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				“Arc Of The Silver King” Leaping, fighting tarpon that live in Venezuelan lagoons are the best opponents a saltwater fly-fisher could want. American Way Magazine By Phil H. Shook "Monos," whispered our young Venezuelan fishing guide, pointing to movement high in a coconut palm in an opening on the towering mangrove shoreline. Straining in midcast to see what he was pointing at, I caught a glimpse of a hunched-over howler monkey clambering through the palm branches. Down below, a wild-eyed tarpon of about four pounds picked that moment to explode out of the tannin-stained water, my orange-hackled streamer fly hanging from its jaw. A few days earlier I was excited about this trip, sitting in a van on a freeway in the heart of Caracas, traffic at a crawl, watching vendors hawking avocados and mangoes to passing motorists, and knowing I would be flyfishing on a jungle lagoon later that same day.. About ninety miles up the road, at Tacariqua Lagoon National Park, I expected to have the fishing trip of my lifetime. For me, a hopelessly committed saltwater fly-fisherman, that would mean catching a tarpon on a fly, doing it with a fly I tied myself, and doing it enough times to convince myself it wasn't an accident. On a sultry November morning I joined seven other American anglers at the Caracas seaport suburb of La Guaira for the three-hour drive to the little fishing and resort community of Rio Chico where the park is located. There, the El Guapo River meets the Caribbean to form a brackish-water estuary recognized in international angling circles as one of the most exciting places in the world to fish for small tarpon. I had prepared weeks in advance for this trip, selecting tackle, tying flies, sharpening hook points, and constructing leaders. Strapped to the top of the van was my rod case containing four graphite fly rods. At my feet rested another four-piece travel rod, neatly packed in a plastic tube, my insurance policy against lost or misrouted luggage. Packed in my bags were four fly reels, extra fly lines, assorted spools of monofilament line for leaders, about twelve dozen flies, and hats, polarized sunglasses, pliers, and other vital tools of the saltwater fly-fisher. I was relieved to see that the others in our group, including a former Alaska fishing fuide, an engineer on an ocean-going freighter, and a San Francisco Bay area developer, all had brought along as much, or more, equipment as I had. After leaving Caracas, our drive took us onto narrow mountain roads, past bustling farm communities to the resort where we would stay. We arrived at an off-peak period and found it almost deserted except for the staff. The facility, which is owned by Venezuelan trade unions, overflows with park visitors during holiday and festival periods. Later that afternoon at the launch site, the guides awaited us, lining up in skiffs with small outboard motors. Dressed in tank tops and shorts, hand-carved push poles in hand, they looked like typical youths you see on street corners with skateboards. After exchanging a few greetings in Spanish-the guides spoke little if any English, making me glad I'd brought a Spanish phrase book-one by one the skiffs paraded into a winding tunnel of mangroves that led to the open water of the lagoon. After a fifteen-minute run across a stretch of open water, we entered one of themany mangrove-bordered coves. Pepe, our guide, suddenly killed the motor, looked around, and said, "Muchos sabalos," I didn't have to look at my phrase book to know he meant "lots of tarpon." Splashing and gurgling fish were all around us, apparently feeding on baitfish up against the mangroves, out in open water, and near the boat. I found myself frantically stringing my rod, looping on a leader, and fumbling for the fly box. Finally rigged up, I discovered my leader was much too long, requiring another and tedious adjustment. Meanwhile, my companion, Bill Marts, a fly-casting instructor from Kirkland, Washington, was throwing tight loops and getting noisy splashes from tarpon boiling up behind his popping bug. I couldn't believe it. After six years learning saltwater fly-fishing by trial and error, attending casting clinics, reading books by experts named Lefty and Chico, tying flies, and building rods, there I was covered up in tarpon and I couldn't seem to get the fly line out of the boat. Finally in action, I cast a small streamer fly to a swell made by a feeding fish. As the fly settled just below the surface and I began the retrieve, the line came to a sudden stop against something solid and I knew I was tight to my first tarpon. I leaned the rod butt against my right hip, stripped in some fly line with my left hand, and struck three times as if I were trying to set the hook on a 120-pound giant. I was rewarded immediately with the exhilarating sight of a silver king taking to the air. After it made several more jumps and short but determined runs, I pulled the six-pound fish to the boat and grabbed its lower jaw. Hooked removed, my first fly-rod-caught tarpon, looking to me as brilliant and elegant as anything behind the counter at Tiffanys, was photographed and released. Unless a fish is a world record or an angler wants to have it mounted, the tarpon, a poor food fish, is almost always released. Many of us bend down the barbs on ur hooks with pliers, a practice that not only prevents injury to the fish, but also may help in setting the hook in the Formica-like mouth of the tarpon. That first afternoon I also had a solid strike from a good-sized fish that turned in a gold flash as it took the fly before breaking off. I thought it may have been a big robalo, or snook, another local game fish. But in the words of author and fly-fisherman Thomas McGuane, that fish became one of "that throng of shades, touched and unseen, that haunt the angler-fish felt and lost, big ones that got away that are the subject of levity to non-anglers but of a deeper emotion to the angler himself." Casting along the mangrove shoreline as dusk approached reminded me of fly-fishing for bass and bream on a farm pond where the heavy shoreline vegetation and the stillness of the water's surface give a feeling of solitude and tranquility that is broken only by a vicious strike from an unseen predator. The calcium-rich mix of freshwater and saltwater, the stable tropical climate, the absence of its predators, and an abundance of food make Tacarigua one of the world's most prolific tarpon nurseries. The bantamweight tarpon, which are in a rapid-growth stage of their life cycle, feed on the great numbers of glass minnows, mullet, sea catfish, pinfish, pilchards, shrimp, crabs, and other marine life that thrive in the lagoon. The saltwater flies we used, unlike delicate trout flies designed to imitate insects that hatch in mountain streams, are many times larger. And because of the aggressive feeding habits of the tarpon, our saltwater flies need only simulate rather than imitate a baitfish in the lagoon. A fly pattern that worked well for me was the "Tropical Punch," with its silver bead chain eyes, hot-orange chenille head, gold mylar body, and flashy gold wing made from a material called Krystal Flash. These streamer flies were fished just below the surface, but some of the most spectacular strikes came while I was using a hollow-faced popping bug on the surface. Tarpon, attracted by the plopping sound of the lure being retrieved in short jerks, would sometimes launch themselves two or three feet in the air in a graceful arc in an effort to crash down on the noisy lure. On our first night, over a dinner of snook (freshly caught from the lagoon), guava fruit, fried bananas, and a thirst-quenching, pungently sweet tamarind fruit drink, I plotted my strategies for the next day with the other fishermen. All of us had sampled the explosive action that is the trademark of the silver king, and we agreed that on light tackle the small tarpon showed the same gill-rattling, demon-possessed antics that have endeared the giant members of the family Megalopidae to the angling community. Back in my room the ceiling fan provided some relief from the warm evening as I went through the ritual of washing the salt residue from my rods, reels, and lines and rigging fresh leaders for the next day. The strong jaws, tough mouths, and rows of tiny, sand-paperlike teeth on even the smallest tarpon required After onlky a few strikes this "shock tippet" would be so badly abraded it would have to be replaced. As I sat there, sweat pouring down my face in the dim light trying to tie Bimini twist knots to connect to shock leaders, I could hardly wait to get back out on the water. Since the best action was in the early morning and late afternoon when the sun wasn't beating down, driving the fish back up into the shelter of the mangrove roots, the wake-up call came each morning at 4:45. In the pre-dawn blackness, the air was filled with the fragrance of tropical plants and a freshness from the nightly rain showers mixed with the smell of salt air off the lagoon. As the sun climbed and the guide poled silently along the shoreline my partner and I could hear the raspy complaint of the howler monkeys and a wealth of bird calls. The baby tarpon began splashing along the mangroves, and in open water the larger tarpon occasionally would roll on the surface, making graceful silver arcs. For long stretches, we would fish silently, oblivious to each other, listening to the sounds of this jungle lagoon, and making cast after cast to the shaded pockets in the mangroves. The mood would be broken by the sudden, often airborne, appearance of a tarpon, its dark-green back and silver sides flashing in the sun. If a tarpon missed a fly or popper once, it was not unusual for the same fish to try again and again. In one small pocket in the mangroves, I had a fish strike on three successive casts before I finally hooked up with a little three-pounder. "Sabalo es muy hombre," said Pepe, our guide, who liked to poke fun at the smaller fish putting on a tough act. One late evening just a few minutes before we had to crank up the motor to head back to the landing , my companion for the day, Bill Kammerer, and I experienced one of those rare moments that only comes at a place like Rio Chico. As we watched our fly lines turn over into the edges of the mangroves, two tarpon hit our offerings and took to the air at almost the same instant. We fought the fish, brought them to the boat, and turned them loose. It was the kind of moment, I had the feeling, that might happen just once in my lifetime. Dallas freelance writer Phil Shook is a former energy writer for the Dallas Times Herald. June 1, 1991