Tarpon

Tarpon are massive, armored fish with large, mirror-like silver scales, a dark blue-green back, an upturned mouth with a bony underslung jaw, huge eyes and a long trailing filament on the dorsal fin. They have a modified swim bladder that lets them gulp air at the surface, and that "rolling" behavior is how anglers find them. The mouth is lined with bone, not teeth, so hooks must be sharp and the hookset hard. Fish over 100 lb are 15 to 30 years old; tarpon can live past 50 years.

Atlantic tarpon range from Virginia to Brazil and across the Gulf of Mexico, with stragglers to Nova Scotia and an introduced population on the Pacific side of Panama. In the US they are abundant from Florida through Texas, with the Florida Keys, Boca Grande, Tampa Bay and the Everglades the most famous destinations and Louisiana and Texas hosting big late-summer fish along the beaches. Tarpon are warm-water fish, feeding best at 75 to 88 F (24 to 31 C) and leaving when water drops below the upper 60s; juveniles live for years in brackish backwaters, canals and mangrove ponds.

Tarpon eat mullet, pinfish, crabs, shrimp, menhaden and pilchards, feeding most heavily around dawn, dusk and night on moving tides. They migrate along beaches and across flats in spring, pour through passes to spawn offshore around the new and full moons of May through July, and stack in deep holes, bridges and channels in summer. A hooked tarpon jumps immediately, shaking its head violently, and the standard advice to "bow to the king" (drop the rod tip) keeps the line from breaking on the jump.

Tarpon are the fish of fly-rod dreams on the Keys flats and of mass pilgrimages to Boca Grande Pass each spring, and they anchor guide economies from Homosassa to Port Aransas. They have little food value and in Florida are catch-and-release by law, with a tag required to possess one for a record. Landing a 100-pounder, reviving it boatside and watching it swim off is the pinnacle of inshore fishing.