Fly Fishing People: Tim Chapman

A character fit for any Carl Hiaasen novel, Tim Chapman weighs in at 270 pounds, reads Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, and after a lifetime as a Miami journalist has built a Cat 5 house (capable of withstanding category 5 hurricanes) on his Big Torch Key lot. He also fly fishes for tarpon.
Jeff Klinkenberg profiles the larger-than-life Chapman for the St. Peterburg Times. “He loves to cast a fly in the direction of a muscular tarpon, the most macho of all saltwater game fish. When a 100-pound tarpon feels a hook’s sting, it leaps from the water in panic, shaking, rattling and tumbling. Then it dives deep and refuses to give up for hours. A tarpon is not a fish for sissies.”