Dan Newman hooked up this morning on Dawn Patrol. She was an easy hundred pounds and made a spectacular leaping run of a hundred and fifty yards before falling back on the tippet and snapping us off. He was using an eight weight rod, the Billy Baroo model by Biscayne Rods, an excellent, ultra light tarpon rod.
Later in the day, as the tide came in, the action slowed. We stopped in a pass to cast to a school of spanish mackerel that were in a frenzy, leaping and feeding on what we thought were glass minnows. The first one we caught regurgitated dozens of tiny eel-like larvae. At first, expecting glass minnows, I didn’t get it; it wasn’t until we caught several and I was washing the spew off the decks that I realized what they were. They were leptocephalus, the minute, fifteen day old, initial life form of megalops atlanticus, tarpon, thousands of them, migrating with the dark moon tide on their natal odyssey from the open waters of the Gulf to the safety of the Everglades.