A Day in Pine Island Sound
By
George Anderson

Cirrus clouds and late afternoon sun had made it impossible to see tarpon in six feet of water, something that requires concentration in the best of conditions. I was getting frustrated. Even with my best tan lens Polaroid glasses, a wide brim hat with a dark underside, and a perch high on top of my fiberglass cooler at the bow of my flats skiff, spotting these laid up tarpon before I got too close to them and spooked them was becoming impossible. It would have made sense to quit long ago. I kept thinking that one more good shot might produce another hook up on one of the huge fish that were making this little basin their temporary home- a place to lay up and rest in preparation for their annual spawning duties on Florida’s West coast.

The sea breeze stiffened and put a chop on the water; a good fishing day had come to its logical conclusion. I pointed my flats skiff north, rounded Cabbage Key and headed for Boca Grand Pass. The twenty minutes it took me to make the run back to the Placida boat ramp near the Boca Grande Causeway gave me a chance to reflect on the day, and especially the unnerving events of the last hour. Maybe if I had tried a little harder the outcome might have been different.

I kept running it over and over in my mind. What could I have done differently to avoid losing not only one of the largest tarpon I’ve ever seen, or hooked? In any case, it was not something that I was likely to forget.

The spring of ’05 had been a difficult tarpon season compared to the past two years, in Charlotte Harbor, when the tarpon arrived in droves by mid April, charging into the schools of threadfins with busts that could be seen hundreds of yards away. The tarpon were willing to take our flies without their usual precaution and at times it seemed like well placed cast with a purple and black Enrico got eaten.

Cooler weather this spring produced colder water temperatures, and by the end of April, there had been only a few days when the water temperature in Pine Island Sound had pushed above 75 degrees, the magical temperature needed to attract offshore tarpon into the Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound.

The shallower, darker, bay waters of Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound heat up more quickly with strong sun and once they reach 75, the first big push of tarpon arrive, often in early April.

Not until the ocean temperature remains above 80 degrees will the fish leave the harbor to continue their pre-spawning activities off the beaches and begin to stack up like cordwood in famous Boca Grande Pass.

The early arrival tarpon normally stay in the harbor, where they feed heavily on schools of Threadfin Herring, Pilchards and other “white bait”. The early season tarpon tend to congregate in certain areas of he harbor or Pine Island Sound; so we check these areas continuously, hoping to find these fish in slow moving schools, rolling and occasionally and charging into schools of bait. Fly fishing can be good at times, especially if you can get into a happy, tightly packed school of fish very early in the morning. Then a well-placed cast in front of a slow rolling fish often produces a solid hook up and the thrills that inevitably follow.

Once the early morning schools get pressured, and a few fish are hooked or caught, they drift back out into deeper water and then it’s a matter of finding a few busts or rolling fish, trying to stay with the schools as they move around feeding on schools of bait, and dredging deep with a slow sink line while drifting along with the wind. Not the most exciting fly-fishing in the world but once the big pull comes; it can turn a dull day into an explosion of excitement. The tug is the drug.

In mid-day, when the sun is high in the sky and there are few clouds the visibility into the water is superb. This is my favorite time to go hunting “laid up” tarpon. Rather than look for big schools, I’m looking for solitary big fish that have picked a spot off the normal boat channels, to rest and relax. Many of these fish really are sleeping in tarpon mode, often up high in the water, soaking up the suns rays. It’s not unusual to see a fish lying with its head angled down and tail actually bobbing in and out of the surface waves like the tip of an old crab buoy.

Approaching these laid up tarpon is always difficult and the trick is to get a shot at them before they realize that you are there. Once they see you, or “feel” the pressure wave that the skiff sends them through their lateral line, it’s usually all over. They just start swimming away slowly and your chance of getting them to bite now is slim to none.

A multitude of variables like water clarity, cloud cover, tide level, wind direction and speed, the amount of sunlight and the visibility in the direction you need to go all play a big part in your ability to even fish for laid up fish. And this is given the fact that the water temperature is high enough (close to 75) so that there are tarpon around - holding in their usual lay ups they use from year to year.

This is perhaps the most challenging method for a fly fisherman to get attached to a big tarpon. When it all comes together though, the payoff can be huge, both in terms of the size of the fish and the excitement!

My day started off looking for the major concentration of tarpon that had been hanging around Matlachea Pass in the Southern part of Charlotte harbor. By mid- morning I had finally found the mother lode. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of tarpon spread out over an area not more than a half-mile square. Fish were rolling, busting bait and revealing themselves by their wakes and nervous water. It’s impossible to see this without your blood pressure rising abruptly!

But this mass of tarpon had attracted a lot of other anglers - mostly bait fishermen. Captains worked around through the fish with their trolling motors, trying to get a good shot at the rolling fish with their live threadfins minnows or small blue crabs suspended by a fluorescent float. Once a fish or two was hooked the fish would panic, and move a couple of hundred yards before they slowed down and started feeding again. The trick was to anticipate the movement of the giant mass of tarpon and try to stay out front where you could get a clear shot at fish that were not badly spooked and still in the mood to take a fly.

This was not the serene tarpon fishing I’ve experienced in the Florida Keys. I was torn by the desire to get away to a place where I could be fishing peacefully on my own and the reality that I had a better chance to hook a big tarpon here in this madhouse of boats and feeding fish than anywhere.

It was exasperating trying to find a fly pattern that the fish would take. If this were trout fishing it would be a piece of cake, but in the world of tarpon fishing, it’s not. I make cast after cast, right through the fish with no results. I change flies every twenty casts. Go from our standby Black and Purple Enrico Puglisi 3/0 to a much lighter color, like Yellow and White. Then Black, Tan, green and white. Still Nothing. It’s getting frustrating, especially when you see the bait guys approach a school and get a hook up on the first live bait they chuck in there! I’m thinking go brown- lots of the bait guys are throwing blue crabs that are primarily brown and they are sticking tarpon right and left.

This reasoning pays off: one cast with a brown baitfish pattern and the line comes tight. The 80-pound tarpon goes airborne and does a loud belly flop back into the water. I chuckle as it is loud enough to get the bait fishermen to jerk their heads around and see a fly angler hooked up to a nice tarpon. Of the twenty odd boats working these fish, only two of us are fly anglers.

After another hundred casts or so, I sucker another tarpon into biting. Again, on a big brown Enrico 3/0 baitfish pattern. This fish is larger, perhaps one hundred pounds, and makes a strong run and then a couple of wild jumps. I make a good bow on the first jump but the second catches me by surprise and luckily the fish stays on even though I was too tight when the fish was in the air. When the fish hits the water the second time, I start cranking in some heat and suddenly there is a violent jerk and the fish is gone. I strip the line back in and find that the class tippet is fine but this fish has cut through my eighty pound Fluorocarbon shock tippet like It had been cut with a pair of wire cutters. That happens from time to time, probably when the fish gets it clamped in the corner of its jaw.

So I grab a bottle of water from the cooler, sit down and relax. It’s one thirty, and I’ve been so busy throwing to fish that I’ve forgotten all about hunger. Tarpon will do that to you. I was feeling pretty good even though I had lost this last nice tarpon.

It was time to make a plan for the afternoon. I was taking a few steps toward a strange event I’m afraid I’ll never forget.

I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich, using my fillet knife to add a few slices of tomato and spread out the mayo and spicy mustard. A bottle of Gatorade helped wash it down complemented with three chocolate chip cookies I had thrown in the lunchbox to satisfy my sweet tooth.

The typical summer weather pattern had set up on Florida’s West coast by Mid-May - A shore breeze from 5-10 from the NE in the morning, followed by a sea breeze from the West in the afternoon. The wind was coming up, but not strong, still only 5-10 knots. I pulled up the tide chart for the day on my GPS. The tide currently was a slack low, but at a fairly high level. With bight sun and few clouds in the sky, it would be an ideal time to go looking for some “laid-up” tarpon. Something I’d been waiting for all day.

For me, fishing visually for resting, individual fish is the Champagne of the sport, both as to challenge and as to reward. Stalking these fish is more like hunting, and a careful approach is critical. Then there are demands of making a perfect presentation without alerting the tarpon to your presence. Only then do you have a chance to experience that rush that comes from seeing the tail kick that propels a giant tarpon toward your fly.

I knew just the spot I wanted to try, an area of alternating sand and dark bottom, off Rocky Channel in Pine Island Sound. A spot that few other anglers or guides seem to fish. Word had it that one of the top fly fishing guides in Boca Grande had caught some huge tarpon for his clients here over the years but a spot that I had found was generally overlooked.

I had fished it four times in the past couple of weeks, and each time I had encountered between five and fifteen tarpon scattered about the little basin, and some were absolutely huge. This is a unique area, unaffected much by the tides and away from the general boat traffic. This was the perfect place for tarpon to sleep. The problem I had on my previous visits was a high tide level and a general lack of good visibility. The conditions today were close to perfect. The tide was lower and the sky clear with only a moderate breeze, giving the surface a slight chop that made it easy to see through the wavelets. Today would be different, and I felt it.

Fishing on your own is always more difficult than having a partner along, especially someone who can pole the boat. Being able to stand up on the poling platform above the engine gives you far better visibility than an angler on the deck, and by poling, you can approach these fish a lot more quietly and precisely.

The routine I’m forced to use while fishing on my own it to use my bow mounted trolling motor rather than a push pole to sneak up on the fish. I then take my sturdy fiberglass cooler and put it up on the front deck just behind the trolling motor. That one-foot in elevation I get by standing on the cooler makes a huge difference in visibility. A two-foot long slip-on extension that fits over the trolling motor handle makes it a lot easier to operate. By tilting up the tiller on my trolling motor, it’s easy to control the direction and speed with my left hand while I have my fly rod in my right, ready to fire. Sneaking up on these fish with a trolling motor is always tough. Even at slow speeds the motor makes some noise so you just have to poke along very slowly, shutting the motor off at times, gliding along and praying that you can spot that big fish before it sees you.

I positioned a big round stripping basket to the left of me, beside the cooler, then stretched the fly line well before stripping all of it into the basket. The fly and leader set up is a lot different for these laid up fish than I use for other tarpon fishing. On my normal quick-change tarpon leader I use only 15” to three feet of “class tippet” – 20-pound hard nylon. Then the shock tippet is 12 inches of 80 lb. Fluorocarbon. For laid up fish we’ve found that a much longer class tippet works better, since one often has to cast over the fish to position the fly perfectly, yet avoid spooking it. So the “Stealth” leader set up we came up with years ago in the Keys makes a lot of sense here too. We still use a quick-change loop and Bimini on one end but then I’ll use 8-9 feet of 20 lb. Mason’s class tippet and then tie in the 12 inches of 80 lb. Fluorocarbon shock with a Slim Beauty knot, to keep the profile as small as possible.

The fly is a critical part of the equation, and something subtle and small is always better. My favorite fly for laid up tarpon is a small fly with yellow and cree hackles and a bit of gray marabou, called the Coker Smoker. A 3/0 hook adds enough weight to get this proven killer to sink just right. Once the equipment is set, the Polaroid glasses and wide brim hat go on, it’s time to hunt for giant tarpon.

I’m fighting the wind, using the electric motor with extreme caution to crab across the flat and not let the momentum of the boat get out of hand. Suddenly, a big tarpon materializes, but it is lying at a bad angle facing away from me. I try to stay far enough away so that I can just see the fish, and maneuver very slowly with the trolling motor to get into better position to get at least a 90-degree angle shot. Throwing the fly close to the fish’s head is the key, so that they see it but are not spooked by a fly coming back at them. Everything that a tarpon sees that is edible is invariably swimming away from it, and when prey, no matter how tiny, swims back towards a tarpon, it invokes panic.

Unfortunately this fish senses the 17-foot boat’s presence, less than thirty feet away, and does what most laid up fish do – swim lazily off without presenting you an opportunity to make a cast. I exhale.

Two more fish appear at the end of a small sandy basin and this time I get a good crack at them. Unfortunately I get the cast too close to the fish, and they spook as they hear the fly hit the water. I take time out for some fairly harsh self criticism. Opportunities like these come in finite numbers.

Now I’m up into the prime area of the basin, where I’ve seen most of the big fish. Suddenly, I glance thirty feet to my right at what appears to be a large gray shadow, too large for a fish. It is totally motionless, so I creep in slowly as I can, using only minimal trolling motor power. The prop is barely turning. Now I’m twenty five feet away and I can see the silver dollar size scales on the back of a tarpon that looks two feet wide! This is a giant fish, surely a female that looks to be a good 7 feet long. She is positioned facing away from me with her head tilting down and her tail only a foot or so below the surface. The fish is facing slightly left, and I’m tempted to try to re-position the boat but after my last experience spooking the fish, I decide to take a chance and make the cast. The fly gently hits the water about four feet to the side of the fish and two feet in front of it. I let the fly sink for three seconds to put it down on the level of the big tarpon’s eye, and bump it once, gently. The giant tarpon glides forward and inhales the fly. Suddenly the line is getting tight even tough I haven’t even tried to set the hook. The weight of the huge fish puts a bend in the rod and buries the hook. As I lean back into the fish, letting the power of the rod set the hook, the big fish pivots back at the skiff and rockets by me, headed for the security of deeper water a half mile in the distance.

The first ten seconds after hooking a big tarpon, things happen VERY quickly. The most critical thing of course is to clear your line and get the fish on the reel. With the line coming smoothly out of the stripping basket, this is easy and in three seconds I’ve got all the line cleared. The fish is running away hard and I have the rod up high, anticipating a jump, but the fish doesn’t jump, which seems strange. She just shifts into a higher gear and opens the throttle. The fly line is gone is seconds and I’m losing backing at an alarming rate. I’ve got nearly 300 yards of 30 lb Micron on my reel, but I’m definitely looking at getting spooled if this big fish doesn’t jump or slow down.

I crank the trolling motor handle to top speed, heading towards the running fish, but I’m still losing backing at an alarming rate. I know from experience that the only way I’m going to get this fish is to start the big motor and run after it. But first, I must get the trolling motor out of the water. With the rod in my right, I’m fumbling with the trolling motor with my left hand, trying to pull it up, but the cooler is blocking the way. As I’m stumbling backwards, trying to kick the cooler aside, all I can think is DON’T LOSE THE ROD. DON’T LOSE THE ROD! Losing a fourteen hundred dollar outfit is one thing but losing that big fish in the process would be a lot worse.

With the cooler out of the way, I finally jerk up the trolling motor with my left hand but the motor twists around since I have a grip only on the pull cord. I try to drop the motor back down and get it to twist the other way and seat in its track, but somehow now the handle has gotten twisted to full power, and the propeller is hitting max RPM. Not good! The black plastic prop is taking chunks out of the white mounting bracket like a buzz saw cutting through lumber! I’m getting a graphic example of Minn Kota’s claim that this trolling motor has one hundred pounds of thrust. It looks like the damn thing might cut the nose off my skiff.

The trolling motor extension handle goes flying off into the water, and as I see it floating off into the boat wake, it crosses my mind that landing a huge tarpon is of more importance than a handle that will cost me $17.95 to replace at Wall Mart. Finally I get the electric motor shut off, run back to the console and fire up the big Yamaha. All the time trying to hold the rod high with my right hand, not lose it and keep some pressure on the giant tarpon.

I mash the throttle, forgetting that I still have the outboard motor trimmed up somewhat, as I normally do while using the trolling motor. With the motor trimmed up, the bow of the skiff heads for the moon when I hit the power. I’m happy no one is watching this. I jerk the throttle back with my left hand and fumble around trying to find the trim button. Finally I get the motor trimmed back down run after the big fish, which is now a good two hundred yards away. I damn near almost have to get up on plane to keep up with the tarpon but I manage to get fifty yards of backing back and things are looking better.

Better at least until I see where the fish is headed. Between where I hooked the fish and the deep water of Pine Island Sound, there is a series of pilings that once supported a mullet shack before Hurricane Charley of ’04 deposited the shack ten miles up the harbor in Punta Gorda! At first glance it looked like the tarpon ran around the left side of all the pilings as I would expect her to but this wasn’t the case. I don’t know if this big tarpon thought she was a snook or mutton snapper, fish that have the uncanny ability to run into the worst mangroves roots once you hook them, or this huge fish was just taking the most direct route to Pine Island Sound. The giant tarpon ran straight through the middle of the pilings and out the other side before cartwheeling into the air. Luckily the tarpon was still on, but it continued on a strong pace towards open water. Now that I had gotten to see how big she was, I was frantic as the skiff headed for the pilings.

To my horror, I could see that my backing was running under the tip of one of the pilings that slanted underwater. All I could think of was get the rod tip down below the piling and try to clear it without breaking the rod. The skiff slammed up against the pilings that were protruding from the water but I had gotten the backing out from under the submerged piling and I was back in business. Except for one problem. Although the route that the tarpon took through next sets of pilings was straight, but the pilings were set so close together that I couldn’t get the boat through to follow it!

Jumping overboard with the rod, swimming thru the three sets of pilings I needed to get through and then back to the boat entered my mind, but obviously that was NOT a good plan. Then it hit me: I could grab one of my life preservers, tie it securely to the rod and reel and allow it to get pulled through the pilings and then go run around and grab it when it came out the other side.

I was almost finished lashing the nylon cord of the life preserver around the handle and reel- consumed by my own ingenuity and perhaps beginning to visualize triumph- when I felt the line go slack. I knew it was over. As I started to reel in, it was obvious that the backing was coming in far too easily to have the line or fly attached.
The sporting life provides few more sickening moments.

The shredded end of backing appeared at my rod tip. Fifteen feet of the backing was abraded before the break, probably caused when the backing was running under that barnacle encrusted piling.

I ran the skiff around the pilings and continued on for another hundred yards looking for any sign of my fly line. Then I shut off the motor and sat down. The wavelets lapping on the hull and the cormorants perched on the piling tops, making their odd croaking sounds brought me back to reality. It was extremely unlikely that I was going to find a trace of my floating line and one hundred yards of backing being pulled along by a 180 pound tarpon swimming ten feet deep in the water, heading rapidly for the Gulf of Mexico.  Still, I had to try...

Too often I find myself measuring success in terms of fish caught. Is fishing about great encounters or does it only matter when we succeed?