Tarpon jig fishing coming under fire | TBO.com

By FRANK SARGEANT | The Tampa Tribune

OK, if I had a gig where I could make $1000 a day for 60 days straight, I would be doing that instead of writing – you bet I would, for those 60 days.

And that’s the lure to dozens of guides who flock to Boca Grande Pass in late spring each year – the amazing concentration of maybe 25,000 giant tarpon in a pass where the fish are jammed shoulder to shoulder. Clients can almost bet on catching the fish of a lifetime, allowing these anglers to make two trips daily and stack up money they’ll need badly through much of the winter, when getting even one daily trip can be a challenge.

And, a whole lot of my close friends are involved in this fishery, guys who have helped me build my career and who still help me out each year with the Outdoors Expo and lots more.

But it’s starting to appear that maybe we ought to take another look at the way we are dealing with that fishery – at least when it comes to weigh-in tournaments as attached to jig fishing.

Many of the old-time guides there, the live-bait folks, some of whom are third generation Boca Grande guides, now charge that weigh-in tournaments, of which the Professional Tarpon Tournament Series (PTTS) is the largest, are killing fish, particularly the big females on which this fishery depends.

To be sure, the old school has a potential ulterior motive. Make the dozens of out-of-town boats go away and their fishery and the money that goes with it returns to them, the gentry of the island, as it had been for a hundred years prior to the introduction of jig fishing in the 1990s.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Tarpon jig fishing coming under fire | TBO.com.

Tarpon tourney’s tactics draw fire | The News-Press

A new controversy is brewing about tarpon fishing in Boca Grande Pass.

For years, live-bait fishermen have been at odds with jig fishermen. Now a group of tarpon advocates is protesting the fishing tactics of the Pro Tarpon Tournament Series, a catch-and-release event that takes place on five weekends in May and June.

“I wouldn’t join that thing if you paid me a large sum,” said Rick Hirsch, a retired New York stockbroker who fishes for tarpon in Southwest Florida three to four months a year. “Every time I go through the pass during the tournament, I go through as fast as I can to get away from it. It’s a mess.”

Tournament director Joe Mercurio defended the event.

“It’s offensive to me when people come out and make comments about us, saying we’re destroying the fishery,” Mercurio said. “They’re passionate, and that’s great, but we ask them to have an informed opinion based on facts, not a whim and a prayer.”

The Charlotte Harbor system, which includes Pine Island Sound and the Caloosahatchee River, is considered the tarpon capital of the world.

Every May and June, tarpon migrate to Southwest Florida by the thousands and congregate in Boca Grande Pass.  Click Link Below For Full Story!

via Tarpon tourney’s tactics draw fire | The News-Press | news-press.com.

Phew! Nothing like tarpon fishing – Bradenton.com

BOCA GRANDE

We’re far from the herd now.

A mammoth tarpon has dragged our 23-foot Dorado tower boat away from the swarms of boats taking advantage of possibly thousands of tarpon that are feeding in preparation for their upcoming spawn.

Now, seated in a fighting chair, I have a decision to make.

I can only feel stinging pains in my hands that have clenched an 8-foot Billy Stick custom-made rod for a half-hour. My arms are shaking each time I dip the rod and reel 50-pound line into the spool of my Shimano Trinidad 20 reel. Each revolution of the handle, a sweat-spitting ordeal, gets the tarpon maybe a couple yards closer from the bottom of this deep water pass.

So I decide to lean back, straighten my arms, and put the burden of this beast on my back muscles. Then, once I’ve worn out that option, I cradle and cross my arms around the rod, my tense hands free to sweat in the sun.

“You can hand the rod off,” one of the anglers on the boat said — I’ll never remember which one after my dizzied state. “We do that sometimes.”

Not an option. I’d gone this far. The tarpon hit our standard tarpon jig and, after that, it was 30 minutes of heavy weight lifting. The pole would have to fall from my hands.

This, perhaps, is the addiction anglers have with tarpon fishing in Boca Grande Pass. Besides the camaraderie, the pods of tarpon that suddenly roll their great silver backs through the water, the whole spectacle of sometimes fishing 10 feet from four boats, this is the habit Boca Grande silver-king fanatics may never snap.

“It’s addicting, isn’t it?” one angler onboard said.

I struggled to say, “Oh, yeah.”

Finally, the tarpon was boat side. We managed to grab the leader — the closest thing to landing a tarpon because it is now illegal to boat one.

I wondered why I felt so crippled after this fish put it to me. A high-five to a fishing buddy felt like squeezing an over-pumped tennis ball.

It swam away and I watched its awesome girth part a wavy path in the choppy water. That’s when I found out why.

“That,” Capt. T.J. Stewart, “is the fattest tarpon I’ve ever seen.”

I had to ask if that was true.

“Really,” Stewart said, “it was.”

Later, Dave Stark brought a tarpon to the boat that a team of Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute members estimated was between 160 and 170 pounds.

“If that’s true,” Stewart said, “yours was probably 180 or 190.”

We’ll never know.

Regardless, it was an adventure of a lifetime. There were two hooked tarpon that escaped pursuing fish after either Dave Stark or Steve Fecher, on board from Daytona and fishing with Stewart as their team “MyELS.com/Castaway Charters” prepared for Sunday’s Professional Tarpon Tournament Series, opened the spool and let the silver king run. There were multiple tangles in lines where jigs were removed from other boats’ lines. There even was a swapping of rods.

This came when Stark’s tarpon went underneath another boat. On that boat, an angler also had hooked a silver king. Because their angler couldn’t get their line over our tower, we simply traded rods and fought each other’s fish.

Both fish got off and all tackle was given back to its proper owner.

In all, we hooked nine tarpon and “landed” five.

Looking back on this epic adventure, it seems there are two reminders that mark a stellar day of Boca Grande tarpon fishing — the memories of curling rods and the battered limbs that could cramp for days.

THE GUIDE: Capt. T.J. Stewart of Cast Away Charters can be reached at 737-5985. Web site is www.castawaycharters inc.com.

via Phew! Nothing like tarpon fishing – Sports – Bradenton.com.