Posts tagged: fly fishing for tarpon

“A Passion For Tarpon” Coffee Table Book Impresses (It’s Big, It’s Complete, And It’s $100…)

January 24, 2011, by 7 comments

Fly fishing’s full of coffee table books, but if you added legs to Andy Mill’s “A Passion For Tarpon” book, you’d have a coffee table unto itself.

A massive volume of 510 pages – jammed with a mix of essays, interviews (of greats like Stu Apte) and a fair amount of Andy Mill’s “how-to” – A Passion for Tarpon is clearly meant to be the definitive volume on fly fishing for tarpon.

And it largely succeeds.

Andy Mills has dedicated a lot of time and money to the pursuit of tarpon, and while I’m unqualified to suggest he’s the best tarpon fly fishermen extant, I will say he’s certainly the best to publish a 500 page book.

A Passion For Tarpon

Table of Contents (see anything you like?)

A Passion for Tarpon crosses a few genres; it’s a pretty coffee-table book filled with nice photographs, but it also offers a handful of very interesting interviews with heavy-hitting tarpon anglers, and yes – it’s also jammed with “how-to” and scientific information about tarpon.

It even includes episode one of Jamie Howard’s acclaimed “Chasing Silver” series on DVD.

A Passion For Tarpon

Even includes the first episode of "Chasing Silver"

I’m not a tarpon angler and I’d be lieing if I said I read every word of this book, but I have read most of it and know that – if it were about small streams – I’d buy it despite the sizable price tag.

It’s clearly written and the interviews are – to a small stream guy – more interesting than the articles, but overall, the book holds together beautifully.

I’m Impressed, But…

I’m just going to say it; the typeface the text is set in isn’t really suitable for a book-length project. In fact, it’s a little startling to see amateur typography appear in a book of this caliber.

That tyographically geekish nitpick aside, A Passion For Tarpon probably will find its way onto every tarpon angler’s bookshelf.

The information, interviews, photographs and other goodies will probably be too much to ignore.

See you at the bookshelf, Tom Chandler.

A Passion for Tarpon cover

A Passion for Tarpon - 510 pages of stuff about tarpon...

Record Cold Temps Kill Gamefish (Bonefish & Snook), Alter Regulations in Florida

January 18, 2010, by 4 comments

Florida’s gamefish populations – bonefish and snook among them – suffered greatly at the hands of the recent freezing temperatures.

Now, it appears in order to preserve gamefish populations, Florida’s wildlife agency has banned catch & kill fishing for tarpon, snook and bonefish (though catch & release fishing is still allowed):

From the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust site:

The cold weather in Florida has caused mortalities of numerous coastal gamefishes.  The night temperature reached down to freezing along coastal areas in the central and southern part of the state three or four nights in a row.  Reports of dead bonefish came from in the Upper Keys and scattered reports of small tarpon statewide. The FWC has closed these fisheries to harvest even though few tarpon are kept, and the limit on bonefish is only one per person per day (yes, some are still harvested in South Florida). Catch and release fishing for these species is still allowed. The FWC is taking this proactive, precautionary approach to ensure the long-term health of the fisheries. As temperatures warm, guides and anglers are finding hungry fish coming in from deeper waters.

In addition to bonefish and tarpon, snook took a big hit. The most recent estimates were of >100,000 snook dead statewide. If true, this would be almost 7% of the total snook population in Florida.  The FWC has responded by canceling the opening of the snook season, due to open February 1. Adding this to the summer closed season, this means that snook can’t be harvested until fall.

Planning a trip to Florida? Check the regs before you go.

See you where it’s supposed to be cold, Tom Chandler.