tarpon
Filed under: Ship's Log — Captain Ned Small @ 7:09 pm
When tarpon fishing by sight, especially with a fly rod for sleepers, everything counts. First, we just want to see if we can see one, seeing one before he sees you, counts.
Next, if we’re lucky, we might get a chance to throw. A “Chance to Throw,” counts.
If you chance a throw and don’t spook it, you’re into the realm of presentation, and every presentation counts. If the tarpon deigns to swim over and take a look, we got a ‘follow,’ and every follow counts too.
Then, if it bites, ‘we stuck one,’ and every strike counts.
This brings us to the “HooWah,” stage, the chance to stick ‘em good, to jump ‘em, the hook can still pop out but you have stung one good, got her into the air and ran her through three or four jumps, this is also known as ‘Look at the Freakin’ Mud!’ not to mention the whitewater foam and silver scales and the rattling gills.
The next step is to hang the hook, get it buried, hook the fish. When that happens all hell breaks loose. Mud blooms across the cove and, if she is big enough, there will be mud and whitewater everywhere, there will be a silver meteor from heaven, seven feet long and careening across the bay, tail walking and furious. She will be airborne in a Giant Panic, in all likelyhood there will be a few mangrove branches scattered in her wake and two men trying to tie her down with a slender thread from a small boat. The chromium shine of her scales in the air will equal the brilliance of mercury and somehow, in all that chaos, you will remember seeing her eye at the same eye level as your own, standing upright, her body upside down in the sky with her tail pointing at the remnants of the moon and the sound, like barrels of rattlesnakes colliding in anger, gills rattling.
At that point you will have jumped one, and jumping one counts. Big Time.
November 11, 2008
Bill and I….
Filed under: Ship's Log — Captain Ned Small @ 4:58 pm
Went scouting a couple of days ago. Here’s Bill with the snook of the day.
Captain Ned Small
239-695-4993
www.sightfish.com/
sightfish@embarqmail.com
All photos are the exclusive property of Capt. Ned Small
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