When Capt. Tom Weaver took his purchasers out on Chesapeake Bay on Aug. 1, it was a slick-calm day. They had 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 regarded about 200 yards away and noticed a fish roll on the floor that my mind stated 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 a lot. “We received nearer to the spot, and I noticed some huge marks on my aspect scanner sonar that I assumed 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 had been laid up, holding slightly 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 purchasers forged to the fish with massive delicate plastic jerk baits.
“We received 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 completely different instances and had 5 actually good photographs at fish.”
Weaver says he noticed tarpon in Chesapeake Bay final 12 months, however the fish had been touring and troublesome to remain on and forged to. This 12 months has been completely different — and higher. The fish appear “happier,” he says, that means they’re extra more likely to maintain in an space and usually tend to play the sport in comparison with touring tarpon.
“We’ve got seen tarpon in Maryland’s part of the Bay, however the variety of fish noticed just lately is uncommon,” Maryland Division of Pure Assets’ leisure fisheries outreach coordinator Erik Zlokovitz stated 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.”
Photograph courtesy of the creator
Whereas it could shock some anglers, tarpon have been documented beforehand in Chesapeake Bay throughout summer time. Fishermen goal tarpon in close by coastal waters off the Japanese Shore of Virginia, and a longtime summer time tarpon fishery can be accessible 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 really land, tarpon in Maryland waters. (There is no such thing as a state-record tarpon at present listed within the Maryland DNR report books.)
Zlokovitz stated it’s too early to inform if the obvious uptick in tarpon is an “anomaly or the beginning of a development.” In accordance 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 might be drawing tarpon farther north, says the DNR, or the fish may might 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 time.
If you run out of Annapolis although, you don’t anticipate an hour and a half later to be working throughout a tarpon, says Weaver, who operates the Fish With Weaver information service. In accordance with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Fee, which manages the U.S.’s most distinguished tarpon fishery, tarpon vary from Virginia to central Brazil within the western Atlantic, alongside the coast of Africa within the jap 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. “In the present day we now have the suitable lures, heavier deal with, and crab and shrimp flies. We’re all set, and prepared for one more probability at catching a tarpon.”