ISLAMORADA, Fla. _ One second the over-sized fishing outfit was dead weight in my hands. The next it seemed totally alive with the thumb-thick rod bowed 90 degrees and bucking as the spool atop the oversized reel spun like a top as line streamed away from the boat.
"Come on fish, give us a jump," Rick Stanczyk, a top Florida Keys guide, said as we stared out over the gulf, and hoped I'd hooked our target species.
Soon, 100 or more yards out a five-foot fish rocketed 15 feet into the air. In the day's first rays of sunshine the silvery fish shined like freshly polished chrome. A split second after splashing down it was airborne again with twists and a flip added to the second jump.
Only one fish looks and acts like that _ a tarpon.
