Tarpon Quest by John Cole

One of the rarer books on angling I’ve ever encountered, Tarpon Quest is perhaps most remarkable for its lack of affectation. While in his mid-60s author John N. Cole sets out to catch a tarpon, one of fly-fishing’s most sought-after and consistently spectacular gamefish. Like far too many of us, he fails. However, he quickly regroups, studies like someone in the last week of NASA’s Astronaut Candidate training program, practices more than that, and generally takes this matter of a fish moving to the fly much too seriously. Then he fails some more. The disappointments, from mere letdown to outright catastrophe, are so finely detailed that the non-angler may come to suspect there’s a hint of masochism in this quest. Fly fishers, though, should understand that all the drama is in these details. Cole gets tantalizingly close to completing his mission on a number of occasions, celebrates—and only rarely rues—the successes of other anglers and tries not to let on how much his heart breaks when tippet-and-fly part company. Soon we realize that the fish he set out to hook and (hopefully) touch, has in the end hooked him. By then he’s not looking to tell us how to rig a leader or to expound on whatever theories of fly presentation he surely holds (both argumentative prerequisites for anyone who considers himself fit for the silver king).

He just wants to catch a tarpon, and as a reader I can’t thank him enough for that. Maybe more than anything else that swims, these fish tend to require devotion from their subjects, those that hope for success anyway, and naturally enough, this is a book about one man’s obsession. Never pretending to be an expert, Cole stands in for all of us during his odyssey and we learn as he did: the characteristics and habits that make the tarpon such a unique sport fish, the history of the fishery—beginning in 1882 with Anthony Dimock’s catch in the mouth of Florida’s Homosassa River and moving to the present-day Keys—and both what to do (from some of the area’s top guides) and (from Cole himself) what not to do. When after three years of trials and tribulations Cole finally finds success, it feels something like a shared triumph, not a little because we’ve been with him every step of the way. By then we too are certain this is a fish worth such effort, and a book worthy of such a fish. The Lyons Press 112 pages, Softbound, $14.95 By Troy Letherman, Editor Fish Alaska Magazine

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