Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tarpon fishing leaves you plenty of time for reflecting
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Tarpon fishing in Virginia affords plenty of time for talking and reflecting, because there is sure to be long periods of inactivity between bites. For some people, it is years of inactivity -- maybe a lifetime.
It is one of those occasions when there’s either absolutely nothing going on or so much is breaking loose that you can’t get a handle on it all.
Tarpon guide Jack Brady.
There was plenty of time for talking one day this week when I was aboard Jack Brady’s 21-foot open cockpit boat. We were anchored near the edge of the Atlantic out of the tiny village of Oyster, where Brady has lived most of his 74 years. He has been a fishing guide since a teenager, going after a multitude of inshore species. His favorites are tarpon, speckled trout and drum in the surf.
A good argument can be made that the tarpon, sometimes referred to as the silver king, is the most elusive and prestigious of Virginia’s vast resource of saltwater fish. The number of releases registered with the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament generally ranges from a modest 2 to 20 annually.
So far this season, the tournament has registered 11 tarpon releases. Brady has been in on more than half of them, which gives you an idea of how he ranks as a Virginia tarpon angler. His catches this season include a rare double hookup.
“He had on about a 60-pounder then she socked it to one weighing in the 100s,” Brady said.
Tarpon are in the northern tip of their range when they prowl Virginia’s Eastern Shore. They arrive in July and August, feeding and frolicking in the bait-rich, sheltered water between the barrier islands and the maze of channels, creeks, bays and bars that stretch lazily to the grassy mainland.
Come September, especially with the first serious northeaster, they head south, probably to Florida, maybe Mexico. “It is just like you swept them out with a broom,” said Brady. “They just disappear.”
We talked about all this as we watched our rod tips and squinted at the bright horizon. We had arrived early to greet the rising tide, which lures tarpon over the flats where they feed. When the tide drops, the fish drop back into deeper water and the fishing is pretty well over.
Brady was fishing a hole 20-plus feet deep. He had reached it by crossing a windless flat, his engine running a few RPM’s above idle, just as a rose-colored sun emerged from the ocean. Tarpon are skittish. The push of the boat against the water or the pitch of the engine can cause them to spook.
Claude Rogers is credited with catching the first tarpon in Virginia water in 1955. “He had been drum fishing and saw tarpon laying up under a bar,” said Brady, a friend of the late Rogers. “He caught two of them on a lure.”
Rogers became the first director of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament and one of the most skillful and best known saltwater anglers in Virginia’s history. I fished with him on several occasions, but somehow he never got around to inviting me to go after tarpon. Some things you don’t just share.
Brady landed his first tarpon more than 40 years ago. “I was with two guys and we went for sharks,” he said. When the sharks turned off, they spotted some tarpon rolling and cast for them. His companions each hooked and lost a tarpon and he landed one. He estimates he has been around 300 hookups.
The state record is a 130-pounder landed by Barry Truitt in 1975. Truitt is a well-known Eastern Shore angler who is a scientist for the Nature Conversancy.
Bardy’s boat, the very one we fished from, is credited with the second largest Virginia catch, 126 ½ pounds.
The nearest I’ve ever been to a hooked tarpon was on a trip with Bob Hutchinson a couple summer ago. Hutch, as he is called, is another giant amount Virginia tarpon anglers. He was outdoor editor of the Virginian-Pilot for years, during which time he avoided taking me tarpon fishing.
Maybe he mellowed when he retired or maybe he figured an old guy like me no longer was a threat. Anyway, he finally took me. We were anchored about 75 yards from fellow tarpon fisherman Doug Wehner who suddenly let out a yell as his rod bowed sharply.
I got to see the fish explode from the water, it gills flared and its long, silver body in a muscular twist. It sounded like the crack of a whip when it crashed back to the surface. That fish measured 65 inches and was Wehner’s second in 10 years of effort.
This week a tarpon that must have been 6 feet long slowly rolled a few feet from the stern of Brady’s boat, right near our baits. I could see its elongated shape, its bluish-gray back, its silver sides, its upturned mouth, even its single dorsal fin.
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Brady said to the fish. “We are just going to play with you awhile and turn you back loose.”
CAPT. JACK BRADY can be reached a 757-331-2111. His guide fee is $400 and he will take up to four anglers.
