Real Florida: Tangling with tarpon

The big catch doesn't come easily, as generations of Mastrys can tell you.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 8, 2002

[Photo courtesy of Jay Mastry] The Mastry crew, from left: Kenny Kleber, tarpon, Don Kearney, Jay Mastry. Bottom: Brian Crisp.

Almost dawn.

Still dark out.

Jay Mastry perches in the stern of his boat watching the Gulf of Mexico. He isn't tired, but he should be. Last night he got five hours' sleep. Night before, even less.

It's tarpon season, and tarpon season is a big deal if your name is Mastry. A tarpon is a hefty prehistoric fish with large eyes, huge silver scales and a penchant for deep dives and flying leaps the moment it feels the prick of a sharp hook in its anvil jaw.

Jay Mastry spends much of his summer trying to catch tarpon. It's a family tradition that goes back more than a half century. His daddy, the late Jimmy Mastry, was one of the best tarpon fishers Tampa Bay ever knew. So was his Uncle Lay. And it goes on and on. Another uncle, Johnny, died of heart failure in 1967 -- in a boat, accompanied by his son, while fighting a huge tarpon.

"When it's my time, that's how I want to go, too," says Jay Mastry.

He is only 49. He smokes Marlboros, but he's otherwise in fighting shape. You have to be in fighting shape to take on a tarpon. In 1952, a Largo angler battled a huge tarpon up and down the Clearwater waterfront for 181/2 hours until the hook broke. The big-one-that-got-away made national headlines.

When Mastry was 17, he took his 15-year-old cousin Larry on a fishing trip. Larry hooked a big tarpon. It was what the Mastrys call a "mean fish," one that seems stronger and more determined than others. An hour went. Then two hours. A thunderstorm blew up over the bay. Lightning flashed too close for comfort.

Finally, after three hours, Jay Mastry dragged the tarpon into the boat with a gaff. Still not licked, the tarpon thrashed and jumped and broke an ice chest and fishing rods. It weighed 106 pounds.

A 106-pound tarpon is a good one. But they get bigger. Earlier this summer, somebody caught a record 224-pounder in Tampa Bay. For a while it was stored in the freezer at Mastry's Bait and Tackle where it could be admired by gape-jawed anglers. The tackle store is owned by Larry Mastry, Jay's cousin, the one who caught the three-hour thunderstorm tarpon long ago.

There are dozens of Mastrys living in St. Petersburg and surrounding municipalities. Mastrys are doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, Realtors, homemakers, stock brokers, boat builders and other things.

But if you ask they'll say, "I'm a tarpon fisherman."

The Tampa Bay way

The sun is about 2 inches above Bradenton Beach a quarter of a mile away. The water is 14 feet deep and a little dirty. Incoming tide. A southwest wind. Gulls squawk above Mastry's 22-foot boat, and pelicans give him the once-over as they flap toward a school of distant bait fish.

"We should see tarpon here," he says. "But you never know."

Yesterday he fished in the Manatee River. The day before he was in Tampa Bay. Sometimes, he fishes under the Sunshine Skyway bridge and at other times off the Don CeSar resort at St. Petersburg Beach. How does he know where to fish? Depends on tide and bait. And of course he knows the secret stuff Mastrys have passed on from father to son for generations. Sometimes, if someone asks where he caught a tarpon, he'll say: "in the mouth."

He caught his first four decades ago. It was little, and his Uncle Johnny, the one who later died of a heart attack, pulled it into the boat. He has caught hundreds since. In 1990, he caught a 127-pounder that won the Suncoast Tarpon Roundup's Finale Day. The roundup is Florida's oldest fishing tournament. His cousin Larry won the tournament last year. His dad won it once, and so did uncles Lay and Mike. The Mastrys practically own it.

His dad and his Uncle Lay opened their bar a few years before the tarpon tournament was born. They called the bar the Pink Elephant. It was 1935 and prohibition had recently ended. The bar, now Mastry's Bar and Grille on Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg, is going strong today. Jay and his cousin, Rick, Lay's son, own it. At 8 a.m., when the bar opens, the crusty blue-haired bartender, Beverly Kaminski, approaches the huge ice lockers with apprehension. Sometimes they contain a huge tarpon or tomorrow's bait.

She's about the only person at the bar who cares nada about tarpon fishing. Justin Mastry, Rick's son and bartender, recently bought a boat and hopes to become a tarpon guide. BJ Young, another bartender, eats and sleeps tarpon fishing.

Hanging above and behind the bar are stuffed tarpon. Photographs of tarpon decorate the wall. The sign below a dirty mirror says: Even A Fish Would Not Get Into Trouble If He Kept His Mouth Shut.

In the late afternoon, fishermen take out their tackle, and right there on the bar start working on it to prepare for tomorrow.

In other parts of Florida, the trendy thing is fly fishing for tarpon. It's become a gentrified sport, in some ways, with white-collared anglers paying hundreds of dollars for rods and for clothing from the latest Orvis catalog. But not at Mastry's, whose blue-collared fishermen wear sleeveless T-shirts, shorts, flip flops and two-day beards. And they fish the old-fashioned Tampa Bay way, the Mastry way, with dead menhaden soaked on the bottom.

Catching a lion by the tail

Seven a.m. Wind stronger. Seven baits out. No tarpon. Sun hot already.

Sometimes after he closes the bar, Jay Mastry jumps into his boat and nets bait. He sleeps for a couple of hours, then rises at 4:30 a.m. to go tarpon fishing. Sometimes he guides people for pay, but most often he takes his girlfriend, pals and relatives

In the boat today are Don Kearney, 70; Kenny Kleber, 18; Brian Crisp, 14; and BJ Young, 30. Kleber's 150-pound tarpon, caught from Mastry's boat, leads the tournament. Kearney's 130-pounder is second in the senior division. Crisp has caught and released 17 tarpon already this summer and leads the tournament's junior division.

Tarpon have no food value; the flesh is red and mushy. That may be why the tarpon, unlike commercially valuable fish, are in good supply. Still, anglers are careful. Few tarpon are ever caught and killed. They are hauled to the boat, admired and released alive.

Tarpon fishing is a primal experience. Imagine sneaking up on a lion and grabbing its tail. If the lion doesn't bite you, it probably will run and drag you.

That's how it is with tarpon fishing. One second you're holding a rod. The line tightens. The rod tip twitches. Then bows down. You grab the rod and pull back hard. You feel an impossibly heavy weight, and then away it bolts, an underwater lion. The water erupts and this huge silver apparition comes flying out, and it's shaking its head, and the gills are rattling, and then it dives deep again. You're connected to something powerful, wild.

The novices

Strike. 7:25 a.m. Pandemonium.

"Your rod!" Mastry shouts."Your rod!"

Brian Crisp, the kid, grabs the rod and sets the hook and fights the fish, about an 80-pounder, which splashes across the Gulf of Mexico for about five minutes before getting loose.

"You'll get him next time," Mastry says.

Mastry stands on the bow like a bird dog, watching for signs of tarpon in the water and at the slack fishing lines. Ask a question and he answers without looking away from the Gulf. Don Kearney, the oldest angler, is just as serious at the stern. But the younger anglers josh and tease and brag like feckless cowhands.

They talk about flatulence, girls, boogers and fighting. Look over and one is holding an angry crab. The pinchers are open and poised to grip the shirt of the nearest unsuspecting lad. Look over a moment later and one of them is dangling pliers from his own nostrils.

One of them -- a stocky fellow -- is sure he is up to the challenge offered by an area restaurant: If he wolfs down a 6-pound steak in one sitting he doesn't have to pay. "I'm pretty sure I can also drink 12 Pepsis in an hour," he boasts to jeers.

The real thing

Very hot and windy. 9:23 a.m. No chance of seeing a tarpon in the rough water.

Strike! Stern rod. An enormous tarpon, all belly, catapults out of the water. Don Kearney's rod.

"Set the hook!" somebody yells.

'Already did!'

The heavy rod bends into a 'u'. Starting the engine, Mastry gives chase. The fish has taken half of the reel's 300 yards of line. No sewing thread, the line theoretically could lift 50 pounds of dead weight. That still is too weak for this tarpon. The trick is to let the tarpon have line an instant before the breaking point is reached. Then when the tarpon stops swimming, pull back on the rod and start reeling

As Mastry chases the fish, Kearney reels frantically. Ten minutes. Fifteen. The fish senses the boat and lunges away. Once more it's a football field distant.

It's a big fish. It could be 120 pounds, but might be 135 pounds. A 135-pounder would put Kearney in the tournament lead for the senior division.

The fish circles the boat. Another five minutes. Kearney gains line, loses line, gains line.

Mastry offers no advice; Kearney has been catching tarpon for six decades. He knows how. But the younger anglers are free with advice and teasing and even Kearney has to grin. Tarpon fishing is a brutal sport, a younger person's game. One day they'll know.

The fish is closer now, close enough to touch. It's 7 feet of silver thug.

The young guy with the gaff gets ready to drag it into the boat. Gone.

The line, it broke. You could hear the pop above the cry of the gulls.

Everybody swears at once.

Jay Mastry says to his old friend: "You did everything you could. We'll talk about losing that tarpon until we catch the next one."

The tide slows. So do the bites. Mastry starts the engine and heads home.

Big chop on the Gulf. Drink Pepsis. Dream about tomorrow.

Dream about lions.

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