Jumping for Tampa tarpon

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — I saw the tarpon leap from about 250 yards away, and I couldn’t stifle a cheer.

After motoring all over Tampa Bay looking for any sign of tarpon, there was no mistaking this. At least 5 feet long, it shot from the water like a torpedo, flashing bright silver in the searing afternoon sun before crashing to the water with a violent splash.

Our guide, Tyson Wallerstein, who had been silent almost all day, didn’t say a word. He just clenched his fist and pumped it twice, softly. He throttled down his 200-horsepower Yamaha V-Maxx and proceeded slowly and quietly toward the slick in the chop that marked the spot where the tarpon touched down.

Sharing this adventure were three friends, David Sikes of Corpus Christi, Texas, Ron Strait of San Antonio and Bill AuCoin of St. Petersburg. AuCoin arranged this trip last fall, and when I learned we were going to fish with Wallerstein, I was excited. Two years ago, Wallerstein treated me, Strait and AuCoin to an unforgettable night of fishing for speckled sea trout and snook in the canals near the Don CeSar Hotel at St. Pete. The highlight of that night was an epic battle with a 29-inch snook that I fought and landed from beneath a dock. Two years later, the four of us relived the moment with vivid clarity.

We fished the previous day with another guide who took us after baby tarpon in a canal. They were all about 10-pounders, and they would not take a bait.

From there, we went to an oyster bed near the back of an inlet, where we saw redfish chasing baitfish. Since the wind wouldn’t let us get on the slack side of the oyster bar, we had to cast over it. I hooked a big redfish, but it severed my line on the oyster shells. We spent the rest of theday fishing for grouper over an artificial reef.

Wallerstein wanted to get us on big tarpon, between 60-100 pounds, but the weather was very windy and rough, which made it impossible to see tarpon rolling on the surface. His last fix on them was two days old, but with tarpon, estimates are worthless. You can’t be near them. You have to be right on top of them. After idling around for an hour, Wallerstein took a wild guess, anchored his 22-foot Pathfinder boat and tossed out several lines baited with cut menhaden. We only caught gafftop catfish and one blacktip shark. Not long after, we went cruising again, including a stop near New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter’s house for snook.

Around midafternoon, the wind shifted to the east, and the bay grew calm. That was about the time Wallerstein and I saw the flying tarpon. When we reached its splashdown slick, we saw huge tarpon rolling everywhere. Sikes got one savage strike on a swimbait, but he waited too long to set the hook and missed the fish. Otherwise, they were largely uninterested in artificial lures, and they couldn’t get to the menhaden because of the catfish.

Wallerstein concluded that we needed bigger bait to discourage the catfish, so he took us to a mangrove thicket to catch big mullet. He got three with his cast net while a pair of manatees loafed nearby.

Shortly after, we anchored beside the Interstate-275 causeway amid a school of giant tarpon. Wallerstein cut the mullets in half and attached the pieces to large circle hooks. For this, he used heavy-duty Shimano spinningreels designed to feed out line against light drag. One revolution of the spool trips a clutch that engages the gears. He also used a couple of big baitcasting reels that feed line against a clicker. Flipping a lever locks the spool.

“Tarpon don’t mess around like these catfish do,” Wallerstein said. “When they take the bait, they tear out like a dragster. When you pick up the rod, keep your rod tip low and just reel down to the fish.”

As described, one of the baitcasters at the front of the boat sang as a fish ran with the bait. Strait grabbed it, and the rod bowed into a deep arc, but we knew right away it was a shark. A tarpon jumps the instant it feels pressure in its mouth. A shark surges to the bottom, but this was a much bigger shark than our little blacktips. After a strenuous battle, Strait muscled it to the surface. It was a 6-foot bullshark, and it looked positively glorious. Sleek and powerful, it flashed a grin of razor-sharp teeth, thrashed a couple of times and broke the line before any of us could bring our cameras to bear.

“Bull sharks are man-eaters,” Wallerstein said. “That’s a big shark, but this bay has some a lot bigger than that.”

“If we can land one of these big tarpon, someone needs to get down in the water to hold it so I can get a shot from this tower,” Sikes said. “That would be such a cool picture. To have a great big fish in the water with an angler looking up out of the water.”

“David,” I said, “my man here just caught a 6-foot shark, and our expert says there are even bigger ones. And you want to get down in this murky water with an exhausted, shiny, possibly bleeding fish. I don’t think so.”

Our luck turned sour from there. A baitcaster at the stern sang, but the fish ran so hard that the reel backlashed. The fish jumped when Wallerstein engaged the spool, but the line wrapped around the guides. It was a solid 5-footer, but it broke the line.

Then, Strait hooked one close to the boat, and it was even bigger. We guessed it was around 110 pounds when it jumped, but it pulled the knot loose at the leader.

Shortly after, a giant rolled 30 feet in front of the boat. Using a baitcasting rig suitable for trout or redfish, Sikes tossed a chartreuse swimbait next to the boil. The tarpon turned on it and leaped as the rod bent, but Sikes never had a chance. The fish shook its head violently and threw the bait.

“It’s probably asking a little too much to land one of thesegreat big things on this little outfit,” Sikes said wistfully.

“Did you see the way that thing was shaking its head?” Wallerstein said. “ ‘Hah! You just thought you had me!’ ”

I took a shot at one last fish that swiped a mullet, but the line went slack when I engaged the reel and pulled the bait out of its mouth. It took another swipe at it and spit it out again. And then it was over. The tarpon were gone.

Wallerstein was despondent. Strait and Sikes were bewildered and I, who gets excited at the sight of a 14-inch smallmouth bass in the air, was utterly spellbound.

“There’s an old saying among experienced tarpon fishermen,” AuCoin said philosophically. “You have to have seven jumps before you hook one. We were two jumps short.”

As for the five we got, I can’t get them out of my mind.