Tampa Tarpon Report is the Tampa Bay area's tarpon fishing headquarters 1855 FLA-TARPON. TTR provides tarpon fishing reports, facts, tips, hot-spots ,tarpon fishing charters and tarpon tournament news to Tampa Bay, St Petersburg and Boca Grande tarpon anglers. Get up to date tarpon fishing reports, tournament results and postings from South West Florida, the Tarpon fishing capital of the world!
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Tarpon Fishing - Tarpon History
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In honor of Vic Dunaway’s many contributions to the magazine, and for the benefit of new readers, we are reprinting some of his articles on the Florida Sportsman Web sites. Dunaway, the magazine’s Founding Editor, passed away May 17, 2012 (click here for the news item). Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more Florida Sportsman Classics: Vic Dunaway Remembered.
Vic wrote about all manner of subjects, including fly fishing. The following article, reprinted from the April 1993 issue, was the first of a three-part series on the “short, but eventful, history of fly fishing for giant tarpon.”
–Jeff Weakley, Editor
Who tallied the first flyrod 100-pounder? Sorting it out is tough, and the answer is bound to surprise you.
By VIC DUNAWAY
Jimmy Albright's 30-foot Prowler made the first forays to Nine-Mile Bank in search of big tarpon.
This is another in our frequent series of articles about historic first catches made in Florida or by Florida anglers. It also begins a three-part series on the short, but eventful, history of flyfishing for giant tarpon.
Spring is here and giant tarpon are returning to the fishing flats of SW Florida. Facing off against this annual tarpon angler invasion are great picket lines of flyfisher-men, by now a familiar sight on the shallow banks of the Florida Keys, South Dade and (a bit later in the season) Tampa Bay & Homosassa. The rankest novices among them are aching to do battle with Tarpon weighing a hundred pounds. The veteran tarpon anglers are dreaming of hookups with tarpon twice that size.
Less than 40 years ago, the idea of catching a 100-pound tarpon on “regulation” tackle was looked upon by most fly fishermen as not merely a dream, but a fantasy as far-fetched as interstellar travel. Even after the first few 100-pound tarpon had been duly and officially recorded in the late 1950s, strident voices all over the land —some of them in South Florida—were still protesting that the public was being hoodwinked; that it was patently impossible to catch a fish of such size on fly gear.
Jerry Coughlan, left, with 125-pounder and guide Jimmy Albright
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