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Jig anglers threaten Pass fishing traditions

BY GB KNOWLES – As the break-away jig debate continues to rage in saloons, chat rooms and courtrooms, I’ve had a chance to reflect on just what is at stake.  In many ways it has little to do with the snagging gear that the “break-away” employs. Nor is simply about reckless boatmanship.

The crowd in Boca Grande Pass isn’t the entire issue either. Right now, few anglers will agree that tarpon populations are in danger of eminent collapse. It isn’t that.

When all is said and done, the jig issue is emblematic of the ills of all of Florida. It’s just one more threat to a one-time wonderful way of life. For me, the jig – and the methods used to fish the jig – is robs people of a very special place and of the things that made it that way.

Good people find good places to love and much of the reason they love them was in the discovery and the making of such rare little parts of geography that is so much more than simple plots of land.

This is the Boca Grande I know and have watched slide towards ruin. It used to be a mighty fine little place to call home. Perhaps I’m an optimist but there may yet be hope that it can return to that special place that throbs deep in my heart.

One of my best memories of Boca was a day trip that Scott Moore and I made to the island one October day. We were young but we had grown up fishing for tarpon with legendary men like Bobby Buswell, Buster Herzog and the late Joe Dvorczak.

These were real men and real anglers who found their own fish and didn’t take to you kindly. They had taken to Scott and me because we would not move up on them when they were working a school of tarpon. We were kids and it was tempting to follow the masters around but that isn’t what makes men. Instead we found our own fish. We earned respect in those days; we didn’t expect it.

Bill Miller had served as a deck hand for Bobby Buswell for many years and we had gotten to know Bill. He had relocated to Boca Grande in order to fish for tarpon in the famous pass. So we took a trip to see Bill.

He showed us his boat and what we thought strange fishing equipment. He used heavy line and wire leaders with wrap-on weights that would break off when a tarpon was hooked. He explained that he fished at night and often could only find the silver kings by looking at the electronic fish finder. This was foreign to us, but oddly thrilling. It was a way of fishing that was truly unique to the great pass and the small hamlet of Boca Grande.

After our visit with Bill we drove down to the gulf and waded out into the surf, watching in awe as 60-pound tarpon chased mullet up against the beach. It was early fall and we’d lost the silver kings where we fished months ago. I cast the only lure I had with me and a huge barracuda dashed from a rock jetty and stole that lure in one bite. So we sat on the seawall, ate sandwiches and watched the tarpon crash into the mullet, spraying them like minnows in explosions of silver.

I don’t think I’ve had a better sandwich since that day. I’m not sure I ever will. The salt spray was in your nose, the crashing tarpon nearly drowned out the surf and the music of birds hovering over the melee. A homeowner noticed us sitting on the seawall and brought us cold glasses of lemonade or water. The liquid didn’t matter; the gesture did.

I wrote for the “Saint Petersburg Times” back then and I called Millers Marina for a fishing report each week. Jack Harper had the place then and he told me he was having a little tarpon tournament and invited me to come down and see what it was all about. I met the late Marnie Banks that day and rode around the Pass with Jack while a dozen or so guides fished in the little tournament.

A terrible thunderstorm came up, the way they do in the Pass during the summer, and everybody had to race back to the dock at Millers. We made it just as the clouds opened up. The marina had burned down at the time and Jack’s office was a trailer on the site. But he had put up a little chickee hut with a tin roof and stacked long picnic tables and folding chairs for the tourney participants and the scant press that showed for the event (just me and Marnie).

Jack had paid for all the fixings for a chicken dinner. So we ate cold fried chicken and potato salad from Hudson’s while the rain drummed on the tin roof. The sound was so loud we couldn’t talk and ate the chicken in silence. Lightning sizzled in crooked yellow lines. The rain was mixed with hail, and thunder shook the little chickee hut. And I don’t think I’ve eaten better store-bought chicken since.

Then there was the long day and night of “Old Hitler.” Some claim this huge hammerhead shark is mere legend. Others believe it was one of several sharks. Some think Bucky Dennis caught it and now owns the hammerhead record because of the great fish. One Boca Grande fishing guide is supposed to have stuck a harpoon in the giant shark. You can pick whatever story or myth you prefer. But I saw that fish and I believe.

I was with my old friend Scott Moore again and he had become a fishing guide and moved from the Anna Maria Island we both grew up on to Boca Grande. He didn’t fish the Pass much. Scott’s a beach fisherman. But he will fish a hill tide and he had his sister and brother-in-law with him. Neither had ever caught a tarpon before.

It was a full moon that evening and the sky was clear. The air was still and you could smell the frangi panni and mango scent drifting like perfume in the hot air. The pass crabs were flowing well but the tarpon didn’t follow them east onto the hill. Instead they waited for them out on the pan, just outside the Pass.

I was in the tuna tower of Scott’s boat taking photos and we hooked a silver king on the first cast. Scott’s sister fought it well and we got it to the boat quickly. In those days we kept scales from the fish as souvenirs and Scott was trying to get one off the fish when it went berserk. I’ve still got a photo, from the tower, of the tarpon jumping into the boat. Scott had to reach out and push it backwards. We wondered why it went wild so suddenly when the drama was nearly done.

So Scott cut the monofilament leader and allowed the fish to return to its home. It never made it. Suddenly a swirl the size of your living room boiled around the boat and a huge hammerhead shark began chasing the tarpon across the top of the water.

“Oh look,” I remember Scott’s sister saying. “There are two sharks after it now.”

But there was only one. It was just so large that the first and second dorsal fins were so far apart that it looked like two huge animals. It devoured that tarpon and oil slicked the water of the Pass. Delicate little terns piped and dipped to pick up small tidbits where a great fish had once been.

I’ve seen a 17-foot hammerhead (the all time record) dead and lying on the deck of a fishing pier. Our shark was much, much larger. It may have been 25 feet long. I can’t judge it. But I’ve seen plenty of big sharks since that day and never one that was even close to that size.

There’s a certain magic that occurs at Boca Grande. For that isn’t the end of the tale.

Later that night Scott’s brother-in-law and I drove down to the lighthouse beach to watch the guides fishing the Pass after sundown. As we walked along the beach we came upon the severed head of a silver king.

In those days tarpon were often used for shark bait and I thought this head to be part of discarded bait. But its gills were bright red. It had died that day. It was hooked in the button of the upper jaw, the same place our fish had been hooked. The small round-eyed Mustad hook we used was still seated and we were one of just a few anglers who used this kind of hook. The short piece of cut monofilament leader was the size we’d used; not the wire of Pass guides. The length that was left was consistent with how short Scott had cut the leader with a fillet knife.

Small waves lapped at the severed head of the great fish and its lifeless eyes gazed up towards a fat and orange moon. I’ll not say it was the head that “Old Hitler” discarded. But I won’t rule it out either.

That night, the whippoorwills calling, the salt air tangy and my skin burned from the sun just a little bit due to the excitement; that night seemed like a heavenly place had been built on this Earth.

There aren’t many places like this. To ruin such a place would be a great sin against its maker and to those of us who love this little island and all it stands for.