Illustration: Paul Puckett
Monte Burke has made a name for himself as the preeminent chronicler of modern fly fishing for tarpon. If you haven’t yet read his Lords of the Fly: Madness, Obsession, and the Hunt for the World-Record Tarpon, you’re missing out. In the latest issue of Garden&Gun magazine, Burke writes about a trip in the Everglades with legendary guide Steve Huff:
I blew it again, I tell Steve.
No, you didn’t, he says. She’s on it. Keep stripping.
So I do. And just seconds later, it happens—that shockingly powerful pull that to some is stronger than any narcotic. It’s a feeling that I once believed to be ineffable until I came across the words of the novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, who described the moment of a tarpon take as “immediate unreality.”
My mind empties, swiftly. The great she-fish leaps, corkscrewing her body, throwing up a fountain of water. Her gill plates rattle. I’m still in a state of open-mouthed, goose-bumped shock when my now-untethered purple-and-black fly comes whistling back to the boat.
Wow, says Huff, a man who has witnessed innumerable scenes like this but is never left unawed.
I immediately ache to do it all over again.
Click here to read the full story in Garden&Gun
Check out Monte’s amazing book on the search for giant tarpon
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