Another Fishing Story from the G. LOOMIS ARCHIVES…………………..
In looking through the G. Loomis Archives we found the following story written by Jim Holland, Jr. A former History Teacher at Villa Walsh Academy, Jim wrote a fly fishing column entitled “What’s Hatching” in the quarterly Black River Journal and made weekly contributions to the New Jersey edition of The Fisherman. Just last year Jim passed away after a long struggle with illness. We hope you will enjoy this story…..
Once Upon a Tarpon Flat
by Jim Holland, Jr.
The air felt warmer and more stable than it had the past 5 days, and although this was not the hot, humid, lemonade-drinking, shirt-sticking-to-your-back tarpon weather we had hoped for, if the visibility held it would definitely do. But again lady luck spit in our eye, quickly stacking great white cumulous clouds in the sky, making the visibility nearly impossible. To make things even worse, the wind dropped off, slicking the surface into an impenetrable mirror of white. For the first three hours we didn’t see a fish, although every now and again we would see an angler throwing at a school just under the bow of their boat, taking a quick prayer shot. Then the stars began to align.
Florida currently holds 29 world records for tarpon. Of these records, all of the major fly fishing records have been caught off of Florida’s central west coast in the Homosassa area.
In 1982, Billy Pate set a fly fishing record on 16-pound tippet with a 188-pound tarpon caught off of Homosassa. For the next 19 years, some of the world’s best fly fishermen and guides attempted to break Pate’s record and become the first angler to land a tarpon on fly fishing tackle that was over 200 pounds.
On May 11, 2001, that feat finally happened. Jim Holland Jr., guided by Captain Steve Kirkpatrick, caught the first tarpon with fly fishing equipment over 200 pounds: a 202-pound, 8-ounce tarpon on 20-pound tippet.
The Florida state record for tarpon caught with conventional tackle is 243 pounds, caught by Gus Bell in Key West in 1975.
The all-tackle world record (additionally certified as the 80-pound class record) for a giant tarpon is 286-pounds, 9-ounces caught by Max Domecq in Rubane, Guinea-Bissau, Africa on March 20, 2003.
We located a school, far ahead of us, and made a wide circle to get in front of it without spooking the fish. As the dark black mass of the school closed to within 120 feet of the boat, I began my cast. When the fish reached about 90 feet I fired, aiming my 12-weight GLX right at the lead fish in the school. Unfortunately, I can’t honestly say I purposely picked the biggest fish in the bunch and cast to that one. Because of the poor visibility, I aimed for the first big black back that I saw and fired. I began stripping, and on the third strip the lead fish charged from the pack, flashed on the fly, and turned away. I continued stripping until my hand stopped abruptly, at which time I set the hook.
The next 30 seconds or so of chaos was a blur., as the line hissed off the floor of the boat and the fish came right to my reel. I stuck her several more times, and feeling the sting of the steel, the fish launched herself halfway out of the water. The fish jumped a second time, again directly away from us, and although we knew it looked big, because we couldn’t see the girth, none of could accurately gauge exactly how big. Not knowing the size of the fish enabled me to remain calm and pressure this tarpon as hard as I would any other without worrying about losing a world record. With each roll, our estimate of it’s weight went up, and after an hour we estimated the fish at 160 to 165 pounds. Then all of a sudden, she went crazy, making a blistering run. A hungry 12-foot bull shark had showed up, and now threatened to eat my prized fish. In response, Steve started the engine. The trick worked, and the shark swam off, apparently not hungry enough to eat his lunch in such a noisy environment.
When we turned the engine off, the fish positioned itself on the bottom and I began to lift again. The amount of pressure it takes to lift a fish this size off of the bottom is almost indescribable. I am convinced that had I not flirted with exceeding the breaking strength of the tippet I would not have landed that fish. Every tarpon you hook comes with an invisible timer, and you never know when your time is up. This is one reason why I fight tarpon so hard, it minimizes the chances of things going wrong or breaking under prolonged stress. And aside from increasing your landing percentage, really pushing fish hard puts less stress on them so your releases will be much more likely to survive to fight another day.
Once the bigger-than-life silver slab finally laid sideways to us in the water, Steve reached down, grabbed the shock tippet, and lip gaffed the monster. Now, Steve is no small guy (6’4″ and more than 240 pounds), and he’s snatched a lot of large tarpon out of the water, but when he tried to drag the fish up onto the gunwale of the boat to tape it, all he could lift was the head. I dropped the rod, grabbed the fish and together we hauled the giant about halfway out of the water. When the fish’s belly spread out on the gunwale, my jaw dropped. The tape showed 47″ in the girth, and with that we slid the fish the rest of the way into the boat to determine the length. My father grabbed the calculator and punched in the girth squared times the length, divided by 800. The number 206 flashed on the screen, and you could hear a pin drop as we all stared at each other, wondering what in the hell to do next. We’re strictly catch & release anglers, so pulling out our kill tag was a tough decision. We ran for the dock at breakneck speed.
After reaching camp we dragged the tarpon out of the boat, found the nearest tree, tied a rope to the scale, and attempted to haul the tarpon and scale it up into the air. After quite a bit of struggle and eventually the aid of the hood of our rental car, we had the giant fully suspended, and looked at the scale. 202.5! “Oh my God, we just made history!”
The giant tarpon measured 85″ long, 47″ in girth and is listed as the world record in the IGFA registry under the 20-pound tippet class in the saltwater fly division, replacing a 187-pound, 6-ounce giant taken by Brian O’Keefe, another Northwest fly fisher, in 1992. It is the largest tarpon ever taken on the fly, replacing Billy Pate’s 188-pounder taken in 1982.
Note: Jim landed the behemoth in a remarkable one hour, 58 minutes on May 11, 2001. The fly was a black, white, and red deer-hair slider, tied on a 5/0 Owner hook. The rod was a 9′ 12-weight GLX.
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