FISHING GUIDES are fond of sayings, and here is one of their harsher assessments: "The angler is just a weak link between the guide the fish." On a splendid May morning south of Key West, I am about to test the tensile strength of that maxim, tightly drawn, as it is, along the imaginary line between my guide and about seventy-five tarpon fresh in from the ocean. Many of these fish weigh more than a hundred pounds. None of them are more than sixty feet away.

The guide, Marshall Cutchin, had spotted the school well out at sea just after dawn. We'd waited nearly twenty minutes for them to porpoise their way into shallower water, and Cutchin is now throwing himself against the pushpole with the force of a vaulter just to keep up. His labors are giving me shot after perfect shot at this aquarama of "happy" fish, swimming gill to gill, gulping sunshine, chipping away at my composure with their yawning indifference. By the fifteenth toss, advanced casting palsy has set in, and my right leg is pumping like a sewing machine. Then, magically, an 80-pounder flows off the dark, spectral mass of the main school.

"He's on it!" Marshall hisses as the tarpon makes a final tail pump, slams his bear-trap jaws around the orange feathers, and turns broadside. At first, I am stymied by the sheer inertial mass of this fish. He's lodged sideways in the shallows right at my feet, and I cannot move him.

Expecting a run, I glance down and fumble for the drag knob at the precise moment the fish rages out of the tourmaline water, shimmering silver, longer than an ironing board and twice as hot. With no more than a sideways glance, he promptly snaps the tippet. My thumb and forefinger are still glued to the drag dial, slack jaw flapping in the breeze.

"You didn't bow," Marshall says, as the school explodes in three different directions.

"I, uh, I thought my drag was loose," I stammer, sitting down on the deck. I have to sit down.

Cutchin calmly plants the pole again and sets his sights on the far end of the flat. He's seen it all before. "Don't touch the drag," he offers, adding one more saying to my thin but rapidly growing book of tarpon wisdom.

....

Compared with the Upper Keys — where there are nearly two hundred fishing guides in Islamorada alone — Key West tarpon are comparatively lightly fished on the fly. Although the tarpon here are "fresher" fish that have not yet migrated through the more northerly gauntlet of anglers, there are fewer fly guides who know the Key West area well, and it's harder to fish because of the lack of defined migration highways. It also presents a larger area of flats and basins to cover.

As recently as the mid 1980s, it was still a frontier town for tarpon chasers, with fewer than a dozen qualified tarpon guides based in the Conch Republic and none who could afford to specialize exclusively in fly fishing. By about 1988, when other Key West guides often still resorted to bait, Cutchin was one of if not the first to go to fly-rodding only. Although he no longer poles a boat for hire, among the Keys tarpon cognoscenti he is still considered one of the region's seminal fly-fishing guides. A favorite guide of Abel reels founder Steve Abel, Cutchin also spent at least twenty-five days a year on the water with all-time permit guru Del Brown. Modest to a fault, he is most likely the best guide you have never heard of.

Today, in addition to having made a successful transition from guiding to Web-design manager for a major corporation, Cutchin is also the man behind the curtain at the popular fly-fishing blog Midcurrent.com, which often reprints stories from SFF for a Web audience.

So that leaves me, the alleged weak link.

Before Cutchin called last winter and offered to guide me on his old stomping grounds, I'd had limited experience with tarpon. Years ago, during a nearly fishless trip to Caribbean Costa Rica, I botched the hook-set on two monsters that struck right at my toes off the bow of a small john boat. After losing two of these jungle giants back to back on the last day of a maddening week, I could have strangled a howler monkey. Since then, my only other shots at tarpon had been for juvenile fish in Florida canals. This was my chance to jump into the big leagues.

On top of that, I timed the trip just right, hitting a stretch reminiscent of "The Good Ole Days," when, I am told, it was not unusual to see a thousand tarpon swim past the bow in a hard day's fishing. In three days, we saw approximately 750 fish. I hooked seven, jumped five, and landed two. But once you have proved lucky enough to position yourself on that taut line between a great guide and a good fish, the rest is up to you. And from the dreaded "trout set" to forgetting to bow, from casting behind the fish to not casting at all, the sight of a huge tarpon ten feet from your tip top is enough to rattle a rookie to the grip.

Continue Reading "Three Days in Key West"     1   2