Shark Fishing With Keith

Keith on a trip to Florida.

Like all my shark fishing stories, there is a reason to tell them! Once a year for several years Keith came down to Cape Coral to do some Tarpon fishing. He calls weeks ahead of time, gives me some open weekend dates, and has me make arrangements with a local Tarpon Captain who runs charters from my Cape Coral Tarpon Hunters Club. When I find a Captain who's available for an all day charter I obtain a price, which is usually about $350 to $400, and have Keith confirm the date and mail the check to seal the deal. Tarpon Charter Boat Captains are in great demand, especially in the early days of the Tarpon season, which starts as early as April and runs well past Labor Day. The date is always for a Saturday and Keith arrives Thursday afternoon and spends Friday fishing with me.

On some occasions we go out directly with a Captain the first day to find out where the Tarpon are at that time of the year, and what bait is being used, and what the other boats are chumming the waters with, and then go out the next day alone. The name of my club, Tarpon Hunters, is so called because you do not fish for Tarpon -- you must hunt them first and find out where they are schooling up and then race your boat there to beat the rest of the crowd, who are sure to show up when it is announced over the air that the Tarpon are jumping off Knaps point, or they are schooling at the Twin Towers, or at the Sanibal radio tower. Some times you hear they're feeding at the shrimp boats or 10 miles off the Sanibal lighthouse in 25' of water and they're biting Mullet heads and Catfish tails.

All this talking comes over the air. Everybody listens to the club's channel to learn what is biting yesterday and where. The Club was a close group of dedicated Tarpon hunters who took their fishing seriously. You can not eat Tarpon and in our Club you were to mark down the size, date and weight of the Tarpon you catc, and where you caught it and then tag it with tags supplied by The Fish and Wildlife Agency. You report it to the club for record keeping and they turn it in every month to Fish and Wildlife (more about that later!).

This one day Keith and I were out fishing for Tarpon in the Knaps Point area and the radio crackled alive and stated, "the Tarpon were jumping in the area of the 'Twin Towers'." At that time I did not know where the Twin Towers area was. I had heard this mentioned many times before but did not know where to go. This time I watched the boats in the area to see if anyone was going to move their boats and if they did I was going to follow them a little later. Sure enough several of the boats in the Knaps Point area hoisted anchors and started to race towards the South Eastern end of Fort Myers Beach. I used my 7 X 50 binoculars and followed the boats the fleet was heading towards, looking for the twin Towers. I then told Keith to reel in our lines, haul in the anchor and we would then follow the fleet, all the way across the open waters to the end of Fort Myers Beach in about 20 to 30 feet of water.

It was a very long ride that lasted 25 to 30 minutes and used up plenty of gas. As we were approaching the pack the radio crackled again stating, "slow down Hammerhead and come from the South Eastern side of the pack." I did as I was instructed and moved around the pack of boats, approaching the circle of boats that were their before I arrived. Yes, the Tarpon were jumping and every now and then someone would call over the name of their boat stating, "Sandpiper has one, or Coffee Man has one!" It seemed as if there was a close group of hunters that had the first chance of presenting their baits to the Tarpon and the late comers, like I, never got close enough to cast a bait where the Tarpon were.

We were the last boat left from the pack that day, as one boat at a time moved away from the area looking for another location. Keith and I, now alone at the end of Ft. Myers Beach, hauled anchor and headed back to the channel markers to follow them home to Cape Coral. On our way back I turned the boat northward towards the beach, and closer to shore. We decided to drop the anchor and throw a few lines over the side. When all the rods were baited, we paused for a beer and sandwich, and just talked fishing. It always happens, just when you decide to take a long needed break, a reel starts to click. Any fisherman worth his salt knows what happens when you hear a click-click-click, and then the fish swallows the bait and the reel starts buzzing. You wait a few seconds and then set the hook by lifting the pole up in the air several times hoping to see a Tarpon jump into the air, (if it is a Tarpon. If it's a shark it will just keep on pulling, as you try to haul it up from the bottom to the boat).

Keith had hooked what he thought was a shark. I pulled in all the other lines to give him a chance to move around the boat to fight his catch. After five or ten minutes of fighting this fish Keith stopped winding and gave me the pole. From the moment I had the pole and started to wind in the line I felt like I was pulling in a rubber tire and loosing the battle. I gave the rod back to Keith saying, "you do not have a fish -- your line must be snagged on the bottom." Keith went back to his challenge and started fighting the thing again and made little progress as he retrieved some line, stating out loud, "it's a fish! I feel it's moving."

After a long fight Keith stated that he was pulling the thing up and to get the gaff ready. As the now visible shark was being brought to the surface we saw the reason for the heavy pulling. The shark was gut hooked in the middle of his stomach and coming to the surface as a breached baby would -- sideways. Hence the fact that we landed a shark on a Tarpon line, and he had no teeth on the line. We needed to hook the shark with two hooks to get him over the gunnel. After this exhausting fight that Keith had won, we headed home to the barn to cut up the shark for dinner.