The tarpon is one of the world’s favourite sporting fish. Stunningly beautiful and known as the Silver King, their aerobatic leaps make them a favourite of fishermen worldwide. From March to July thousands of tarpon pass through the harbour in Key West en route to their breeding areas and fishermen are attracted into town in order to pit their wits against them.

There are many varying fishing styles for targeting tarpon, the style varying depending on the type of water that you are fishing. Tarpon can be found on sand or mangrove flats and also in shallow river inlets. For these venues the preferred method is either fishing a fly coupled to a very strong rod and line or using an artificial lure. At other venues such as Islamorada the preferred method is fishing with small live fish such as herring or pilchards. The favourite fishing style in Key West is chumming with shrimp boat trash. Let me explain what we mean by shrimp boat trash. Many shrimp fishing boats ply the waters in the Gulf of Mexico and besides netting 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 involves the Captain cutting the manhaden into small pieces and continually throwing them behind the anchored boat to attract the tarpon. The anglers fish with a whole menhaden on the hook, and it is drifted back in the current down to the feeding tarpon.

The tackle recommended when fishing for tarpon in Key West 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. There is also a 3 piece version (the Conolon Boat Traveller) which probably better suits the travelling angler. That version retails at £79.99 in the UK. Incidentally, I use that Conolon Boat rod to fish for sturgeon on the Fraser River near Vancouver and last year caught my best 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 I’d put 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 retails at around £80 in the UK, whilst the TLD 20 is about £15 dearer. Whatever reel you decide on, it has to be super free running, because you’re attempting to make your bait run down in the tide at a similar speed to the pieces being thrown in by the Captain. My own preference is for the larger TLD 20 because the larger spool spins slower when you are running your bait down in the tide with the other advantage that it needs less turns to reel in when the bait has drifted as far you want. You’ll need the reel fully loaded with line, I go for the grey Ande nylon in either 15lb or 20lb breaking strain. At the end of that is tied a 10 foot leader of 50 lb fluorocarbon and a large circle hook. Naturally all of the light tackle boats have top class tackle for you to use if you don’t have your own.

Let’s now take a look at the actual fishing method used in Key West. Your captain will have taken you to one of the top tarpon spots, maybe the yacht basin, Bokacheeka, the entrance to Key West Harbour or maybe the North West Channel. The boat will be anchored at the bow and if there are other boats fishing they’ll probably be only a few feet to one side or the other. The plan is that if everybody is chumming then there should be a good stream of food drifting down to the tarpon, keeping them in one substantial shoal rather than splitting it up. The skipper will start chumming with the cut up baits and you’ll hook a whole fish onto your hook. There’s a definite way to hook these baits but don’t worry, the captain will demonstrate how it’s done. You now let your bait drift down the current, paying particular attention to where your line runs from the reel spool. A bite can be quite gentle and will often be detected by the spool of the reel suddenly running faster. As soon as you see a bite you have to reel like hell….don’t strike !!. The beauty of a circle hook is that it kind of hooks the fish itself once you tighten the line by turning the reel as fast as possible.

Once a tarpon is hooked all hell will be let loose, the fish will almost certainly leap out of the water and it will certainly start running towards Cuba !!. Don’t forget that when playing a tarpon that if he jumps he’ll get rid of the hook unless you immediately lower the rod to lessen 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 everybody else on board if you lose a fish because he jumped and you didn’t bow. If the hooked fish is of reasonable size the Captain will let the anchor go and set off in pursuit of the fish. It’s not unusual to unhook a tarpon a mile away from where it was hooked. It can be a tiring and long fight but with a bit of luck you will eventually have the fish alongside the boat ready for a quick photograph before it is safely unhooked 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” !!.