Word: tarpon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Belize are one of the wonders of the fishing world. They extend for miles: a limestone plain covered by a blue-green, seemingly endless mirror of gin-clear salt water, traversed by bluer channels and punctuated by small mangrove islands. This is the home of Megalops atlanticus, the tarpon...
Essentially, tarpon are huge archaic herring. In Florida they regularly grow to 150 lbs. (the world record on fly is 188 lbs.), but in Belize they are smaller, up to about 100 lbs. They are beautiful creatures, sheathed in scales the size of silver dollars, glittering, pugnacious, spooky and inedible: the only thing you can do with a tarpon, in the unlikely event that you catch it, ) is let it go. But as a rule you have no choice about letting a tarpon go. It just goes...
...angler than in the fish. No other angling contains such extremes of frustration and exhilaration. One hears middle-aged enthusiasts declare it to be "better than sex." Perhaps not, but the two activities have something in common: the first try is an embarrassment; everything goes wrong. With tarpon, however, it keeps going wrong...
...ideal day for flat fishing is cloudless, calm and roasting hot. The guide poles the skiff along the flats in a predatory silence, and you stand on the bow platform, with line stripped out, sweating through the sunblock lotion, ready to cast. Tarpon fishing is stalking. You must see the fish and cast to it. Hence its peculiar excitement, which far exceeds trout or even salmon fishing. "Look, look, out there, about a hundred feet, in the white spot, a big one, he's coming, ooh, thrreee of them!" You peer and scan and peer again, and see nothing. Then...
What the guide expects you to do is shoot the line out 60 ft. or 70 ft., drop the fly (a vulgar tuft of feathers and Mylar) some 5 ft. in front of the tarpon's snoot and start stripping it in. The fish will then charge the fly, you will strike, and it's showtime! So much for utopia...