Outdoors Column | Angler braves shark-infested waters to bring in his first tarpon
When the opportunity to land his first tarpon presented itself to angler Steven Starmer, swimming in shark patrolled waters wasn’t going to slow him down.
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m going in to save him,’” Starmer said. “I took off my shirt and left everything there and jumped in.”
The fishing trip started like many others for Starmer, who loves to catch sharks. He headed to his favorite pier in northern Tampa Bay where only two weeks before he caught a pair of bull sharks.
“There’s been some nine- to-10foot bull sharks up in the bay. We’ve been broken off by some monsters,” he said.
To target sharks Starmer and his friends use big bait and paddle them away from the pier via kayak. Heavy tackle is used for the hopeful battle with a hard pulling bull shark. A 6/0 conventional rigged to 400-pound cable leader attached to a dead mullet is the bait of choice for sharks.
The first catch of the day was their target. Starmer’s friend, Petey Santos, landed a small bull shark. After being released they waited for the next bite. Soon Starmer’s mullet was found.
“I watched something huge explode over the top of my bait. As soon as I set the hook a tarpon started jumping like crazy, shaking his head!” Starmer recalled. “Probably around 15 minutes into the fight it started to go toward a buoy about 75 yards out. I then noticed when I was fighting it I was dragging him and the buoy was moving too. They were tangled together. That’s when I knew what I had to do.”
So Starmer jumped in and swam toward the tarpon. One of bull sharks favorite summertime meals is tarpon. They’ll regularly ambush hooked tarpon up to 200-pounds around Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
“I wasn’t even thinking about sharks. All I thought about was this is my first tarpon and I’m going in after it. My friends said, ‘Dude you’re nuts, we’ve seen the sharks out here,’ but it never crossed my mind.”
When he got to the tarpon the low tide helped him being able to stand in water that was about 5 feet deep. Starmer began to untangle the heavy cable that was wrapped around the crab trap while hoping the tarpon wouldn’t go ballistic into him.
“It took me a minute to get it untangled. The leader was wrapped around the rope a couple times. I was trying to hold him so he didn’t run into me. Luckily he was tired when I got out there so he was pretty calm at that point,” he described.
“A boat pulled up to me and was able to get some photos. I got him free and Rob Messina reeled him in the rest of the way.”
Back closer to the pier Starmer unhooked the six-foot tarpon that he estimated weighed over 100 pounds. Pier goers snapped photos as he hoisted the prized catch from the water. When the fish, and Starmer, got their energy back, he revived it to live another day.
“The best part of the story was that the fish was released successfully!” he finished.