When Capt. Tom Weaver took his shoppers out on Chesapeake Bay on Aug. 1, it was a slick-calm day. They have been about 65 miles from the ocean close to Hooper Island Lighthouse in Maryland. That’s when he noticed what he thought was an enormous tarpon.
“I seemed about 200 yards away and noticed a fish roll on the floor that my mind mentioned was tarpon, however I didn’t know for positive,” says Weaver, who has guided within the Florida Keys each winter for 15 years. He is aware of tarpon and has caught lots. “We bought nearer to the spot, and I noticed some huge marks on my aspect scanner sonar that I believed may be cobia.
“We drifted one other 10 minutes, getting nearer to them. However they weren’t cobia. There have been seven or eight huge tarpon, all 80 to 100 pounders. They have been laid up, holding just below the floor, clearly seen in about 20 toes of water.”
Weaver recorded a pair movies of his encounter on Aug. 1, and it’s straightforward to see within the video that the fish are massive and silver, and clearly tarpon. Though tarpon are notoriously troublesome to catch, his shoppers forged to the fish with massive smooth plastic jerk baits.
“We bought tarpon to activate a lure twice. It was swirling the lure or bumping it, however not hitting it or getting hooked,” says Weaver, a New Zealand native who has lived within the U.S. for 35 years. “Over about 90 minutes we discovered tarpon 4 totally different occasions and had 5 actually good pictures at fish.”
Weaver says he noticed tarpon in Chesapeake Bay final 12 months, however the fish have been touring and troublesome to remain on and forged to. This 12 months has been totally different — and higher. The fish appear “happier,” he says, which means they’re extra prone to maintain in an space and usually tend to play the sport in comparison with touring tarpon.
“We’ve seen tarpon in Maryland’s part of the Bay, however the variety of fish noticed not too long ago is uncommon,” Maryland Division of Pure Assets’ leisure fisheries outreach coordinator Erik Zlokovitz mentioned in a press launch. “This 12 months is the primary time we’ve gotten a number of experiences of colleges of tarpon, and never simply stray fish.”
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Whereas it could shock some anglers, tarpon have been documented beforehand in Chesapeake Bay throughout summer season. Fishermen goal tarpon in close by coastal waters off the Jap Shore of Virginia, and a longtime summer season tarpon fishery can be out there alongside North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound, not too far south of Chesapeake Bay. Nonetheless, it’s uncommon for anglers to come across, not to mention truly land, tarpon in Maryland waters. (There isn’t any state-record tarpon presently listed within the Maryland DNR document books.)
Zlokovitz mentioned it’s too early to inform if the obvious uptick in tarpon is an “anomaly or the beginning of a development.” In keeping with the DNR, many warm-water species like Florida pompano, cobia, cutlassfish, and pompano dolphinfish have gotten extra frequent within the Bay and the Atlantic coast. Warming waters could possibly be drawing tarpon farther north, says the DNR, or the fish may could possibly be touring farther in pursuit of meals sources like menhaden and shrimp. It may additionally merely be that fishermen are seeing a bigger northern migration this 12 months. A surfcaster in Rhode Island caught a tarpon this summer season.
If you run out of Annapolis although, you don’t count on an hour and a half later to be operating throughout a tarpon, says Weaver, who operates the Fish With Weaver information service. In keeping with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Fee, which manages the U.S.’s most outstanding tarpon fishery, tarpon vary from Virginia to central Brazil within the western Atlantic, alongside the coast of Africa within the japanese Atlantic, and all by means of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.
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“A minimum of two different Bay guides I do know have seen huge tarpon this 12 months within the Chesapeake close to the place I’m fishing,” Weaver informed Out of doors Life whereas he was fishing for redfish on Monday morning. “Right now we have now the correct lures, heavier deal with, and crab and shrimp flies. We’re all set, and prepared for an additional probability at catching a tarpon.”
