Not only are Big Girls
far from easy but they can prove very expensive to entice as well and many men
have been chasing them all over the world without bagging one, though they may
have seen a good many and tried to tempt them. They may even have had to suffer
the indignity of seeing a competitor suitor make off with the big girl they
were after and whom they had spent many a restless night dreaming of. Yes these
girls have got it all and don’t they know it? They often flaunt themselves in
the sun near some of the most beautiful beaches in the world for all to see,
but when it comes to actual physical contact then suddenly they are all coy and
may disappear altogether without so much as a wink. Yet like all of their sex
there are also those rare days and the right set of circumstances, when they
seem to throw caution to the wind and will literally force themselves on the
first suitor that happens along and makes any sort of half hearted offer to
them.
Yes big tarpon can be
the most fickle fish in the world when they are “not in the mood”. I can’t
exactly recall when I was first attracted to a big silver king/queen (as they
are often referred to) but I can say that it was a mighty long time ago. Images
of tarpon adorn many T shirts and can be found in any big game fishing book,
together with impressive stories of their fighting capabilities, written by
famous anglers like Zane Grey and Ernest Hemmingway. Sadly they do not swim in
British waters, but whenever I have found myself in warmer climes, where they
are to be found, my enthusiasm has been rekindled to have a go for one.
My first opportunity
arose on a family holiday to Florida
back in 1998. With our young son in tow, we had done the usual visits to
Universal Studios, Bush
Gardens
Fishing for these
semi-tame (but free to leave) tarpon was naturally forbidden, as they are a
tourist attraction, but feeding them and seeing/touching them at close quarters
certainly leads you to the conclusion that they can’t be that hard to catch and
sure enough before long I was enquiring after a captain, with boat, to take me
out after them. At the time my finances were not great, and as my mate Rodders
told me I was “prudent” with my money. That said these days I am retired and he
is working his socks off, but I digress. Anyway a trip was booked with a local
captain and the cost shared with none other than a Vietnam War veteran whom I
had befriended in the aforementioned ‘Safari Club Bar’ aka ‘The Dead Animal Bar’,
which is still going strong today.
The fishing proved far
from easy but despite this, and the session being temporarily interrupted by a thunderstorm,
both the vet (David, who had some impressive bullet wounds in his lower legs)
and myself, caught modest tarpon of around 20 lbs plus a mangrove snapper of
perhaps 8 lbs on the small live-baits fished under the nearby bridges.
Even though I’d had a
taster of tarpon fishing I didn’t feel as if I’d been there and done that
sufficiently to tick off the species on my fishy bucket list. Interest was
re-kindled some years later in 2001 when discussing the species with a mate at
work, Andy Hunt. Andy was fresh back from a family holiday on the island of Tobago
in the Caribbean , where he had hooked and lost
big tarpon from the beach and caught some reasonable ones out in a boat with a
guide called Kester, who I recognised as having fished with Matt Hayes on a
program for Sky TV.
Now selling a holiday
to Tobago to the Mrs was not altogether
difficult, though we did end up booking into the Rex Turtle Beach Hotel in the
month of August which as I later found out is not an ideal time of year to
chase the Big Girls. The holiday was one great success all around, and having
tracked Kester down I did manage four or five morning sessions after tarpon.
Having done some homework regarding tackle I had taken quite a bit with me
including an up-tide boat rod (previously purchased for Mahseer) and borrowed a
big baitrunner reel loaded with 65 lbs BS braid.
On my first morning
out with Kester, again using small lives as bait (known generically as jacks on
the island), I hooked and lost the biggest tarpon encountered on the trip. We
had used the small boat to get out to the sea side of the reef at Pigeon Point,
and cast baits at a pod of cruising fish in about 4 feet of water. My first
cast at this pod produced a confident take and as I set the small circle hook I
experienced that classic tarpon performance as five feet or more of silver king
took to the air in an impressive aerial display of silver and green all covered
in sea spray. This is a common reaction of a tarpon upon feeling the hook and
is the image captured on a million T shirts by artists such as Guy Harvey.
Kester had told me
what sort of bite to expect, how I was to let the rod be pulled down by the
fish until it was pointing at it, before reeling in on a straight line and
unbent rod to set the circle hook. According to him the fish would likely jump
(as it did) and then head out to deeper water in its attempt to escape. Wrong!
This one had other ideas and had clearly not read the book. Once the fish
dropped back in the shallow water after jumping it was off at high speed across
the reef. We did not have an anchor down as we had been sight fishing so we
prepared to follow the fish along the reef. But as countless numbers of tarpon
hunters will tell you everything is happening on fast-forward mode once you
hook your fish. This is when the braid proved to be a poor choice for line as
the fish ripped perhaps a hundred yards off the reel before we got underway. I
felt a rasping sensation through the now fully compressed rod before it sprang,
sickeningly back. The braid had been cut on the reef and my fish was again
free. How big was she? Kester said 90 to 100 lbs and I had no reason to argue
with his estimate.
Other trips were made
during our stay which commenced with Kester picking me up at the hotel at some
ungodly hour in order to launch the boat at Pigeon Point and be out on the reef
for first light. We averaged a couple of tarpon per session plus some small
barracuda to 20 lbs (remember the island record is 70 lbs plus!), some small
tuna and Rainbow Runners and a single African Pompano.
My best tarpon from both
this trip and another some 2 years later, was a modest 65 lbs but I enjoyed the
sessions greatly and at 100 bucks for a mornings sport it was great value that
I seriously doubt would be on offer today.
More years slipped by.
Other holidays came and went, including a memorable one to the Maldives in
2010, when a single mornings fishing produced two impressive Sail-fish and a
Wahoo. Jeez these big saltwater, tropical fish know how to fight and really do
put our smaller freshwater species in the shade. With work out of the way
(eventually) I started to think of that fishing Bucket List once again. 2012
saw an out and out, and very successful, fishing trip made to Texas after Alligator Garr in the company of
Watto, Stevie Younger and Mark Gabriel, the trip written up by Steve for Pike
and Preds magazine. But where to go in 2013?
The married readers
amongst you will realise that being let off the leash as I had been for Texas could not be
repeated on an annual basis, assuming you want to remain married that is. I
considered the options for somewhere with good weather, good food and with
perhaps good fishing thrown in for good measure too. Thailand was rejected following a
previous holiday there which revealed that the coastal waters had been
seriously denuded of many, many fish leaving some of the small, well stocked
lakes on offer but they did not appeal. Antigua ,
Cuba and Mexico were all ruled out for one reason or
another but what about a return trip to Florida ?
Irrespective of what
you think about the Yanks (who have many pros and cons) one thing you simply
cannot argue with is the fact that they look after their fish and know the
meaning of the word sustainable, which most of the world do not. To give you an
example they had a very cold (for Florida )
Winter a few years ago in the Keys which apparently killed off many of the
Snook. So the taking of Snook for food was banned for a few years whilst the
species recovered and now they are on the menu again. The taking of all species
is regulated and tarpon are particularly protected. So you can fish in the
waters of the Florida Keys in the full knowledge
and indeed expectation of encountering good and protected fish stocks.
Exactly where and when
to visit the Keys were the next questions that arose before making any booking.
I had learnt from bitter experience that just booking a holiday, when it suits
you and the family, is unlikely to result in good sport with the few exceptions
to this for me being the fishing lakes in Thailand
and my lucky morning in the Maldives .
Some tarpon are resident in the Keys year round, with pockets I have seen at
Robbie’s and other marinas such as that at Key West, but the main population
migrate down the Atlantic Coast and pass through the Keys en route to the Gulf
of Mexico during April, May and June of each year.
Having decided to stay
in the Florida Keys during the month of May my
wife got involved in exactly where we would rent and went searching on the
internet having on-line conversations with numerous owners and realtors.
Eventually a house was booked at a place called Key Colony Beach
The tarpon migrate in
their thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands for all I know, travelling down
the east coast of America
heading for the Gulf of Mexico . Much of their
passage is blocked by the Keys themselves so that they are channelled through
the passes between Keys and pass under the bridges connecting the Keys as the
road runs from Key Largo (made famous by the Humphrey Bogart film of the same
name) in the east and running out to Kew West some 100 miles away. The most
famous of these bridges is without doubt the Seven
Mile Bridge
which connects Marathon to Bahia Honda, which
on paper anyway put our holiday location in the right place.
All of the proper
tarpon fishing takes place from boats as trying to control and eventually land
a big tarpon from the shore is pretty much out of the question. I had intended
to have a few trips with local guides/captains, to learn the ropes from them
and then to hire a boat myself and do my own thing, which would obviously be
cheaper and hopefully a lot more satisfying though no doubt more demanding.
By a massive stroke of
good fortune I was given free use of a 22 foot boat fitted with a 90 HP engine,
ideal for fishing for tarpon.
All I needed was a
convenient bridge or two to head for. Problem, though we were close to a small
bridge at Vaca Cut there was both heavy boat traffic through its narrow confines
as well as very strong currents running either one way or the other between the
Atlantic and the Gulf. My wife Maggie and I did fish here on several occasions
catching barracuda, various types of snappers and grunts, some decent Nurse
Sharks and a few tarpon, but none in the 100 lbs class that I was targeting.
All I needed was a
convenient bridge or two to head for. Problem, though we were close to a small
bridge at Vaca Cut there was both heavy boat traffic through its narrow confines
as well as very strong currents running either one way or the other between the
Atlantic and the Gulf. My wife Maggie and I did fish here on several occasions
catching barracuda, various types of snappers and grunts, some decent Nurse
Sharks and a few tarpon, but none in the 100 lbs class that I was targeting.
A big consideration
dawned on me now that I had tarpon fishing literally on my doorstep. Pretty
much all of the guides took their clients to the larger bridges either
anchoring directly under them or drifting in the vicinity of them. If I ruled
out Vaca Cut, for the reasons given above, where was the next, more suitable
one. Well even though we were staying on Marathon I found that the start of Seven Mile
Bridge
The waters around the
Keys are shallow for the most part. The boat I had available was not fitted
with an echo sounder and even if it was you needed to know what the underwater
topography was like and you don’t learn that overnight. The ever present risk
of getting grounded, damaging the boat or more likely the prop or having a
close encounter with a bridge support (remember those fast moving tides) or
with a power boat “controlled” by a drunken Yank made such journeys even less
attractive.
Having asked around
the local bars (another tedious but necessary task) I tracked down a guide
based right next to Seven Mile Bridge by the name of Bobby Manskey and Maggie
and I met up with him one evening to try for a big tarpon. Bobby had been out
and about earlier in the day with his cast-net and had a dozen or so prime
mullet waiting for us in a cage near his mooring. I should add that mullet are
the prime bait at this time of year as they too use the Keys for their
migration and the tarpon feed on them heavily. But you can’t catch the mullet
on bait and also they don’t last well in a net before getting in poor condition
or keeling over so you need to get them within 24 hours of your trip. Not
something that the visiting angler can easily do especially if they are not
skilled in the use of a cast-net.
 |
| Bobby Manskey |
It was not long before
we were dropping, or rather positioning our anchor at a known good spot between
the new and old bridges. The tide was running fast, about as fast as the Wye
flows at Ross in the Winter, and the water had masses (no exaggeration) of
floating weed streaming through with it, meaning that the line had to be mended
on a regular basis. Tackle consisted of a one piece 7 ft rod suitable for 20 to
40 BS line and a Shimano 6500 Baitrunner loaded with 30 lbs mono and a
fluorocarbon, rubbing trace of 50 lbs. A float (known locally as a bobber) and
finally a good size (7/0), good quality, circle hook on which to lip hook a
live mullet, completes the set-up.
Getting the anchoring
just right, so that the boat ends up between the bridges, does not rub on the
bridge supports and most importantly holds in the tide can take a few attempts
but without too much trouble we were soon set and sent out a couple of hapless
mullet to await their fate. We were not alone and there were ten or so other
boats fishing the same general area but though a couple of fish were hooked it
appeared that these were lost after various periods of time being fought. So
clearly we were in the right area and Bobby had hooked up a tarp here the
previous night. Would I get my chance?
One of the things I
like about fishing (even for carp) is the suddenness you sometimes get when a
bite happens. With pike a run is often preceded by a few bleeps of the optonic
or dips of the float to pre-warn you of a pick-up. Well it ain’t like this with
tarpon, or at least it wasn’t with the bite I got that evening. The mullet was
taken in a huge, powerful spash and associated impressive vortex. The rod was
pulled down and I successfully set the circle hook by winding on a straight,
pointed rod. At this point all hell broke loose as the tarpon decided to put as
much distance between itself and us in as short a time as possible.
Time is now of the
essence as line is leaving the oversize spool at an alarming rate and if you
are not quick on your toes you would soon be spooled. There were four of us
on-board (but only me fishing) and Bobby’s little helper Liah, ran to the bow
of the boat to cast off the anchor line, complete with buoy, to aid location
later. Quite a while later as it happened.
With the boat free and
under power we were able to follow the fish, retrieve some of the lost line and
indeed got the fish on a short line, where it was jumping and wallowing after
about 15 minutes. Bobby shouted something to Liah and she came along-side me
trying to touch the line, which I was none too keen about in case she broke the
line or pulled the hook out. Apparently if you can touch the leader with the
fish on then it counts as a “caught fish”. However this was not something I had
in mind and wanted to fight the fish to a stand still and if possible get her
on-board for a photo. Nevertheless Liah did touch the leader and I could have
claimed my catch there and then and cut it off. No thank you.
At this point the tarp
got its’ second wind (or was it still her first wind?) and decided to tow the
boat, first in and out of the bridge supports and then way out in the Atlantic
for a mile or more. I’m hazy about how far we were towed because though we had
hooked up the fish in daylight it was now pitch black. Fighting a strong and
largely unseen monster of a fish in the dark brings its’ own problems. Where is
it? How far away? Keep it away from the prop. Get that sea grass off the line.
I hope the hook holds and the line doesn’t fray. What if the commotion attracts
one of the massive Hammerhead Sharks known to inhabit the area that literally
eat the tarpon off the line?
After the fight of my
life, lasting over an hour, we got my prize along-side and Bobby was able to
lift her into the boat with the use of a hand-gaff placed in the bottom jaw and
me lending a hand. With a great sense of urgency, as none of us wanted to keep
this beautiful and massive fish out of the water for longer than necessary, I
eventually held up my Big Girl for the camera.
 |
| Phil holds up his first 100 lbs plus Tarpon up for the camera assisted by Bobby Manskey |
Admittedly the
pictures we took are not the best, but I hope the reader can get a good
impression of the size and beauty of my estimated 120 lbs tarpon and I have a
permanent image to remind me of that special evening afloat in the Keys. A
dream had been realised after many years of trying. I had done battle with one
of the World’s greatest sporting fish and won. During the rest of our stay
other great fish were hooked. Some came off, for one reason or another, but
other monsters were brought to the boat (no more brought on-board though)
including several other hundred pound plussers up to an estimated 165 lbs. At
that stage I had learnt a bit about how to tame the Big Girls in less than an
hour by really taking the fight to them and constantly trying to throw them off
balance with side strain.
I could go on even
longer about fishing for these magnificent creatures in fantastic surroundings
but I don’t want to spoil your day more than I probably already have. Go on,
save up your pennies and convince the Mrs that you should spend some time in
the Florida Keys chasing some of the local Big Girls.
 |
| A Strong Tarpon est' at 140lb swimming away |
