Thursday, February 23, 2012

All Day Every Day


"I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except we like it and it makes us think and feel."
Roderick L. Haig-Brown

It started as "Tarpon Thursdays." We planned to resurrect an old tradition that we had heard about of meeting on the bridge with pizzas and beers and a few circle hooks and sabiki rigs on hand lines to catch live bait and to see what would happen. That was three months ago.

Now, as we are about to roll into March, we have Tarpon Wednesdays. Sometimes there are Tarpon Mondays. If Tarpon Mondays are good, Tarpon Tuesdays make an appearance and more often than not, they just happen to be in the same week. Never, ever has there been a Tarpon Friday, but there have been some memorable Tarpon Saturday and Sundays.

Our wives and girlfriends are not pleased. I am willing to admit that at least two people in our gang have a real problem.

The fly and long rod have been forsaken for stout 7 footers with 30lbs braid and a big circle hook. Let the live bait swim, dial down the drag, lean the rod on the railing, sit back on the wall with some friends and crack a beer. The sweetest sound is the clicking drag or the skittering hand line that stops the laughter, the stories, the jokes and the tall tales as the nearest dude sets the hook and we all gather around.

I am going to miss this place. I wish we started this 3-years ago.


















2 comments:

Stealth said...

I wish I had fish like that swimming in my back yard. Beautiful fish. What are those 2 silver rounded fish called? (Pictures 13 and 16) I caught one in SC last summer and thought it was a butter fish.

Matt said...

those are horse-eye jacks. they can get quite big. see the post titled 'jack at the dock' from august or september of 2010.