Challenge of tarpon lures angler to Florida Palm Island known as hotspot for ‘silver kings’

Palm Island is one of Florida’s more exclusive and unique vacation destinations. For starters, access to the island is via private boats or by car ferry that carries only eight vehicles per trip. Once on the island, cars are left in a large parking lot and visitors get around by golf cart, bicycle or on foot. There are some townhouse style private homes here and there, but most vacationers rent one, two or three bedroom time-share condos. Each condo has a full kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry room, and multiple bed and bathrooms, all fully furnished and exquisitely appointed.

Only certain areas of Palm Island are set aside for housing, and there is small general store, Rum Bay Restaurant with a diverse menu and outstanding seafood, and a pizza parlor to serve guests. A recreation center rents everything from kiddie floats to big boats including canoes, kayaks, sea-dos, snorkeling gear, bicycles, and golf carts. There are 11 tennis courts, a pro shop and an on site pro tennis instructor, and each cluster of condos has a private swimming pool , Jacuzzi, and several fully equipped barbecue and picnic areas.

Fresh water island ponds are full of unique fish and amphibians, the lush foliage is alive with beautiful birds and certain sections of the beach abound with a variety of sea turtles there to lay eggs. Miles of white sand offer the chance to swim, sunbathe, snorkel and search and select from the abundance of sea shells, or just sit under a beach umbrella, relax and watch the porpoise swim past. Regardless of all the beauty and amenities, my single outdoor-minded purpose for visiting this vacation paradise was to interact with the thousand of tarpon ceaselessly swimming around the island.

Tarpon Time

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune and great pleasure to fish for a dozen species of salmon and trout, four types of bass, and prized salt water quarry from big rod marlin and shark to light tackle snook, permit, bonefish and barracuda, among others. If I had to choose only one game fish to fly cast to for the rest of my life, without hesitation it would be the tarpon. Tarpon are hard mouthed, finned torpedoes of solid strength and stamina under silver-scaled armor. Setting the fly hook on a 100-pound tarpon is a kin to kicking a sleeping bear, you’re soon going to have your hands full of all the attention you can stand and generally more than you bargained for.

Tarpon fishing combines the best features of hunting and fishing. The guide poles the flats boat through crystal clear water 4 to 10 feet in depth and each of you keeps a sharp lookout for traveling or schooled fish. Then you sneak within casting distance and place a fly near the moving fish without spooking any. There may be two tarpon or 20, and I’ve seen groups of 100 of the chrome- sided behemoths, cast a dozen times and never had a strike. Hard to believe that many fish could all have lockjaw.

When a 100-pound plus tarpon finally does engulf a fly no bigger than a car key, the first clue is usually just a slow tension and tightening of the line, as if you were hung up. Then the angler pulls the rod straight away from the fish, hanging tight to the line with both casting and stripping hands. Never lift the rod tip, as if hooking a salmon or trout. The fly just won’t sink into a tarpon’s bony mouth that way. Once the angler strikes, pulling the rod back two or three times to sink the barb home, it’s time to hang on and hope.

A hooked tarpon might jump immediately after feeling the hook, right beside the boat, occasionally into the boat, creating a very nasty situation. Or the big fish might speed off on a run causing a tense few seconds while the line that has been stripped onto the deck must zip into and through the guides without catching, snagging or snarling, which will snap the leader in a heartbeat. Occasionally the tarpon will run at the boat, necessitating fast line stripping and deft rod handling until it reverses direction and line sings outward again.

Then the fish is on the reel and the real battle begins, often 45 minutes to an hour, rarely on a really big, strong fish, two hours or more. A 12-weight rod seems like a lot of stick when casting all day, but it’s a mere twig when fighting a hot tarpon. Kind of like going bear hunting with a buggy whip, exciting but not always prudent. In five years, during 15 days of fishing, my guide and I have broken seven fly rods. It’s part of doing business, so to speak, since tarpon are the strongest, toughest game fish I’ve ever tangled with!

Grande Sunday

I get a lot of odd looks when I mention I’m taking a short Florida vacation in June rather than during snow season. When a sportsman asks, I need only mention tarpon and fly rod in the same sentence and those in the know get a wishful smile, a far away look, and nod their heads reflectively. May and June are prime time for the tarpon migration all along the bays and ocean of Florida’s entire coastline. Anglers travel from all over the U.S. to fish for tarpon, and though weekdays are busy enough on the water, everyone in Florida and their brother head for the beach or their boat on weekends.

My fishing dates for this year fell on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, not promising due to the intense recreational boat traffic that puts fish down and scatters the schools. I was disgruntled but not defeated, because I had an ace up my sleeve, my perennial guide Captain Austin Lowder. Upland hunters put their trust in an outstanding bird dog to locate game, and in the world of fly fishing for tarpon, Austin would be a field trial champion many times over. He says it’s just experience, but I call it his sixth sense that invariably locates tarpon and puts me within casting distance with the right fly. Sunday, my third and final day after silver kings, the ocean would be a nightmare of buzzing boats and jet skis, and Capt. Lowder’s skills and patience would be sorely tested.

We decided on a split day, fishing 6 to 9 a.m., then 4 p.m. to dark to avoid the heaviest recreational boat traffic, but that was not to be. The wind had shifted 180 degrees from the previous day and picked up considerably. As we exited the protective pass in the pre-dawn darkness we got a nasty surprise. A 19-foot flats boat offers little protection from nasty seas, and within one minute we were both soaked to the skin by spray and waves coming over the bow. To make matters more miserable, the crest to trough drop was beating and bouncing us unmercifully. After only an hour of that abuse, seeing only one other boat and no tarpon in the heavy waves, we ran for shelter.

When Austin picked me up at the dock at 2:30, the wind had subsided, the sun was shining and new hope blossomed. Once through the pass we slowly motored south, paralleling the beaches, 200 yards off shore, watching, hoping and vigilant for a flash of silver, a dorsal fin cutting the surface, or a tarpon’s tail in the surf. After an hour without spotting a fish and having spoken with anglers on three other boats, all who agree the tarpon were elsewhere, Austin had one of his premonitions. “We’re going to Boca Grande,” he said, and throwing a rooster-tail wake we made the 30-minute run.

Boca Grande pass is one of the most famous tarpon spots in Florida, and one of the most crowded when the fish are running on the tide or crabs are hatching. Today the spot was desolate of fish and fishermen, but alive with recreational boats, so we headed for the back bay area. I spotted the pod of tarpon 200 yards in front of us just as Austin stopped the boat, then he pointed out two other rolling splashing schools far off on the left and right. We were surrounded, and I was in heaven as I climbed onto the bow casting platform, stripping line from the reel in readiness to cast. As Austin used the electric bow motor to intercept the first line of tarpon and position me for a cast, I checked to see that the sparse gray hackled fly, called a cockroach, was free moving on the leader loop and the long feathers weren’t fouled around the hook.

Over the next three hours, which passed like mere minutes, without exaggeration I cast into more than 20 schools of tarpon. Some were traveling in long strings, others were circling and frolicking in daisy chains. Some were pods of a dozen fish, while several schools held 50 to 75 chrome- sided torpedoes from 60 to 150 pounds. Several times I placed my fly among the cluster of flashing silver half a dozen times and was ignored each cast.

More demoralizing than having my fly presentations and retrieves snubbed so many times, were the four fish that did strike during Sunday’s hot, humid casting frenzy. Not one resulted in a hookup of more than 30 seconds! Even when you’re casting among a school of tarpon, refusals are so common and strikes so scarce, when the line finally tightens it’s always a surprise to me. I set the hook on the first fish, but obviously not quick enough or hard enough as the line went limp almost at once.

Half an hour later, another take, I set the hook and felt the fish surge, then nothing. “Strip, strip,-faster, strip faster.” Austin yelled, “He’s running toward you.” As I tried to tighten the line that was in front of me on the left side of the boat, a tarpon leaped clear of the water almost 180 degrees behind me near the front right of the boat. It was my fish, on a long loose line, and I watched as the fly pulled out in my direction and the fish went the other.

I was so wound up by the third strike, I set the hook so hard I broke 30-pound test leader and left the fly in the tarpon’s mouth! Then, in all my tarpon trips I’ve never had a fish take the fly like the fourth one did. The tarpon must have turned, struck and run, because a passing locomotive couldn’t have pulled faster or harder. My fly line went through my fingers so fast it cut my knuckle like a knife. I took two band aids to close the cut and stop the bleeding, and as I retrieved line on later casts the salt water worked into the wound and gave new meaning to the agony and the ecstasy of fishing.

Finally, as we were heading in for the night about 7:30 p.m., I got to cast to one more pod of fish. My second cast drew a strike, the hookup was finally solid, and five leaps, several long runs and 45 minutes later a 110-pound fish was photographed and released. Nine takes, five hookups and three tarpon from 90 to 120 pounds to the boat in three days. Now that’s a Florida vacation.

Early the next morning, a few hours before flying home, I took a pensive, melancholy walk along a somewhat secluded section of Palm Island Beach. Just I turned to head back, a glint of silver caught my eye 50 yards off shore, and then another as several tarpon breached the surface. “Only 364 more days, boys.” I murmured to the surf, “then I’ll meet you right back here in June.”

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com