IMPORTANT ISSUES CONCERNING OUR FISHERY:

Noted angler issues a tarpon warning:
During a recent public hearing on tarpon research a number of experts issued warning signs that the silver king population may be in peril.

Sponsored by the Bonefish and Tarpon Unlimited group, the speakers ranged from cutting edge scientists to one of the great legends in fishing.

They all pretty much came to the same conclusions:Most of those apply well to Boca Grande.

Shocking most of the audience was Billy Pate's account of tarpon fishing in other countries. Pate is legendary in fishing circles. He was the first man to catch all major billfish species on a fly rod and held the All-Tackle tarpon fly rod record for over 15 years, as well as other light tackle records.
Pate stunned most of the assemblage by revealing that there is a large harpoon fishery for tarpon in Central and South America where the eggs –a la caviar –are sold at market. Thousands of tarpon are killed in that part of the world each year –tarpon that may be those that also come to Boca Grande.
But the most crushing of Pate's comments was about the decimation of the tarpon fishery in the Homosassa and Florida Keys areas. Pate is an avid fly fisherman and therefore kept his comments to where he fished, but what he had to say draws great parallels to Boca Grande.
"I used to jump 200 tarpon in the month of May at Homosassa," Pate told the St. Petersburg gathering. "Now you have trouble finding a fish and the decline has just happened in the last five or six years."
A similar event has occurred in the Florida Keys –a place that got Billy Pate involved in fly fishing for giant tarpon.
"I fished a tournament in the Keys last week and we had 51 schools of fish –fish that I had good shots at with a fly rod. But out of all those fish I only caught one. There seems to still be tarpon in the Keys but they don't bite the way they used to."
Sound familiar? Well it should.
When asked what caused the trouble with tarpon he came up with the same troubles so familiar with Boca Grande.
"I'm not an expert," Pate said, "but if you ask me it is too many boats and lack of courtesy. When I first started fishing in the Keys the guides took me out and taught me the courtesy that is important to fishing. If a guy is poling down a flat you don't go in front of him, you slip in behind him. If you hook a fish and somebody is fishing next to you than you don't start your engine until his fish have passed by. That can spook tarpon like crazy."
Pate said things have changed in his small home town of Islamorada; much as they have also changed in tiny Boca Grande as well.
"I started fishing in the Keys for tarpon in the early 1960s," said the 70-something Pate. "Back in those days there were about 25 fishing guides in Islamorada, but today there are 200, as well as regular recreational anglers. A lot of the boaters out there don't know the track that tarpon take, they don't know where the bonefish lakes are. We have tracked tarpon from Flamingo (at the southern tip of peninsular Florida) to the bridges south of Lower Matecumbe Key, but today's anglers don't understand this and they cut them off their routes."
Though a key theme to Pate's talk was the crash of vital tarpon fisheries in Florida, it was not his chief concern. Instead he raised chills with the audience by his recounting of tarpon fishing trips to Central and South America.
"I'm not going to say which country because they've been pretty good to me, but I was asking one guy where the big tarpon were and he got out a map. He pointed to some small towns and looked in a ledger. He told me one town had a slow year and only got 450 big tarpon but another town got over 2,000 –all in the same country. When I asked what they did with them I was told that they can sell the eggs, tarpon caviar, for as high as $16 a pound."
Mature tarpon often carry as much as 40 pounds worth of eggs. The average fisherman in these third world countries can probably harpoon, and take to market, several a day. Pate said the carcass may be sold as fertilizer, minus the valuable eggs.
If you do the math that means that tarpon harvest can mean a probable minimum of $1,000 a day, more than many Boca Grande fishing guides make and in a small country where such monies represent a fortune. Pate's concern is that, while tarpon populations seem to be in good shape in Florida, they may be in serious danger elsewhere –all the more reason to work to preserve them everywhere. And he was not alone in that sentiment.
Scientist Dr. Aaron Adams of Mote Marine Laboratory also addressed the group. Adams has been studying juvenile tarpon habitat, primarily in Charlotte Harbor. He noted that habitat is very important to the early life cycle of the silver king.
Tarpon spawn far offshore but, later, young silver kings move far up the estuary, into seemingly hostile waters.
"They go into the nastiest places you can imagine, where you would not expect to find any fish," Adams said.
"They thrive in low, perhaps no oxygen, environments where tarpon predator fish could not possibly survive. Hence they grow up in a relatively predator-free environment. We've seen a few birds eat them but not much else."
Meanwhile, according to Adams, such interior coastal habitats are being rapidly destroyed by development, damming or other water alteration schemes. Adams displayed a portion of the Cape Haze Peninsula and pointed to a number of seemingly land-locked lakes.
"This is where young tarpon need to grow up, but it is an area that can only be accessed through the vast coastal mangrove system during extreme high tides. When a berm or road interrupts this water system then tarpon are cut off from this valuable habitat."
And since such habitat is rapidly vanishing the threat remains real to the tarpon population.
"Tarpon live for a very long time, maybe 60 years or more," Adams said. "They take a long time to reach sexual maturity so we won't know what kind of shape the population is in for some years. It isn't the same as with fish like snook where you can get a handle on it in a relatively short period of time."

The bottom line is that as many conservationists have been insisting we may already be fishing on credit. If the tarpon schools we see now were spawned 10, 20 or more years ago they may be devoid of nursery habitat today.
If you combine that with the global threat, with harvest for caviar, than you have a pretty scary picture of what the future could bring.
Meanwhile, tarpon anglers around the world are now concerned about fishing pressure. What seems to be an abundant gamefish just may well be on the road to extinction.
And that would be a great shame.
By G.B. Knowles