THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

One evening after a quick turn round
of something to eat and dropping the
family back at the motel, I was back
aboard the same boat for an after
dark session fishing for tarpon.
Tarpon, along with lots of other
desirable fish, seem to be
everywhere in these parts. You only
need look along the harbour walls
and inlets to see the sheer wealth of
fish they have available to them. It
can be quite mind blowing at times.
On this particular trip we would be
Ian Williams playing a Bonito
trolling ballyhoo again, though
around the channel entrances rather
than way out at sea. I've since learned there are better ways of approaching tarpon, which are notoriously
difficult fish to catch. Not so much in getting them to take a bait, but to stick the hook in and get it to
stay there, then get them back to the boat.
The interior of a tarpons mouth has been compared to having a lining of fibre glass, and as such is a
difficult place to get a hook to bite. On top of that, their aerobatics doesn't help the situation either.
Combine the two, and you have the perfect recipe for fish losses. But not that particular night, as we
boated and released a fish of around a hundred and forty pounds, and later, another of seventy pounds.
Subsequent visits to Key West have been a mix of trolling and wreck fishing, with the former being
done on the way out to try the latter.
We also did a repeat of the dorado trick by chumming them up from depth around a raft of floating
sargassum weed. But primarily we were interested in fishing a couple of US navy wrecks that had been
deliberately scuttled for diving and fishing purposes after they had been given the ecological green light,
which by that stage were loaded with big fish.
Again we took in turns on the rods, switching pairs with each new drift. It was a bit like Whitby
wrecking with large lures, except that the fish were a whole lot bigger, and definitely harder fighting.
These were amberjacks in the forty to
ninety pound bracket, after which you
needed the break that alternate dropping
gave. It was relentless. Fish must have
been piled high over the rusting hulk just
waiting for the next pair of lures to go
down.
What I've also done at Key West is headboat
fishing. I've had a few trips out on
the bigger party boats where you can
really rack up the species numbers.
Tarpon coming to the boat
This was the first time I'd ever tried that
type of fishing, and while it can be a
never ending source of small fish for the
hire rods, it can also be a cheap way of
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