The tarpon is one of the world’s favourite sporting fish. Stunningly beautiful and known as the Silver King, their aerobatic antics make them a favourite of anglers worldwide. From March to July thousands of tarpon pass through the harbour in Key West en route to the spawning grounds and fishermen are attracted into town for the chance to pit their wits against them.
There are many varying fishing styles for hunting tarpon, the style changing depending on the type of water that is being fished. Tarpon can be found in shallow river inlets and also on sand and mangrove flats. For these venues the favoured method is either fishing a fly coupled to a very strong rod and line or using an artificial lure. At some venues for example Islamorada the favoured method is livebaiting with small fish such as pilchards or herring. The favoured method in Key West is chumming with shrimp boat trash. Let me explain what we mean by shrimp boat trash. Many shrimp fishing boats ply the waters in the Gulf of Mexico and besides catching shrimp they also net a lot of small fish called menhaden. These are bagged up in onion sacks and sold as bait to the tarpon fishing boats in Key West.
The method involves the Captain cutting the manhaden into chunks and continually throwing them behind the anchored boat to attract the tarpon. The fishermen use a whole menhaden on the hook, and it is drifted back in the tide down to the feeding tarpon.
The tackle recommended for Key West tarpon fishing is extremely straight forward. Our favourite tarpon fishing rod is the ABU Conolon Boat, 7’9” 12-20lb test curve. It retails here in the UK at £74.99. ABU also offer a 3 piece version (the Conolon Boat Traveller) which might be more suited to the jet-setting traveller. That version retails at £79.99 in the UK. By the way, I use that very same rod to fish for sturgeon on the Fraser River near Vancouver and last year landed my biggest ever fish with a length of 9ft 1inch and weighing…who knows, there was just the two of us fishing and there’s no way we could lift such a beast but we estimated it at around 400 lbs. Anyhow, returning to tarpon fishing. The most popular reels for tarpon fishing are the TLD15 and TLD20 lever drag multipliers from Shimano. The TLD 15 retails at around £80 in the UK, whilst the TLD 20 is about £15 more. Whatever reel you decide on, it has to be super free running, since you’re trying to make your bait drift down in the current at a similar speed to the pieces being introduced by the Captain. I prefer to use the larger TLD 20 because the larger spool spins more slowly when you are drifting your bait down in the tide and it needs less turns of the handle to reel in when the bait has drifted as far you want. You’ll want the reel fully loaded with nylon, I go for the Ande grey in breaking strains of either 15 or 20 lbs. To the end of that is securely knotted a 10 foot leader of 50 lb fluorocarbon and a large circle hook. Naturally all of the fishing boats have first class tackle available free of charge if you don’t have your own.
Let’s now take a look at the actual fishing method used in Key West. Your skipper will have motored out to one of the top tarpon spots, perhaps the yacht basin, Bokacheeka, the entrance to Key West Harbour or maybe the North West Channel. The boat is anchored at the bow and if there are other people tarpon fishing, their boat will very likely be moored only a few feet away. The idea is that if everybody is chumming then there will be a steady stream of food drifting down to the fish, keeping them in one substantial shoal rather than splitting it up. The skipper will start chumming with the cut up baits and you’ll hook a whole fish onto your hook. There’s a particular way to hook these baits but don’t worry, the captain will demonstrate how it’s done. You now let your bait drift down the tide, paying particular attention to where your line leaves the spool of the reel. A bite can be quite subtle and will often be detected by the spool of the reel suddenly running faster. As soon as a bite is seen you have to reel like hell….don’t strike !!. The magic of a circle hook is that it seemingly hooks the fish itself once you tighten the line by turning the reel as fast as possible.
Once a fish is hooked all hell will be let loose, the tarpon will almost certainly jump clear of the water and it will certainly start running towards Cuba !!. Remember when playing a tarpon that if he jumps he’ll get rid of the hook unless you immediately lower the rod to ease the tension on the line. This lowering of the rod is known as “bowing to the King”, and you’ll get plenty of comments from anybody else on board if you lose a tarpon because he jumped and you didn’t bow. If the hooked tarpon is of decent size the Captain will release the anchor and set off to follow the fish. It’s not unusual to unhook a tarpon a mile away from where it was hooked. It can be a long and hard fight but with any luck you will eventually have the fish beside the boat ready for a quick photograph before it is safely released to fight again some other day. I recall a ‘first-timer’ fishing with us one year. He hooked his first tarpon and as it jumped he excitedly asked “how big is that” to which one wag replied “about forty minutes” !!.
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