Fighting Tarpon The Right Way

Follow these guidelines to ensure a safe release for the fish

BY NATHANIEL LINVILLE

Fighting tarpon is the major barrier to catching one. Compared to permit, these fish can be easy to coax into biting your fly, but once the hook finds a home in a tarpon the real work begins. Nearly all of the mortality associated with catch-and-release fishing is a result of the time between when the angler sets the hook and the fight ends, and shortening this time is the best way to benefit the fish we care about.

In my experience, there are a few things we can all learn to do that will reduce fight times, keep the fish healthy, and preserve the resource past our own lifetimes. Most mortality comes from shark predation, and not all of it happens while the fish is still attached. Give a tarpon your respect by giving it everything you have; pull hard, and don’t expect to grab every one of them.

To ensure that your hooked tarpon is not harmed while on the line or after you release it, a few simple guidelines are worth consideration.

The first one should be obvious, but seems to evade a large number of guides and anglers: if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. This goes for fishing nearby sharks, as well as what to do if a fight feels like it’s taking too long. The former has an easy prescription: simply leave if there are sharks around. The latter is a little harder to do in the moment, but simple: pull hard enough to either break the fish off or land it fast. Most bad decisions on the water are the result of optimistic math, whether it’s getting too close to another boat, using a trolling motor to keep pace with a school of fish that the first two casts didn’t entice, or trying to play it safe and not pull too hard on a fish for fear of breaking it off. Fear of losing out on a spot, a bite, or a face-grab seems to be a major contributor to poor behavior, and it’s worth accepting that doing the right thing seems easier in our minds than it does in real life. I once asked Tom Evans, perhaps the most accomplished record fisherman of all time, what his secret to success was when fighting big tarpon. His response summed up what we all can do better when tarpon fishing: “Pull on them. When they jump, as soon as they land, pull on them harder.” Great advice from someone who succeeded in catching some of the largest tarpon on a fly rod ever, not to mention breaking more than a few off along the way.

The author exerts maximum pressure on a tarpon.

Capt. John O’Hearn

The second is slightly more complicated but no less important: fish the right tippet. Without getting into finger pointing in anyone else’s direction, there was a time when I was seduced by the logic that in order to shorten a fight I needed to fish tippet stronger than 16-pound test. On its face, this seemed to make sense: pull harder, catch them quicker, and heavier line makes this easier. Sadly, the culture of fishing “unlimited” terminal tackle for tarpon sidesteps a few important issues: what happens if I make a mistake? What if a shark shows up and I want to end things? If I’m attached to a fish with 30- or 40-pound test, I allow myself to stay attached through dumb mistakes (think holding the handle while the fish runs) that the fish would be otherwise able to swim away from.

Leaving a hook in the face of a tarpon is not a big deal: science has shown us that a fish rids itself of the hook in relatively short order, and this is far less impactful than keeping a fish on for longer than it should be. Without taking a headlong dive into the deep crevasse of knot construction, know this: a good knot will preserve the strength of the line(s) it’s tied with, and a bad one won’t. If I tie a bad knot with 16-pound tippet I won’t get all of the strength of the material, and most of the time I was fishing 30- or 40-pound ‘class’, I was accessing some unknown amount less than the line’s stated strength. When I made the decision to think critically about not just what I was doing but how I was doing it, I had to learn a few knots: the Bimini Twist and the blood knot. And I didn’t just learn to tie them in Dacron and 12-pound fluorocarbon; learning to manipulate stiff monofilament nylon into these productions was harder, but not by much. I took the time, learned the knots. They were all I needed to make a solid leader that was IGFA compliant, and after fishing this way and learning how to catch tarpon quickly on lighter line I can honestly say that when I thought I was doing anyone other than myself a favor by fishing a heavier ‘class’ I was wrong.

When you make a choice to fish an IGFA leader for a tarpon, you are putting yourself (not the fish) at a disadvantage. If it’s your first time fishing for tarpon, think of it as a process and not a destination. You will likely learn by breaking a few off what you can and can’t get away with, but these lessons will be learned at your own expense, not at the expense of the fish. In short order you will find that you can pull plenty hard on 16-pound to land a fish fast—often in single-digit minutes, but along your learning curve you’ll not affect the fish negatively. As a mountain climber learns a route by falling before attempting it without a rope, anglers learn how to fish and how hard to pull by breaking a fish off. Without the specter of failure, it’s hard to improve your fish fighting tactics to the point that you can subdue a fish fast. If you are fishing 40-pound breaking strength for tarpon because you’ve convinced yourself it’s better for the fish, you might unwittingly be acquiescing to the same icky part of our nature that causes some people to allow themselves to be short-roped to the summit of Everest. Just because it’s easier to accomplish doesn’t mean it’s right.

Above all, I recommend that any angler who wants to fish for tarpon keep in mind that the end goal is to be capable of catching a fish quickly, and releasing it unharmed. Along the way you will make mistakes, but these will be painful only to you and not the fish. If you’re serious about this, hooking a fish with line you can’t break won’t improve your skills and will often result in harm to the fish. If you want to do it right, for yourself and the fish, consider fishing a leader that’s IGFA compliant.

Nathaniel Linville lives in Key West, Florida. For over ten years he has owned and operated The Angling Company, a full service fly shop in Key West. His world record catches include a 16-pound permit on 2-pound tippet and a 140.3-pound tarpon on 6-pound tippet. His tournament record includes three wins of the March Merkin Permit Tournament and one in the Del Brown Invitational. His frank discussion of addiction and recovery as well as his thoughts on world record mortality was featured on the MillHouse podcast in 2020 and has been downloaded by over 10,000 people in 34 countries.