SOUTH FLORIDA THEN AND NOW

We launched before dawn from the Lorelei in Islamorada. The run into Florida Bay felt endless, a long push into the silence of the mangroves. No markers, no channel signs, just open water and flat light. I had no idea where we were. But Camp Walker, my guide, did. He threaded the skiff through the backcountry with a certainty that only comes from years on this water. We arrived in position without a word.

And then—tarpon.

A fish rolled, 100 yards off the bow, a faint shimmer of silver. Then another, off the port side. Camp carefully lifted the engine, grabbed the push pole, and climbed onto the platform. The skiff came to rest in silence, the water slick as mercury, and we began the slow, quiet stalk.

It ended with the take, a hard jolt, line gone iron, a deep thrum through the cork into bone. The tarpon exploded from the surface, gill plates clattering, head shaking in defiance, every ounce of this beast airborne.

Twenty minutes in, the tarpon came within reach, tiring, not finished. Camp went for the wrist of its tail. The fish detonated and dove hard and I dipped the rod, fed it beneath the bow, and came up on the other side.

Five more minutes.

This time, Camp got a hand on it. Biggest fish I’d ever landed. Bigger than those river tarpon in Belize.

And there we were, quiet again. Me with my hand beneath the massive body, Camp cradling the tail, both of us in the water beside the boat. The fish’s eye held that unreadable depth they always seem to—a prehistoric longing. After a few moments, Camp released his grip and the fish kicked once, twice, and was gone. That’s how it ends now. No hero shot, no hanging scale. Instead, a slow release, and the knowledge that this fish lives to roll again.

A century ago, a fish like this might have been dragged ashore and weighed, an argent scale pinned to a wall beneath a brass plate bearing the angler’s name. The Izaak Walton Club on Useppa Island did just that—each tarpon immortalized not just in memory, but also in ritual.

To understand how far tarpon culture has traveled, it helps to look back at the clubs that once defined it. A century ago, names such as Long Key, Useppa and Boca Grande carried near-mythic status in the angling world. These were places where sportsmen and sportswomen, often wealthy industrialists and writers, gathered to chase the great fish, to record their victories in photographs, logbooks and fish on the wall. These places and anglers shaped the traditions that still echo in today’s tarpon fishery, albeit in a different way. 

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