Thursday 5/29
Racing the pelicans.
Don't forget to turn your nav lights off later, lest an uppity guide need to tell you for some reason.
My fishing compatriots were saying encouraging things about this day both the night before and the morning of. The normal stuff like “Gonna stick some fish tomorrow!” and “I think today could be our day.” I was trying to moderate my expectations but I’d be remiss to say I wasn’t excited and also feeling positive. And, the forecast was for storms early the next day, so this could be my last day of fishing—crunch time. We got a solid early start and were one of the first boats to the flats on the northern part of the area, and we started seeing fish moving almost right away.
There seemed to be two approaches to tarpon fishing in Homosassa. The guides, for the most part, seemed to pick a spot, stake out (or Spot-lock the trolling motor), and wait for fish to show within range. E’s approach was more along the lines of staying in a spot and waiting, but if you see something promising a little out of range, or have a chance to pattern and intercept moving fish, you might as well move over there if you can. So that’s what we did. Homosassa guides nowadays tend to have two big trolling motors, both mounted on the rear of the boat to stay away from the angler’s fly line, and no power pole, which is kind of an oddball, local specialized thing. They must have some serious battery banks. E had one trolling motor which he can move to the back, and it seemed to work just fine. One good thing about the trolling motor being in the back is it is easy to spot lock with the angler facing downwind.
Wind was not a problem for us this day; at least, an excess of wind was not a problem. We had a nice slight ripple on the water to start, but the morning fairly quickly turned flat as can be. Before that happened, though, I got to witness a little of what the fish “usually” do. There were more of them showing themselves, they weren’t all hauling ass to god knows where, and I even was able to make 2 or 3 casts to a daisy-chaining/wallowing around group of tarpon of mixed sizes, from maybe 50 pounds up to 100 pounds, before they disappeared. We thought they had moved up ahead of the boat, and E recommended a cast up there, which I made, and it was a decent delivery. I started slowly working the fly back and it quickly came tight. My heart leapt like a tarpon, but alas, it was a small trout. That is when the group showed themselves again off the port side rail, an easy cast…had I not been hooked up to a stupid little trout!
FIL and I each had a handful of shots this morning before it turned dead flat calm, but neither of us were able to feed any tarpon.
When it did flatten out, it created an interesting illusion on the water of “endless horizon.” It also killed the fishing. Fish were perhaps understandably not willing to show themselves, and if we were able to be in range, they were SPOOOO-kay.
Calm. So calm. Too damn calm.
Before fishing on this trip, I re-read the tarpon-related sections of McGuane’s
The Longest Silence. Up on the platform that day, in that dead calm, the baking sun, with sweat rolling down my back and beyond, swollen feet and cankles, there were long silences, with lots of time to think. Time to reflect on each of the handful of fish I’d seen each day. Time to reflect on my shitty casting and lack of real focused preparation for challenging, unfamiliar angling. Time to think how I suck, and how it was going to feel telling people I flew across the country to fish for a week (4 days, really) and didn’t catch jack squat. Up there on the casting platform in the dead calm, scanning the gray-white expanse with a feeling of disappointment in myself and hopelessness at catching a fish, that was the longest silence.
It is hard to describe the challenge and intrigue of this fishery until you do it. It is hard to know how you'll react when you see the whole top half of a 150 pound tarpon come out of the water 70 feet from you. When you see this:
I lifted this image from the web.
During this long, flat calm day, sitting over hard bottom in 2-3 feet of water, I patterned a solo fish waking it’s way on an intercept pattern for the boat. I waited, then unleashed the line, made a couple false casts and dropped it. The fish was huge to me, easily 120 pounds or more and seemingly as long as a jet ski. It definitely saw my small black and purple toad fly, and it definitely turned 90 degrees away from the boat upon seeing said fly, and fled the flat at a high rate of speed.
Around 2 pm the sea breeze out of the west picked up and we were quickly into rolling chop again. We headed to the lee of Bird Island and made some half-hearted casts for trout, redfish, or whatever would bite, and got some nibbles, but nothing stuck. An offshore boat had been hard aground here at this island all week but this afternoon somebody (local yokels?) was using the higher high tide to pull it elsewhere. It was definitely NOT Sea Tow out there as they had a small open skiff with something like a 25 hp outboard on it, towing a ~30 foot deep draft boat. Ah, Florida!
We headed back to the pool. I, with a lump in my throat.
Would we fish tomorrow? Is that it?
We discussed plans and decided to use a more sheltered launch closer to the fishing grounds. We’d putter out to the ocean and see what it was like.
Friday 5/30
As a group, we were slow this morning. FIL especially was not in no hurry, as we say down there. This may have been a lucky thing though. It was calm inland, but we expected wind on the water.
The boat launch was up one of the spring fed rivers in the area, the numerous freshwater springs of this area likely being part of what attracts the migratory tarpon. When we arrived, bottlenose dolphins were herding mullet and other fish against the far bank and murdering them. Some tweaker types were fishing from the adjoining concessionaire boat house and had likely been there all night, and were as entertained as I was even though their fishing was surely ruined. I overheard this exchange between them:
“They ain’t got no water down here?”
“F*ck no, nothin’ but that musty old shit from the hose.”
“Got damn…”
Somebody needed something from the truck which I volunteered to go get, and I also grabbed a couple bottles of water from the case I had just bought that morning, and handed them to the guys. They were appreciative. I wondered if I had earned their allegiance, or showed them what to bust into when they needed more water.
The Chaz boat ramp. See the ripples against the far shore? That's dolphins herding mullet.
Puttering out that gin clear river was super cool, and the dolphins met us for a bit of bow-riding fun at one point, which is always a great experience.
Resume safe normal operations. Normal for Florida, anyway. Believe it or not, there are rocks here. We found one.
No extra charge for this nature experience.
As we neared the ocean, a large dark cloud loomed to the south, advancing on us quickly. We were about to get clobbered, clearly. We decided quickly to head for a National Wildlife Refuge dock, tie up, and shelter in the pavilion. It was crazy how quickly the wind picked up. E was able to get a couple fenders out but the bow was bouncing up and down like crazy and he decided to just hold the boat off the dock with his body. In the brunt of the storm, we couldn’t set it up for a long line to bounce in the waves or do anything but hold on. The pavilion was “closed” after storm damage, but sorry, not for us; not today. I took photos and video but it doesn’t do the experience justice. A flock of frigate birds were playing in the storm winds in front of us while lightning struck and rain whipped. It was violent, but mercifully short. If we had run out ten minutes earlier, there's a good chance we would have been in open water when that storm struck. So, maybe the slow moving start to the morning was fortuitous.
As we neared the ocean, a large dark cloud loomed to the south, advancing on us quickly.
We decided quickly to head for a National Wildlife Refuge dock, tie up, and shelter in the pavilion.
It was then a quick trip to the fishing grounds, where it was sunny, and breezy, but fishable. We saw a couple scattered fish before the wind picked up more and developed into that state of “we would have to get insanely lucky to even have a shot at any fish”—foam lines and everything. We spent several hours just seeing if we might get lucky before heading back behind the shelter of the marsh and islands to try our hands with the trout and redfish again. FIL caught a sail catfish, which is pretty neat, and I saw, cast to, and got some looks from a nice snook, but nothing doing. Honestly though, my heart wasn’t in it. I come for tarpon. No tarpon, no enthusiasm. We headed in.
Windy. So windy. Too damn windy.
And that was that, for fishing on this trip! It was rainy and windy the next morning and I had to fly out later that day.
Closing Thoughts
I did not expect to go down to Homosassa and have immediate success hooking giant tarpon. I expected it to be challenging. I did not have a good understanding of the nature of the challenges, however. Now that I do, I will be more prepared next time. And I do plan for there to be a next time. I can’t make it back this year (even though I think FIL will try again this June), but I’m invited to join when they are tarpon fishing (didn’t screw that up at least), and I do plan to try again in 2026. Quirky little Homosassa will likely be the focus, but there are other options we can consider too and which they’ve had success at before, such as off the beaches around Apalachicola.
Even though I didn’t expect to be an instant giant tarpon rock star, I was still disappointed in my performance. It was humbling and educational. I can and will do better in the future. And I know that these challenges just make success all the sweeter when it finally does come.
I was there during a tough week during a tough season. We were in contact with a couple of old time regulars who consistently spend weeks and/or months fishing for Homosassa tarpon every year, and the consensus was “not as many fish as usual and not doing the usual things that give anglers a chance to hook ‘em.” And, weather is weather and you can’t control that, either.
For more perspective, E decided he was going to figure this fishery out on his own—no guides. It took him 3 years before he caught his first.
And, kind of a funny anecdote about Homosassa: after E had caught some fish, Steve K_, the guide who guided the fly caught tarpon world record (whom we saw out there a couple times; he’s got the only red flats boat around), motored up alongside to him to tell him "The boys wanted me to come talk to you. We see you been catching a few fish, now don't be running your motor up on people fishing…etc.” …which of course E had not been doing, but the territorial pissings had to flow anyway.
Homosassa—an interesting place to fish for sure. There is something uniquely satisfying about fishing in a place with deep roots in our sport, and preserved in the fly fishing canon. I will be back. I’ve got a bone to pick now with those f*ckers. My wife asked me in a resigned tone, “Oh…is this your new Ahab obsession?” I think it is, honey. I think it is.
-END-
bonus: in case you are disappointed, after reading all this, that you did not get to see any badass tarpon catches, here you go. (thanks, Andy Mill)
