The Tarpon Book by Frank Sargeant

Author:Frank Sargeant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Derrydale Press
Published: 1991-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Hooking Boca Grande Tarpon

Curiously, most guides don’t bother to fish for tarpon where they see them rolling. The theory is that the rollers are “playing” or going through some sort of pre-spawn ritual, and are not interested in food. Those massed closer to bottom, on the other hand, are likely to take, so the skippers pay a lot more attention to the tarpon they see on their depthfinders than those they see on top.

In general, the feeding fish are most often found on the ledge of the up-current side of the deeper holes, so the top skippers spend a lot of time working over these locations, pinpointing them by lining up the Lighthouse and the fuel storage tanks ashore as markers for the various hotspots.

When a tarpon takes, there’s no mistaking it. The heavy rod takes on an alarming bend, and as soon as it does the skipper firewalls the throttle. This takes up slack, drives the hook home, and gets the boat out of the way in case the fish decides to come straight up and jump, as they often do. (A green tarpon inside a boat’s cockpit is an awesome sight. The only thing to do is take cover, anywhere you can find it, until the fish jumps back out or expires.)

“The one problem a lot of beginners have is that they want to jerk on the rod to set the hook,” notes Jon Zorian. “It doesn’t work most of the time. You can’t jerk hard enough to get all the slack out and drive the barb home, but you can jerk hard enough to make him spit out the bait. I make all my customers keep their hands on top of the rod, not under it, so they can’t reflexively set the hook when they get a strike.”

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