.
I did get to cast the new Sage Motive rod in an 11 weight lent to me just for this trip. The rod cast very well and even the guide was impressed with the line I was able to lay out with this purpose built tool. The rod is fast, as you’d expect. If you’ve cast other big, fast action saltwater rods, you know the experience. I liked the rod and felt comfortable with it. I’m sure it would have handled a big tarpon well. Alas, I’ll have to make that speculation and not report from experience.
I never got a boil on the fly. I never saw a 5 foot shape loom up behind the fly. I can’t say I got close to catching one.
Still, I enjoy just seeing them. My knees got weak at the sight of them. My pulse sped up, my hands began to shake. I felt fortunate just to have a shot.
I did get to fish the Motive a little bit more, casting for sharks, cudas and trolling for jacks. I did get a fish on it, which was a nice bonus.
I might not bring an 11 on my next Long Island trip. Instead, I might revert back to my Redington Predator 10 wt., which I had along as well and which dealt with the jacks and cudas just fine, even throwing a big popper into the wind.
I sure would have liked to hook into one of those nice Long Island tarpon, but they are so few it might be better just to let them hang out and play with the locals.
There are a few places this happens. The best known is probably Robbie’s in the Keys. It also happens at the Sunset Lagoon café in San Pedro, Belize. I guess it also happens at Rum Runners in St. Croix in the USVI.
The USVI is not a bonefish destination, although they are there in limited numbers. If you find yourself out there, think tarpon instead.
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Saw this shared from the Suplee Fly Fishing Company Facebook page. (give them a like, if you would… support people speaking out in favor of our resources)
The comments below are theirs, not mine. I thought they’d have more authority than anything I might add.
A nice, dead tarpon
New Women’s #12 pound world record on Fly.
So rather than comment on this post I thought I would share my thoughts here. As a guide who has participated in most of the Major Florida Keys Fly Tournaments for over a decade. I understand wha…t truly difficult accomplishment this is to achieve.However as a Florida Keys guide for the past two decades. I all also understand how much pressure and stress this very fragile fishery is under.I’m just not sure that in this day and age of technology this practice if killing these huge mature fish just for the sake of a world record is acceptable.I personally have never considered killing one if these fish for this purpose. Have I killed fish while fighting them to pure exhaustion just so one of my wealthy sports could get there ever so precious “grab and grin” shot with a prehistoric beast? I would be lying if I said I haven’t. But these world record chasers are the upper tier of anglers and guides and I would think they would have a little more respect for the resource.We have digital cameras,Face Book, Twitter, Instagram, email , FaceTime etc. these fish can be caught, taped, photographed, filmed what ever and instantly uploaded for all the world to see.I say let’s stop killing these huge old fish just for the sake of world records. A true world record is one that released and never scored so that maybe our children have a chance to catch one of these fish some day.
I have a feeling I’m not done making mistakes when it comes to setting the hook on a tarpon, but I have a few choice mistakes that are top-of-mind.
I didn’t have a lot/any knowledge about tarpon when I went fishing for them for the first time in Belize in 2010. So, when I got my first eat and I set the hook and the hook stuck I cleared the line like I would for bonefish.
Well… that was a dumb thing to do, as it turned out. The fish was off, and with it my best shot from that day. You keep tight to the tarpon. I didn’t do that. I haven’t done that particular bad move again, but I have pretty much re-trod the tarpon mistakes that most folks make.
Derek Rust’s grand slam tarpon. #skinnywaterculture
Mostly, there is just a tad too much trout set in my tarpon set, regardless of efforts and intentions to get that out of my game.
The Gink & Gasoline guys have some good tarpon pointers.
What tarpon setting errors have you made?
(Originally posted September 20, 2012)
She’s a sport. This was our honeymoon, after all. It was also her second day of fly fishing ever. That’s jumping into the deep end, pretty much. Still, I figured if it was going to happen, it stood a good chance of happening here, out of El Pescador in Belize.
I would routinely say that what I wanted, out of the day on the water, was to share with her what it was that I loved, out there on the flats. It is an obscure concept if you’ve never been out there and maybe the selling of it is a bit challenging. “Hey, let’s stand on a boat for a few hours, looking for fish that are really hard to see, in the sun without shade. Oh, and you can’t have a beer until you land a fish (OK, that’s really more my rule).”
She was kitted out for success. She came walking up for breakfast like she belonged.
Ready for action
We got out on the water and headed up to the park. It is a nice ride up there and the day wasn’t too hot while we were running. Soon after we paid our fee at the park we went in search for baby tarpon. This wasn’t maybe the best first stop. First, it wasn’t going to be something that would put her up on the deck and secondly, back in the mangroves it was stiflingly hot.
I was also having a case of the sucks. I couldn’t seal the deal on the baby poons. I swept the rod on the first fish. I cast on the head of the second. I cast behind the third. The fourth wasn’t interested. All the time it was really, really hot. She suffered through it all though without a complaint, which just goes to show what a trooper she is.
We went out into a slightly bigger lagoon, a place with a bit of a breeze, and I managed to blow one last fish. On this fish I made a good cast, got the take, set the beejeezus out of things and managed to just break the fish off. That was surprising because this same set-up had landed my 85 pounder in Cuba. Same knots, same spools of material. Go figure.
Me, casting.
We then left to find some bones and the Mrs. got up on deck. Cesar, our guide set about helping out with her cast. This was her second day fishing, period. It is a tough place to start. Cesar got her up and running and put in into position to catch fish. There is a lot to remember though, and it was tough for her to carry it all in her mind. There is so much we carry in muscle memory and when you have to pick it all up and have to keep it in the front of your mind, well, things are going to get dropped, and plenty of things got dropped. She was unfazed though, mostly because of her awesomeness.
Mrs. BOTB actually hooked two bonefish, which I thought was simply wonderful. She got to feel the fish a bit, but put too much slack into things and both bones managed to get off. She did, however, manage to get a little snapper, so was not blanked on the day and got to enjoy a Belikin.
Earning the beer.
The day ended with Cesar and I out on foot chasing down several schools of bones. That was a fun time.
Another one in the books.
She got to see what I love out there and she understands me a bit better because of it. That was the goal, so, mission accomplished. She may need a few more days of trout fishing before we head back to the flats, which I’m happy to provide for her.
She’s game, which is just simply wonderful.
(originally published May 9, 2012)
The tarpon was first and that was clearly the pig of the trip. After we finally released that fish we went looking for some bonefish.
We found them.
Really, I think the guides could likely produce bones pretty much all day, but they like chasing the tarpon when they are in, since they don’t stick around all year and the window is about three months long.
The bones weren’t big, maybe 3 pounds, but they fought well and we even had one little cluster Fuque where I got a knot in my running line that went through the guides. Jim worked on getting the knot undone and I hand lined the fish, which meant it had PLENTY of slack. The thing turned around and started swimming leisurely back toward us. The thing came so close to the boat that I just figured I’d wait and pull it’s head out of the water. That’s exactly what happened and we managed to land the bonefish pretty much without the rod.
The next flat we went to was ocean-side and as I got up on deck Jim asked the guide “you ever see any permit here?”
“Sometimes” was the reply, although it should have been “Sure, in about a minute.”
There was Mr. Permit cruising right toward us. No time to switch rods, the bonefish fly would have to do (a Peterson’s Spawning Shrimp). The fish lit up on the fly, started chasing it down doing a little erratic dance behind it. I SWEAR it ate, as did Jim, but I was tight to the fly and there was never any sort of resistance on the line. Just like that it bugged off and I was left, about 2″ from a Cuban Grand Slam.
Kind of cool to come so close. I know it is mostly luck and “right time/right place” that gets you those Grand Slams and I was pretty damn close to getting it right.
That’s why we keep fishing.
Photo by Jim Klug, Tarpon by Cuba
Really… I can’t complain at all.
There is a lot to love.
Awesome shot by Jim Klug.
Adrienne got the photo. I got the photo of the photo.
My experience with tarpon is still “light,” but since when have I let that stop me?
That just sucks.
The one that got away, Florida, 2013. Photo Adrienne Comeau.
Bill Horn wrote a book about fishing the Keys through the seasons. It’s a good read and it is illustrated by Bob White. That’s what got me interested in the first place.
I did an interview with Bill and then when we knew we were coming down he offered to take us out on the water for a day.
Bill just started living in the Keys year round and has been punished for that decision with gale after gale, but I think he’s still pretty happy about it. He lives in Marathon on a canal, minutes from the tarpon. When Adrienne and I got there and finally got situated the run to the fishing grounds was about 8 minutes.
Pretty much paradise.
As we got out it was a bit threatening and when Bill checked his phone and saw a squall centering over us we simply ran back to his house, waited it out while we talked to his wife and went back out after the weather passed.
While Bill hasn’t been a year-rounder for long, it is safe to say he has the pulse of the area. He predicted, with alarming accuracy, when we’d see our first meatball of fish. He pegged it within 15 minutes. He staked us out perfectly and we had SHOTS. This was the first time I really saw the huge schools we had traveled all this way to see.
Doing the two handed thing.
Adrienne had an eat. I saw the fish suck in the fly, but she never felt it and it was spit out before the violence happened. She had a lot of shots and the fish were reacting to the fly, which was good. You could just feel that something had changed. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen now.
I got up on deck and Bill handed me one of his rods, what he said was a Biscayne. It was a one piece rod, impractical for travel but nice if you are fortunate enough to live in a place you never have to break down you rods. Bill vouched for the rod, but apologized for the line which he said was old and prone to coiling.
Soon after I was up there were fish. They were heading my way. They were happy.
I made the cast, placed the rod under my arm and started the two hand retrieve. I’ve never really done that before and I found it a really good way to keep from trout setting. Hard to trout set if the rod isn’t in your hands.
I cast at a mass of tarpon. I know you are supposed to cast to an individual fish and I’d love to say I did. I didn’t. I cast at the big mass of darkness over the light patch and a single fish emerged from the pack tracking the fly. About 10 feet from the boat it simply ate the damn thing.
Unable to trout set I simply strip set and strip set again, still holding the line in both hands. The fish was displeased by this turn of events and quickly went airborne. According to protocol, I bowed. The fish, still attached, got pissed and started a run.
Here’s where it all starts to go pear-shaped. Out of the corner of my eye I can see a rather impressive rats nest rising off the deck. This rats nest is likely not going to make it through the guides. I know it, but I can’t do anything about it. Then the physics problem happened when the bulk of the knot tried to pass through the guides, failed, creating forces greater than the tolerances of the tippet/knots, or for that matter, the guide, and things broke. The fly broke off. The guide broke. I nearly broke.
Well, there’s your problem right there.
If I didn’t break, I bent pretty far. I kneeled down on the deck and shook. Oddly, I didn’t feel the wave of frustration or anger I really expected to feel. I felt, well, kind of happy. I just kept saying “wow” over and over. I had fed and jumped a beautiful creature. Bill estimated it at a little over 100 pounds. I felt rather fortunate to have had the opportunity, to have felt the power of the fish with both hands on the line, to see it jump high out of the water and contort its body before crashing back to the water.
Sure, I would have liked to land that fish, to look into its massive eye and get to know it a bit more. I would have liked to see it separate itself from the water a few more times. But this was good and I wasn’t going to diminish it.
Adrienne got the photo. I got the photo of the photo.
That turned out to be end end, or close enough not to matter. A black wall had formed out in front of us. It was bigger than the first squall and we could see the blue water boats running before it. It was going to hit us, as much as we would have preferred it didn’t. We ran back to Bill’s house and saw on the weather website that this was substantial. The rain was driving horizontally.
Something wicked this way comes.
The day was done.
Fishing with Bill was great. He had wonderful stories and knew layer upon layer of the Keys and he freely shared his knowledge with us. I felt fortunate for that as well… I also felt a bit bad about breaking his rod, but he told me he fixed the rod himself and it was no big deal.
Seeing the number of tarpon we saw on that day is something that will both delight my memories and haunt my dreams.
Basically, I need to get back there.
On the way back to Islamorada a couple things happened. We drove out of the weather and we went to Robbies.
“Yeah, we fed, like, a couple dozen tarpon…”
