A New Approach Report
Thank you for reading this New Approach Report. I am writing this from son Maxx’s living room, which is a whole lot better than a hospital bed!
Until I can get up and running again, I thought I might dig into my files and find interesting stories and/or timely fishing tips, as well as running a photo of the week sometimes. That’s the new approach! This week’s story is about an old fishing buddy with a fat stubborn streak.
Kent’s Tarpon
by John Kumiski
Barry Kent was a gifted fly tyer. Before emigrating from South Africa, he’d run a commercial fly-tying business for nearly twenty years. I met him at a Backcountry Flyfishing Association meeting, and we quickly became fishing partners.
Back in the mid-1980s we used 80- and 100-pound monofilament shock tippets for big tarpon. Heavy mono doesn’t stay straight, so we’d tie leaders onto our flies ahead of time and store them in a tarpon, or “stretcher,” box that kept the leaders stretched. and straight One of the pleasures of preparing for tarpon season was filling that box with freshly tied flies.
Most tarpon flies then were variations of the classic Keys-style streamer. Realistic baitfish tied with synthetics hadn’t become popular yet.
On one of Barry’s first trips to Homosassa, I rigged him with a yellow-and-orange streamer and poled the flats. We weren’t seeing much, and the fact we were the only boat out there didn’t inspire confidence.
Barry had tied a pattern he called Baby Blue. They were beautiful little blue crab imitations, but stiff and unnatural-looking in the water. After a while he turned to me and said, “I don’t have any faith in this fly.”
“Go in the box and get another one,” I said.
He started taking the fly off.
“No. Find the new fly first, then change it.” While we were having this conversation, my attention was distracted. As soon as I went back to scanning the water, I spotted a string of tarpon forty feet off the starboard side—hundreds of fish swimming nose-to-tail, stretching farther than I could see.
“Barry! Pick up the rod and make a forty-foot cast off the right side!”
“Where?”
“Anywhere! Just get it out there!”
Fortunately, the yellow-and-orange streamer was still tied on.
Barry made a perfect cast. As the fly landed, one tarpon peeled out of the line and crushed it. Barry reacted with the classic bass-fisherman’s hookset. He snapped the leader. He also scattered several hundred tarpon.
I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the poling platform. Breaking a 20-pound class tarpon leader with a fly rod is an accomplishment.
“I guess the fly was OK after all,” I finally managed. I’m not sure Barry appreciated the joke.
Over the years I discovered he was one of the most stubborn people I’d ever met.
One afternoon we found ourselves off La Costa Island looking at a school of at least 300 tarpon. By then more than ten years had passed since Homosassa, and Barry still hadn’t landed one. “Cast out in front of them,” I told him. “Let them swim into the fly. Strip just fast enough to stay in contact.”
Instead, he cast across the middle of the school and stripped the fly back as fast as he could. The water was crystal clear. You could actually watch the fish slide out of the fly’s path.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Cast in front of them.”
He ignored me and repeated the same cast.
“You’re stripping it too fast. Can’t you see them moving away from it?”
He turned and said, “I don’t like to strip it slow.”
Well…OK then.
For the next half hour he made exactly the same presentation with exactly the same results. Finally he said, “I don’t have any faith in this fly.”
“Hand me the rod.”
While Barry dug through the stretcher box, I made two casts. On the second, a large tarpon inhaled the fly and launched into the air three times before throwing the hook.
I handed Barry his rod back. “It’s not the fly,” I said. “It’s you.” Naturally, the school spooked, and that was the end of our chances.
A year or two later I was filling my stretcher box for another season and decided to invite Barry again.
“Do you want to go tarpon fishing?”
“I’d love to.”
“Then here are the rules. You’re going to follow my instructions, or you’re not coming.” He started to object. “No ‘buts.’ Either listen or stay home.” To my surprise, he agreed. “And I have some new flies I tied,” he said.
“Leave them home.”
Barry was a far better fly tyer than I was. My advantage was experience. I’d spent sixty straight days on the water every tarpon season for more than a decade. I knew what worked because I’d watched tarpon tell me.
That year’s hot fly was a chartreuse version of Mike Martinek’s striped bass pattern called Electric Sushi. It was easy for anglers to see from fifty feet away, making it much easier to judge where the fly was relative to the approaching fish. Better yet, the tarpon had never seen anything like it.
That’s what I had Barry tie on.
Tarpon fishing has long stretches of boredom interrupted by moments of complete chaos. This day started with boredom.
We saw an occasional fish but never got a good shot. By afternoon we were sitting in Captiva Pass with several other boats, waiting for the outgoing tide to carry crabs through the pass and bring the tarpon in.
Nothing happened.
Finally I suggested we leave and run down the beach. We’d gone less than a quarter mile when a huge school of tarpon appeared, swimming north along the shoreline.
I shut down the outboard, eased into position with the trolling motor, and said, “Cast it in front of them and let them swim into it.”
This time Barry listened.
Within seconds a tarpon engulfed the fly.
Thirty noisy minutes later—with Barry yelling through every jump and run—I grabbed the leader. After twelve years of trying, Barry had finally landed his first big tarpon on a fly.
The school kept coming.
That afternoon he hooked two more and landed another. I couldn’t resist. “Damn,” I said. “See what happens when you listen to the guide?”
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That’s the New Approach Report. I hope you liked it. Thanks for reading.
Every day is a blessing. Don’t waste it. Go fishing! Go paddling! Go walking! Stay active!
John Kumiski – https://spottedtail.com – https://www.etsy.com/shop/PhotographybyKumiski
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