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.
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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.
