Tarpon Fishing in Key West
The tarpon is one of the world’s favourite sporting fish. Stunningly beautiful and known as the Silver King, their aerobatic antics make them a favourite of anglers worldwide. Each spring thousands of tarpon pass through Key West Harbour on their way to their breeding areas and anglers are drawn into town for the chance to pit their wits against them.
There are a number of different methods for catching tarpon, the style changing depending on the type of water that is being fished. Tarpon can be caught on sand or mangrove flats and also in shallow river inlets. For these venues the favoured method is either fishing a lure or a fly (with a strong fly rod. At some venues such as Islamorada the preferred style is fishing with small live fish such as herring or pilchards. The favoured method in Key West is chumming with shrimp boat trash. Let me explain what is meant by shrimp boat trash. Lots of shrimp fishing boats ply the waters in the Gulf of Mexico and apart from catching shrimp they also catch a lot of small fish called menhaden. These are bagged up in onion sacks and sold as bait to the tarpon fishing boats in Key West.
The method sees the skipper cutting the manhaden into chunks and continually dropping them behind the anchored boat to attract the tarpon. The fishermen use a whole menhaden on the hook, and it is drifted back in the tidal flow towards the feeding tarpon.
The tackle suggested for Key West tarpon fishing is extremely straight forward. Our favourite tarpon fishing rod is the ABU Conolon Boat, 7’9” 12-20lb test curve. It sells here in the UK for £74.99. ABU also offer a 3 piece version of the rod (the Conolon Boat Traveller) which probably better suits the visiting angler. That one sells for £79.99 in the UK. By the way, I use that Conolon Boat rod whilst fishing for sturgeon in British Columbia and last year caught my biggest ever fish with a length of 9ft 1inch and weighing…who knows, there was just the two of us fishing and there’s no way you can lift such a beast but we estimated it at around 400 lbs. Anyhow, back to tarpon fishing. The most widely used reels for tarpon fishing are the TLD15 and TLD20 lever drag multipliers from Shimano. The TLD 15 sells for around £80 in the UK, whereas the TLD 20 is about £15 more expensive. Whatever reel you choose, it has to be super free running, because you’re trying to make your bait drift down in the tide at a similar speed to the bait being thrown in by the skipper. My own preference is for the bigger TLD 20 because the larger spool turns slower when you are running your bait down in the tide and it needs less turns to reel in when the bait has drifted as far you want. You will need the reel completely loaded with line, I prefer the grey Ande nylon in breaking strains of either 15 or 20 lbs. To the end of the line is tied a 10 foot leader of 50 lb fluorocarbon and a large circle hook. Of course all of the light tackle boats have excellent tackle for you to use should you not have your own.
OK, now down to the fishing. Your skipper will have motored out to one of the top tarpon spots, perhaps the entrance to Key West Harbour, the yacht basin, the North West Channel or maybe Bokacheeka. The boat will be anchored at the bow and if there are other people tarpon fishing, their boat will probably be only a few feet away. The idea is that if everybody is chumming then there will be a good supply of bait drifting down to the fish, keeping them in one substantial shoal rather than splitting it up. The skipper will start throwing in the pieces of menhaden and you’ll put a whole fish onto your hook. There’s a particular way to hook these baits but don’t worry, the skipper will demonstrate how it’s done. You now let your bait drift down the current, paying very close attention to your line as it leaves the reel spool. A bite can be quite subtle and will often be detected by the spool of the reel suddenly running faster. As soon as a bite is seen you need to reel like hell….don’t strike !!. The beauty of a circle hook is that it seemingly hooks the fish itself once you tighten the line by reeling in as fast as possible.
Once a fish is hooked things will suddenly become hectic, the tarpon will likely leap out of the water and it will certainly start running towards Cuba !!. Remember when playing a tarpon that if he jumps he’ll throw the hook unless you swiftly lower the rod to ease the tension on the line. This dropping of the rod is known as “bowing to the King”, and you’ll get plenty of comments from anybody else on the boat if you lose a fish because it jumped and you forgot to bow. If the hooked tarpon is of reasonable size the skipper will release the anchor and set off to follow the fish. I’ve released fish that were hooked a mile or more away from where they are finally released. It can be a long and hard fight but with any luck you will eventually have the fish alongside the boat ready for a quick photo before it is safely released to fight again some other day. I remember a ‘first-timer’ fishing with us one year. He hooked his first tarpon and as it jumped he excitedly asked “how big is that” to which one wag replied “about forty minutes” !!.
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