Month: June 2018

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Fifty Shades of Fish

I’m not a horrible fly fisherman, I’m really not. My casts could be better, sure, my hook sets may not be quite the thing, and when I actually hook a fish I may not land it, but I’m not always incompetent. Some days the sun shines. Natheless I’m skunked again in Margeritaville. I’m worn out with Florida, and last weekend I failed to catch any fish.

It wasn’t my fault exactly, and it certainly wasn’t Captain Court Douthit’s (pronounce Dow-thit’s) fault. Court clearly loves Florida and the fish and the sport and he’s investing a big part of his life in it. That’s why people like me need guides: I want to learn something, I need a boat, I don’t know the water or the fish . . . That’s why you pay good guides: they make the investment to know what you don’t and have the stuff that you need that you don’t have. Our first day out what Court had was a plan, and given the weather it was a good plan, but fishing is a sadomasochistic sport, and fly fishing even more so. Some days one’s not the sado. This weekend we weren’t the sado.

We fished the Gulf side out of Dunedin (pronounced Done Eatin’, which in Gaelic means cute shops), not in Tampa Bay. Dunedin is protected by narrow barrier islands, and the other side of the barrier islands, what Court called the beach side, was where the tarpon usually cruised. We weren’t going out there though. We couldn’t have seen whales cruising and the waves were downright scary. Instead we looked for tarpon on the leeward side of the islands. All we found were crusty old guys in boats (“That’s Old Bag of Rocks. He had his driver’s license taken away because he’s blind. He carries a bag of rocks to chunk at jet skiers.”)

The weather was all wrong. For all I know there’s never any sunshine in Tampa, it’s always overcast except when it storms, and the wind always blows hard. Sunshine and calm waters in Tampa may be like hatches: a practical joke to play on unsuspecting Texans. The night before we’d gone to bed during lashings o’ rain and lightning. We figured the next morning on the water it could get bad. It got bad. Before it got really bad Court polled us across a flat looking for snook. I got some casts which landed somewhere near a snook, so of course it turned and moseyed off in the other direction. Mostly we saw a lot of mullet stacked up on the sand.

It never rained but I still got soaked. Coming back through the slop to the marina the waves were fast and high, and we had buckets of saltwater spray us with each wave. It wasn’t cold, and as spa treatments go it was fine. It would have been better though if Court had fixed us a nice cup of herbal tea to go with the salt rub.

It was obvious Captain Court felt bad, but there was no reason for it. He’d taken a risk to get us out on the water and we appreciated it. He said the forecast was the same the next day (pronounced it’s going to be crap again tomorrow and there’s no reason to try the same thing), but that if it wasn’t lightning we should try something else the next night.

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Dunedin is a pretty little town with a pretty little marina that looks like somebody set Georgetown down on the Florida coast. It was charming. At the little marina diner we ate fresh tuna and avocado carpaccio with ginger and lime, called in South Florida tuna poke. Most marina diners would have had grilled cheese or burgers with soggy fries, and the raw fresh tuna was a big improvement. So were the fresh grouper tacos. They also had local beers, and after lunch I took a nap in the car while Kris checked out the shops. Success.

Our day wasn’t done, and except for the diner and the nap it didn’t get better.  Not only did we get skunked and drenched, the Astros lost to the Rays. The Rays are a fine young team, and the Astros’ offense was dead, their defense was sloppy, and Gerrit Cole pitched subpar.  The stadium also lived down to its reputation. The crowd (pronounced the stadium was mostly empty) was friendly and the food and beer was surprisingly good. There were a lot of Astros fans, and also some Rays fans, but it was sparsely populated. I found a Tampa friend from my favorite Astros fan site just by looking. He was pretty much sitting next to us. I had prime seats that I’d bought as soon as tickets went on sale. He’d bought his tickets that morning. Not much demand.

Saturday morning there was lightning and rain. We went to the St. Petersburg fine arts museum, which was small but nice enough and which had some fine Asian pieces, and the St. Petersburg history museum which houses the world’s largest collection of autographed baseballs. By game time the weather had cleared enough to fish the underwater dock lights for snook and baby tarpon, 20 to 40 pounds. We’d have some visibility to spot fish against the underwater lights. Kris was all for it, and I’m all for Kris.

* * *

Kris asked me where we were going to eat in Tampa, and I told her Hooters. Actually, I told her that there was a famous national restaurant chain founded in Tampa and that we should go there. She asked which one and I said I can’t remember the name.

“What’s it famous for?”

“Breasts.”

“Chicken?” I hadn’t considered chicken.

“No, lady breasts.”

“Twin Peaks?” No. “Hooters?” That was the one. “I guess it’s because of all the owls in Tampa,” she said.

I know Hooters was founded in Tampa because six years ago my friend Patrick was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Patrick has his peculiarities.

The first day he left the convention for food, but every civic volunteer suggested Hooters. It was founded in Tampa. What good Republican wouldn’t want to go to Hooters? Patrick wouldn’t want to go to Hooters. After the third or fifteenth Hooters suggestion someone suggested a Thai restaurant.

Now I’m stealing Patrick’s story, and it is one of the best stories ever. Ever. Patrick, if for some odd reason you ever see this forgive me, but I can’t resist. It’s the best story ever.

When Patrick got back to Austin from Tampa he called me. “You won’t believe who I met in Tampa! Mark Naimus!” “Who?” “Mark Naimus!” “Who is Mark Naimus?” “What are you talking about! You know Martin Amis!”

Each Texas delegate had a straw Stetson, blue jeans, and a Lone Star Flag pearl-snap shirt. It was a handsome ensemble. Then-governor Rick Perry autographed Patrick’s Stetson on the font brim, and future-governor Greg Abbott autographed it on the back.  When he went into the Thai restaurant in full regalia Patrick spotted Martin Amis at the bar. Now think about that for a second: it wasn’t somebody you or I would recognize. It wasn’t John Wayne or Elvis Presley or Paul McCartney. It wasn’t even Stephen King. It was Martin Amis. Patrick, who’d just finished Lionel Asbo, recognized Amis and introduced himself.

Amis was covering the convention for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Patrick told Amis that he’d just read Lionel Asbo, and then they talked about Laurent Binet’s HHhH, a French novel that had won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and which they both admired. It’s a very good novel which of course I hadn’t heard of. Martin Amis autographed the crown of Patrick’s hat, and I’m pretty certain it is now the only cowboy hat anywhere autographed by Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and Martin Amis.

The next day Patrick was on the floor of the convention and a runner tracked him down. Mr. Amis was making a film of the convention for the Daily Beast. Mr. Amis was wondering if Patrick and other members of the Texas delegation would agree to an interview. Mr. Amis would come to their motel to film the interview.

So when Patrick called me bubbling about meeting Martin Amis I said Patrick, you know what’s going to happen. Martin Amis, sardonic, liberal, witty, is going to shred you. No no Patrick insisted. We talked by the pool about books for an hour!

“It was great!’ Ok, Patrick may not have said it was great, but you could tell he surely thought so.

So the video was posted by the Daily Beast, and sure enough, Martin Amis shredded the Republican Party and the convention and in the middle of the film, wearing his Stetson, is Patrick, and Amis treats a delegate to the Republican National Convention with the greatest delicacy, the greatest kindness. And who wouldn’t?

And of course there’s that hat.

* * *

The Astros lost Saturday’s game as well, with some bad luck and some sub-par pitching by Justin Verlander and more dead bats. At 9 that night we met Court in a St. Petersburg neighborhood park to fish the boat slips for snook and baby tarpon. We fished until 4 the next morning.

If you don’t fish saltwater you may not know about fish lights. Bait is attracted to light. Game fish are attracted to bait.  Any light works, but spooky underwater green lights work best of all. I figure that the bait thinks it’s natural plankton luminescence, and being planktivorish it shows up to gorge. It’s not a very good theory, and as far as I know planktivorish isn’t a word, but it’s something. Bait could just be dumb. Or maybe it just likes green.

Did we see fish? You betcha. Looking into those weird nighttime pools of green we saw snook and baby tarpon enough to make any sight fisher happy. Over the seven hours we fished, moving from dock to dock, I must have made 300 casts to fish, at least some of which were in the vicinity of fish. Kris must have made another 100 casts–She didn’t want to come back to Florida so she let me cast more than was my due. Court put us on fish and we tried every fly, small light, small dark, large light, large dark, gurglers, purple things that looked like Cookie Monster, green things, tan things, and back to small white, small dark  . . . Nothing worked until . . . Skip that. Nothing worked.

I had three hits, three, all of which I pulled out of the fish’s mouth with a trout set–don’t tell Captain Court, but I swear I have an excuse.  Nine o’clock is my bedtime. It’s not when I start fishing.

By the next morning we were punch drunk and exhausted and had caught nada, but we’d seen baby tarpon roll by the dozens, flashing up through the green glow and hitting the surface like big salmon taking a fly. Just not my fly. At least we didn’t get a sunburn. Not that the sun ever shines in Tampa.

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When you’ve got two days in a strange place to catch fish there are no guarantees that either the fish or the weather will cooperate, and there are never any guarantees fishing for saltwater fish. If we’d had longer the weather would have cooperated and sooner or later we would have landed a fish, but we ran out of sooner with no later at all. I would fish with Captain Court again in a heart beat. I just hope next time its a bit luckier day. Or a bit luckier night.

* * *

We didn’t eat at Hooters. Mostly we ate at the ballpark except for the marina diner and the first night at Columbia in Ybor City with Kris’s 34-year-ago maid-of-honor and her husband.  I bought some cigars in a random cigar roller’s shop.  I didn’t miss Hooters, and no one suggested Thai.  We didn’t see Martin Amis.

 

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Sunfish, Tarpon, and Donuts

Friday we fished the San Marcos River with Chris Adams of Go Outside Expeditions.  We’d fished on the San Marcos with Chris before, and there are few things as pleasant as repeating a river with a guide you like. Chris had a new raft, which was great, and his wife made cookies which were also great,  and we fished from 7:30 or so until almost 5, with Kris the client spending a good two hours trying to re-think Chris the guide’s business plan.  Meantime I added to my sunfish collection.

There was a nice redbreast, the most notable feature of which is that weird long opercle flap–the ear.  I also caught a long-ear, which is more boldly named but which runs a poor second to the redbreast in the long-ears competition.

Kris caught the pretty Guadalupe-largemouth hybrid in the top picture and a warmouth and some largemouths and some other stuff.  I got a nice river largemouth.

Mostly we were fishing poppers and streamers with 6 weights, and we switched flies a lot during the part of the day when things were slow.

I noticed that the river fish aren’t as dark as the pond fish I usually catch.  They seem almost translucent, less brightly colored, and better matched to the shades of the river than the fish in weedier ponds. As long as it’s not time to spawn the fish match the place.

* * *

We go to Tampa at the end of the week to fish with Court Douthit, and I’ve had a lot of conversations in Houston about Tampa. It seems that everyone but me visits Tampa or came from Tampa, and a lot of the people I talked to have fished Tampa Bay for tarpon.

In the elevator a colleague told me that she went to St Petersburg for a deposition, and thatshe had to cross the Howard Frankland Bridge. Halfway across with no other traffic she had a memorable anxiety attack. Duly warned.

At Gordy & Sons, I was buying a big game sinking line and got into a conversation with an employee and another customer. The customer said he’d fished Tampa a lot, that the bait fishermen gather to catch tarpon on their way into the bay at the Howard Frankland Bridge, and that the boat bloom was not to be missed. “You should get your guide to take you there just to see it.” The same thing happens up and down the west coast of Florida, famously at Boca Grande for abundance of tarpon and Homosassa for the size of the tarpon. The customer told me that the boats were so crowded that the guides carried knives, big knives, to slash tangled lines. I could picture guides in center consoles slashing away with sabers.

Last Thursday a client showed me his picture of a 70-pound tarpon caught in Tampa the weekend before.  We were in a medium-sized banquet room, about the size of a basketball court, and he said that in a space the size of that room there would be 100 boats. He said they were fishing 60 feet deep with crab, and that the guides were so used to the press that a path opened for his boat to follow the tarpon’s run.

I’ve been reading Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s River of Grass, and because of the conversations and the reading it finally struck me that I was missing something important.  Douglas is a lyrical writer. She describes the Rock, the limestone spine that gives Florida shape and substance, the concave shape of which creates the Everglades, and which plays out as the Keys in its final submersion. It struck me that because it shapes Florida the rock also shapes the tarpon migration up the western coast. Like I said, Douglas is pretty lyrical, and maybe I let too much rub off.

The tarpon migration, not the limestone migration, follows the Gulf Coast from the Keys as far as New Orleans. For marine biologists the number of tarpon that migrate and why they migrate, including their inshore excursions, is one of the grand mysteries. It’s probably all the usual fishy reasons: Sex and food and protection. They spawn offshore so inshore would only be a staging point for spawning, but there’s certainly food inshore.  Maybe they come in because from larvae they’re hardwired to move offshore to inshore, inshore to offshore. It’s some kind of vestigial biological instinct that plays no real purpose. Maybe.

In the 1880s anglers figured out that tarpon migrate and could be caught with light tackle at the openings of the bays, so the anglers began show up in numbers to match the tarpon. Maybe we’re as hard-wired to follow game migrations, whether woolly mammoths or salmon or tarpon, as tarpon larvae are to move inshore. Maybe the angler migration is as much a vestigial instinct as the tarpon migration.

Postcard, Tarpon Inn, Port Aransas, Texas, 1911-1924, The University of Houston Digital Library, from Wikipedia

It also struck me that I hadn’t connected Marjory Stoneman Douglas with  Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the mass shooting occurred on Valentines.  She doesn’t deserve that connection, but no one does.

* * *

Bakeries, which in my worldview includes donut shops, are necessary to fishing, and on our way to fish with Chris from where we were staying in San Antonio we stopped at Mi Tierra’s panaderia for breakfast.  Of course what we really wanted was to have the huevos rancheros at Mi Tierra: there’s no better bacon or coffee or wait staff anywhere, but we were running late. It was doubly disappointing.  There was no pan dulce that early, only empanadas, and they were only ok.

Earlier this year driving from Houston it struck me that every donut shop on the way to the Guadalupe River seemed to have a Buddhist shrine.

There’s a large Vietnamese population in Houston, and I figured the donut shops must be Vietnamese.  Turns out no.  Cambodian.

At the Foodways Texas symposium in April there was a panel on Cambodian donut shops moderated by Rob Walsh, with David Buehrer, Houston’s hippest coffee guy, filmmaker Keely Steenson (who showed her film on Cambodian donut shops), and Samoeurn Phan, a shop owner. Turns out that most donut shops in Southeast Texas are Cambodian-immigrant owned. These aren’t hip donuts, they’re not cutting-edge donuts, and they’re not authentic kolaches (because every Texas donut shop has to have a kolache which is a sausage roll which is not actually a kolache). They’re working class cheap donuts. Joy Donuts. Snowflake Donuts. LeDonut (where I go for the boudin kolaches, which are also not technically kolaches but which are delicious).

It’s no accident, and it’s all in the business plan. A Cambodian donut entrepreneur builds out the shop then finances its purchase by a Cambodian family, as often as not relatives of the entrepreneur. There’s no bank, because no bank would finance the venture, and it’s a family affair. Mom’s in the front at the counter, dad’s at the back turning out donuts.  It’s a hard way to make a living, but it’s a way to make a living.

Steenson has a film on Cambodian donut shops which was shown at the symposium and which I hope will someday make it to the internet.  Buehrer, the hip coffee guy, had worked at Phan’s donut shop in high school. That, he said, is where he learned about customer service. And kolache. So a hip Anglo coffee entrepreneur learned about an old-fashioned Czech pastry from Cambodian donut entrepreneurs in the Houston suburbs. That’s kind of the way Houston works.

 

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Flies, Leaders, and Devil Rays

At the end of the month we fish two days with Captain Court Douthit somewhere near Tampa. Captain Douthit inherited us, so I hope his Zen or at least his sense of humor is on. He’ll probably need it. Three or four months ago I tried to book with the Orvis-endorsed guide in Tampa.  I’ve had luck with Orvis guides, but no luck here: he was booked.  I found another guide with a boat I liked, booked the dates, and sent in the deposit.

Turns out I tried to pick a guide by his boat and instead picked a movie star.  In May he canceled our trip because of his schedule with Animal Planet. Who knew? It’s probably for the best, since on fishing videos you have to yell at your fish like Vikings taking scalps. We’re not much good at that.

Anyway when he canceled he was nice enough not to just drop me: I guess I’m not quite that prom date. He passed us on to Captain Court, and it looks ok. Captain Court has a cool boat, a 1994 Hewes, with a relatively new engine, and I like his website. I like that he took off a summer to hang out with his kiddo, which seems a long way from taking scalps, and he doesn’t seem to require that the clients in the photos on his website yell at their fish.

* * *

As it happens I’ve tied a lot of tarpon flies, all tied on 1/0 hooks for the smallish resident tarpon of Belize. That may be small for Tampa, or maybe not. I have no idea what fish want in Tampa, or what we may fish for.  To be honest I’d be perfectly happy puttering around mangroves looking for snook in the roots or redfish in the grass. Are there mangroves? Is there grass? I don’t know.  As to flies though I gather that if you put a fly into a tarpon’s zone, the tarpon’s not real selective about the fly. Maybe even a McGinty would work.

Of course there’s that whole casting-into-the-zone thing which is a problem, and so far even when I’ve had lucky casts the tarpon haven’t taken my fly. Maybe the casts weren’t lucky enough.

Dimock, Anthony Weston, The Book of the Tarpon, 1911, at 108.

Like the tarpon, tarpon folk don’t seem overly concerned with fly selection. Bill Bishop in High Rollers says he only carries three patterns in shades of dark and light, dark for clear water and light for cloudy. Or was it the other way around?  On a quick internet survey everybody seems to push at most four or five flies. Even by bass and redfish standards that’s sparse. For bass I’ve got more than three different kinds of poppers, not to mention various streamers, woolly buggers, frogs, and McGinties. You probably can fish for tarpon with a McGinty, but nobody knows it yet.

I tied a lot of tarpon flies during Hurricane Harvey.  I like tying tarpon flies because they’re big, and even in these late days I can still see them, and we were going back to Belize in November after Harvey. Our house didn’t flood, and we never lost power, but for three days our street was a storm drain.  There was nothing to do but watch the weather, watch the water rising, tie flies, and joke on Facebook that I was waiting for the tarpon to show up in our yard.  They never did. After a day or so even I stopped joking on Facebook.

What tarpon people are concerned with are leaders. On the internet you can find a dozen ways to tie a tarpon leader, and each leader’s proponents seem certain as to their efficacy. I didn’t know there was so much righteousness in the cause of leaders.

First off there’s the whole IGFA leader standard. Everyone agrees a 12-inch bite tippet is too short. I’m sure that somewhere deep in the heart of the IGFA tower in downtown Nantucket there are sincere discussions among high-level executives of how, if the bite tippet were lengthened, it would treat all those prior 12-inch tippet record holders unfairly. Get over it. Remember Roger Maris.

Meanwhile in Belize guides recommend a straight 6-foot 60-pound leader.  It’s not a good  idea. Tarpon are the prey of bull sharks and hammerheads, and sometimes you want to break the fish off.  That’s not going to happen with a 60-pound straight leader. You also want the leader to break if the line is wrapped around your leg, your neck, or your guide. Getting pulled into the water with the bull sharks and hammerheads seems a particularly bad idea.

Plus fly lines have a breakage strength of less than 40 pounds. I’d rather break my leader than a fly line, or a fly rod. So I’ve settled on a 20-pound class tippet. I’ve considered 16 pounds, but that seems pretentious. Anything less than 16 is just cruel.

I used a 60-pound nylon butt section because that’s what the guys at Bayou City Anglers wanted me to buy.  I went to Bayou City in the first place to buy hard 30, but I follow instructions. The whole leader’s about nine feet, +/- 12 inches. The six-foot 60-pound nylon butt is attached to the fly line with a perfection loop, and to the 20-pound fluorocarbon class tippet with an improved blood knot. The twenty-four inch 60-pound fluorocarbon bite tippet is attached to the fly with a Kreh loop knot and to the class tippet with an improved blood knot. All those knots seem impossibly small. I’m sure it’s a total failure, but not because I didn’t think about it.

Who wouldn’t be fascinated by such stuff? Who says fly fishing is arcane?

* * *

Monday we went to Minute Maid Park at Union Station, pronounced MUM-puss, to watch the team formerly known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays play the Astros.  I wanted to  see the Rays before we went to Tampa. In 2008 the Devil Rays banished the devil, changed their name to the Tampa Bay Just Rays, and got rid of the fish logo and replaced it with a little patch of sunshine.

See that glimmer in the eye of the R? On Monday the Astros played the Tampa Bay Glimmers in the Eye.

I liked the old Devil Ray mascot, but hated their uniforms, now I like their uniforms but I’m dubious as to the little patch of sunshine. I also liked the way Tampa Bay Devil Rays fell off the tongue, though many people thought it clumsy. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim is clumsy. Dallas Rangers of Arlington is clumsy.  Tampa Bay Devil Rays has some Latin rhythm.

Turner-Turner, J., The Giant Fish of Florida, 1902.

As a team, the Tampa Bay Rays née Devil Rays are perennially a hard-luck lot. since their first season in 1998, they’ve won 1,500 games and lost 1,738, for a .462 winning percentage. The Astros have played since 1962 and have won 4,391 and lost 4,552 for a .493 percentage.  The ‘Stros were in striking distance of breaking .500 a few years back, but then went into their three 100-loss-season tailspin.  Did I mention that the Astros won the World Series last year?

The Astros at .491 are now about the median, with only nine teams at .500 or higher. The Rays lead only the San Diego Padres for the very bottom.  Of course they’re stuck in a division that includes the Red Sox and the Yankees, so life isn’t fair. They’re also in Tropicana Stadium, which is in St. Pete and apparently inconvenient to get to from Tampa.  Along with the Oakland Coliseum, Wrigley Field, and Fenway Park it’s judged one of the worst dumps in Major League Baseball. The Rays consequently don’t outdraw the Tampa Bay Lightning of the NHL. They don’t even play baseball in the NHL.

The Rays did have some great seasons ten years ago, when Andrew Friedman, now with the Dodgers, was their VP of baseball operations. I don’t know Andrew, but he’s a Houston boy, and I know his dad, Kenny. The Rays even made it to the World Serious, and Andrew got a lot of the credit. The Dodgers pay Andrew a lot of money for the lot of credit, but who don’t the Dodgers pay a lot of money? And if he’s anything like his dad he’s a bargain.

As is more common than not, this season is not going well for the Rays. Through Juneteenth they’re 33-39 for fourth in the AL East. They’re also doing some weird rotation maneuvers, starting relievers for two or three innings, because part of their rotation is weak. Monday’s game they had a great start, getting four runs early on Gerrit Cole. Cole came into the game 8-1 with a .240 ERA, and has pitched this season like a Cy Young winner.  Those four runs to the Rays may have been his worst three innings as a Stro.

Cole kept the ‘Stros in it though, finishing seven innings with no more runs. The Rays lost in the bottom of the 9th when their closer, Sergio Romo (with a 5.0 ERA but a pretty good June) gave up a two run walk-off double to Alex Bregman.  Heartbreaking for Rays’ fans, great stuff for Astros’ fans.  If you don’t know baseball know this: a team with a closer with a 5.0 ERA in a one-run game’s got a problem.

Of course the next night the Ray’s fine young pitcher, Blake Snell, pitched a gem against the Astros fine old pitcher, Justin Verlander, to take a one-run game and snap the Astros’ 12-game win streak. The previous evening’s goat, Sergio Romo, now with a 5.46 ERA, got the final two outs. That’s the other thing, if you don’t know baseball know this. The Baseball Gods are cruel, vicious, and capricious, and what goes around comes around.

 

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Tarponesque Physiques.

Michaelangelo, detail of the Prophet Jonah (with tarpon) from the Sistine Chapel, 1508-1512.

Tarpon are big girls. They’re big boys too, but the lady tarpon are generally bigger and can reach lengths of more than eight feet and weigh more than 300 pounds. The males are smaller. Females live longer than males, as long as 50 years. Lucky males may make it to 30.  Tarpon obtain sexual maturity at seven to 13 years.  By the time a tarpon reaches 100 pounds it’s 10 to 13 years old.

In their larvae stage tarpon absorb nutrients direct from seawater.  Small juveniles start eating smaller fish, but primarily they’re planktivores and live on  zooplankton. As they grow juveniles eat more fish and add shrimp and crabs to their diet. By maturity they are strictly carnivorous. Sub-adult and adult tarpon eat shrimp, crabs, mid-sized fish like mullet, pinfish, and needlefish, and apparently have a soft-spot for sea horses.  I’ve never fished a sea horse fly, which is probably why I haven’t caught a tarpon.

Tarpon swallow prey whole, which explains the forward placement of the hooks on tarpon flies.  Short takes aren’t a problem.  I’m told that what is a problem is setting the hook Their mouths are hard and strip-strikes are de rigueur. Hooks must be sharp, though whether hooks should be barbed or de-barbed is a controversy. A guide in Belize rejected my tarpon flies because I’d flattened the barbs. Bill Bishop’s High Rollers: Fly Fishing for Giant Tarpon suggests partially flattening barbs, but that seems like neither fish nor fowl. At least the de-barbers have the argument that it’s easier to set the hooks, and it’s easier to pull the hook out of your guide when you makes that special cast.

Bite tippets are needed because tarpon have small densely-packed sharp teeth, villiform teeth, and writers universally criticize the IGFA 12-inch standard for bite tippets. Big tarpon will swallow flies deeper than 12 inches. Twenty-four inches appears to be common practice among anglers, IGFA be damned. There goes my record.

Tarpon have draw bridge jaws and knight-in-armor gill plates. Their silver sides are as straight and thick as walls. They attack prey from below. Look at those eyes. Look at that jaw. That’s no carp, that’s no bottom feeder.

Their scales are as large and bright as half-dollars.

Other than the Indo-Pacific tarpon, the tarpon’s closest relative is the skipjack, wrongly called ladyfish by everyone but Texans. Skipjacks, like eels,  bonefish, and of course tarpon spawn offshore and come inshore as larvae. Like tarpon the skipjack leaps when caught and shreds leaders. They’re just a lot smaller.

Catching skipjacks in saltwater is kinda like catching bluegills in fresh: universally frowned upon by conventional tackle folk but universally loved by fly fishers.

* * *

If I had to pick a fish to hang out in the Mos Eisley Cantina, I’d go with a tarpon. They appear intelligently malevolent, aloof, violent. They look alien.  Maybe Admiral Ackbar’s ancestors evolved from tarpon.

Ok, maybe I’d pick a gar for the Mos Eisley Cantina.  Gar are tarpon’s distant cousins: they share soft rayed fins.

State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901

Of all the traits of tarpon though, the one that may be the most defining (and another trait shared with gar) is its air-gulping, lung-functioning swim bladder.  On two separate trips I’ve fished rolling tarpon off the South Padre Island jetties, but they were coming up to gulp air for fun, not necessity. Juvenile tarpon mature along mangrove shorelines in stagnant backwaters The absence of oxygen-rich water keeps out most predators. Because juveniles can roll and grab oxygen from air, they can live where other fish can’t.

As an aside, there’s nothing more startling than being on a bayou on a hot summer day, mildly conscious of alligators, and have a four-foot gar pop-up to roll next to your canoe. I don’t think they’re after air. I think they just want to hear me yelp.

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We took the skiff out yesterday.  There’s a tropical disturbance in the Gulf, and it was blowing 20 offshore and picking up fast inshore. It wasn’t bad when we left, but we couldn’t find any water clarity, and the wind made things miserable. We didn’t last long.

Don’t get confused by the photo: our boat’s the one in the front. When we left the Marina we had to pass the cruise liner in the Galveston Channel, and there were Coast Guard cutters running interference.  They waived us further out, to the far side of the channel. It’s the first time I can recall being told what to do by a guy with a mounted machine gun.  I followed instructions.

Today, Father’s Day, we fished a bit for bass at Damon 7 Lakes. The photo doesn’t do the fish justice, though it does a nice job on me.

 

I caught a textbook bluegill while messing around with a Tenkara rod.  I was listening to Zane Grey’s stories about battles with monster tuna and swordfish and tarpon and stuff, but I couldn’t stretch the bluegill into a five-hour epic struggle of man against fish. Still, the blue on the gill plate complimented my shirt.