By Drew Nobregas
Not a cloud in the sky, and a slick calm summer day in the Everglades made for a spectacular moment in my decade-long guiding career.
With two good repeat clients, Paul and Gary, we set out for a full day of fishing. We found some happy tarpon first thing in the morning, and Paul caught a good one on light tackle around the 40-pound range. Once that shut off it was the perfect time to look for some snook while the lighting was good and tide was right for the occasion. After finding several schools of bait, the snook followed.
Paul was catching a snook just about every other cast, and Gary couldn’t catch water if he fell out of a boat for some reason. I proceeded with “it’s ok man, some guys have all the luck, but I’ll stop at one more spot on the way home to see if we can get you a good fish too.”
After moving to the next spot we came across a huge tripletail just drifting by in the current. Gary threw a DOA shrimp at it perfectly and got the bite. Game on, he finally had his good fish of the day, although I had no idea it was this big until I realized I didn’t bring a net. So we played the fish easily for a few minutes on light drag and I stuck it with my cobia gaff I always keep in the boat. Once it hit the deck I knew this was the biggest tripletail I’ve ever seen. These guys were thinking I was crazy from my reaction, but I knew this was something special and we had to get an official weight to see how big it was.
I called my marina, they got the scale ready, and sure enough, we caught a true 30-pound tripletail! I’ve lived here my whole life and fished for these fish ever since I was in diapers. Never have I heard of or seen a specimen this large. It was a glorious fishing day for all of us and we shared it between a group of seven people at Captain Craig’s for an amazing hook-and-cook dinner.
All we planned on was to go out fishing and see what happens. Magic ensued.
