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Good
Incentive I’ve never been a morning person. The snooze button typically takes a lot of abuse before I roll out of bed, late for work. But add the incentive of a possible encounter with a Silver King, and waking up before dawn on a weekend suddenly becomes worthwhile. For the second day in a row, my alarm clock blasted a radio station at distored levels at 5 a.m. I had gone fishing for a few hours Saturday morning at the Pompano Beach pier. The conditions were excellent, with plenty of baitfish and snook in the water, but nothing decent was biting. For 4 hours, all I caught were blue runners and needlefish. I knew the weather would be excellent on Sunday too, so I decided to try beach fishing. The problem with fishing in Boca Raton is that nearly the entire coast is private or park-owned property. This means parking is hard to come by for early morning and after sunset anglers. The only accesible pre-dawn beach parking I knew of was along Spanish River Blvd., where it connects to A-1-A. I had never fished the beach in Boca, so I was going on pure guesswork. As it turns out, Spanish River Beach is a somewhat popular place for locals to fish. At 5:45 a.m., I was the first one to grab a parking spot. I unloaded my gear and headed toward the beach. I walked about a 1/4 mile north along the beach to get to where some pilchard schools were feeding at the water’s edge. I pounded 2 sand spikes into the dense damp sand just above the waterline about 15 feet apart. I angled the spikes at about 45 degrees so the drags would work more efficiently. There was no need to keep the lines high above the surf since there were hardly any waves. I rigged both of my 30# spinners with 2 feet of 100# leader, 4/0 circle hooks, and 2oz sliding egg sinkers. Unfortunately, the sardines I had bought were very soft. I was limited to a gentle cast of about 50 feet, otherwise the bait would simply rip off during the launch. I set both my spinners out past the pilchard schools and picked up my 8# spinner to jig for blue runners. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes before one of my big spinners started screaming. A split second later I looked out towards the brilliant orange sunrise to see the silhouette of a thrashing tarpon heading skyward. I yanked the rod out of the spike while tightening the drag. The circle hook had done its job perfectly. It had firmly embedded into the tarpon's lower left jaw before I even picked up the rod. The big fish proceeded to earn its reputation: Jumping 3 or 4 times in quick succession, followed by a drag-smoking sprint. It was the thrill I had come for, and the reason I dragged myself out of bed before dawn. A little bit of history... I've been fishing nearly all my life. In the past 15 or so years that I've fished in South Florida inshore gamefish territories, I’ve been using light tackle in hopes of getting my name in the IGFA record book. So far, I’ve lost about a dozen tarpon, four big bonefish, and a massive permit. The reasons are varied, but most came down to the age-old conflict of light line and structures. Pilings, docks, rocks, sargasso clumps... all have ended my chances of landing my “first” of the previously mentioned gamefish on light tackle. It was really starting to piss me off. I’ve now awaken to the fact that if I want to realistically land fish, I’m going to have to use medium to heavy tackle. I got my first big snook one week earlier. It was the 30# Ande line that held onto the fish even though it wrapped around pilings under the pier. That was enough to convince me to take a break from light tackle. Fighting a fish is fun, but landing the fish is what it’s all about. Back to the action... There were two facts on my mind while fighting this fish. 1.) Tarpon have fast recovery times. After a few minutes of aerobatics, they tend to calm down and rest. It’s a good time to gain some line back and land ‘em. But wait too long, and they’re liable to make another drag-ripping run. The longer a fish is on the line, the more chance there is of it getting away. 2.) I had fresh 30# line and a 100# leader. I had tested the line strength and drag settings a few days before by using a hand-held scale. Therefore, I had a good idea of how much pressure I was able to safely assert... quite a bit more than I was used to with light tackle.
I ran back to my gear to grab my Canon digital camera, powered it up, and handed it to Al for him to take my photo with my prized catch. The photos didn't come out as good as I'd hoped. They were a little blurry and I blinked, but at least I was able to be in the photos with the fish. If Al hadn't come along, I would have only been able to photograph the tarpon laying on the sand. A 36 inch “Lawstick” was the only measuring tool I had with me, so I made sure to hold the big fish close so I could later determine its length in relation to my body. After the photo, I lowered the big silver king back into the water and swam it for 30 seconds or so. It righted itself almost immediately and leisurely kicked my hand free when it was ready to go.
Once home, I downloaded the images from my digital camera. I was amazed. The tarpon was even larger than I realized. I determined the length to be 57 inches! At that length, the estimated weight is about 70 lbs. It's certainly not a tournament-sized 150+ pounder, but for my first, I'm very happy with it! So that’s the story of my first tarpon. I’ll definately keep surf fishing on the menu. The Fall mullet migrations will be here soon, and so will the big fish that follow them. I can hardly wait!
-->Bill Buckley parrothead1973@mac.com
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It
was now 5 minutes into the fight. I had increased the drag tension to
keep the big fish from spooling me. With an intense bend in the Shimano
Saragosa rod, I started to recover line while walking south down the
beach parallel with the fish. It was now time to start thinking about
how the hell I was going to land it. As luck would have it, the second
person I saw on the beach that morning happened to be a flyfisherman
walking north towards me. At about the 10 minute mark, “Al”
was beside me and offered to help land the fish with his lip grabber.
Well, the good intentions were there, but his grabber was too small
for this tarpon’s jaw. I managed to get the fish to ride a small
wave up onto the sand, and then Al got a gloved hand under the gill
plate. Coincidentally, the hook came out at the same time. Upon later
inspection, I discovered that the hook didn't just pull out... it broke!
Success
at last! After all these years, I finally LANDED a tarpon! And, besides
a little assitance landing the fish, I did it all on my own terms. No
guides, no coaching, and only 15 minutes from home! I fished at the
beach for another 3 hours, but only caught blue runners and needlefish.
The pilchard schools were so thick, I could almost scare them onto shore.
The big game fish simply stopped biting after sunrise. The weather was
beautiful, which also meant the sun was hot. I packed up and headed
home at about 10 a.m.