Tarpon are showing up off Rhode Island coast

Did someone say global warming? Tarpon have strayed far north from tropical waters and are showing up off the Rhode Island coast.Though no one has yet caught one on rod and line, commercial gill netters last week were taking this exciting game fish off Newport from Brenton Point to 100 miles offshore. Waters had warmed to 77 degrees, high for the open ocean off this tiny New England state.

People normally think of tarpon as being along the Florida coast and points south, but at times in the past, anglers have tangled with tarpon as far north as Virginia, according to Tom Figg, a retired outdoors journalist friend.

Seeing this species as far north as Rhode Island is huge news. Will tarpon make annual treks to the Ocean State and become common enough to attract Maine anglers the short distance south for a go at the exulted king of game fish? If waters off northern New England warm more, will tarpon show up off coastal Maine?

When anglers think of tarpon, they often conjure images of casting to big silver fish on shallow flats, but I have chased giant tarpon in deep water off the eastern Costa Rican coast, the most exciting fishing I have ever experienced. These words come from a man who has fished tarpon on flats in the Florida Keys, too.

In the Caribbean, schools of tarpon as large and sometimes larger than a football field would porpoise on the slick, oil-like surface before wind sprung up in late morning, making the fishing a game of blind casting. As these giant tarpon porpoised on the calm sea, sometimes dozens and dozens of them at the same time, the hissing water along their sides would make a constant noise that could be heard from quite a distance.

The trick was to motor ahead of the school, cut the engine and drift in the path of the approaching tarpon. As the fish neared the boat, I would cast as far as I could and let the fly hang in the water, pulsing the hackle wings with gentle sweeps of the rod tip. When a tarpon hit, fish often in excess of 100 pounds, it was nothing in such deep water to have a tarpon run 400-plus yards. The guide would chase the fish down in the boat, and we'd watch it take off for another quarter-mile. We'd do this three to four times, heartbreaking in humid, 90-degree-plus temperatures under a glaring sun.

The Rhode Island scene will probably require similar deep-water fishing tactics. If tarpon make this an annual pilgrimage in future years, folks will learn to fish them. Anglers will use deep-water tactics to marauding schools -- probably smaller schools than seen in the Caribbean.

Cobia, triggerfish and other tropical species have also been caught off Rhode Island, a state that already had a dynamite ocean fishery in the form of striped bass, bluefish, bonito, false albacore and some tuna species, including bluefin. I have fished off Rhode Island, and compared to Maine's ocean fishery, it is far more attractive because of the ultra-fast bonito and false albacore -- species that a friend refers to as "real saltwater fish."

Speaking of bonito, although they have been somewhat rare in Maine, a few have been caught off the mouth of the Saco River and points just south in the last 12 years, more evidence of global warming as this species expands northward.

In early July off Popham Beach at the mouth of the Kennebec, an angler in a charter boat caught a brown shark in 10 feet of water. This species normally doesn't stray north of Cape Cod, but it had bite marks, which are signs of mating activity.

Also called a sandbar shark, brown sharks average 50 to 100 pounds but grow to 260 pounds and have a mouthful of triangular teeth. Please do not confuse a sandbar shark with the diminutive spiny dogfish, also called sand shark, which are common in Maine.

Equally as compelling, beaches in extreme southern Maine have had shark warnings this past week.

Will the Maine of the future have bonito, false albacore and maybe even tarpon? Will we see more brown sharks (and other ones more common south of us) in the shallows around our beaches?

Fish aren't the only critters moving north into New England and the Pine Tree State. The World War II generation grew up in a Maine where songbirds such as mourning doves, tufted titmice, dickcissel and red-bellied woodpeckers were practically nonexistent. These days, the first three species have become commonplace here, and the fourth one may turn a head but doesn't send anyone to the telephone to call Audubon officials.

I have an old Peterson's bird guidebook, copyright 1980, and many of the ranges of bird species have changed. Birds have expanded their ranges northward and southward in the 26 years since publication.

Turkey vultures have also expanded into Maine during my lifetime and are a common sight in the bottom third of the state. In the past 15 years, opossums have ranged into southern Maine, and now, we even have a hunting season for this arboreal marsupial, a mainstay of Southern folklore.

Out of all these newcomers to New England, the one that excites me the most is tarpon. Anyone who tangles with tarpon no longer looks at striped bass in the same manner. Tarpon have rocket-boosters for fins that routinely take them 10 feet into the air, and they can swim a quarter-mile in a flash. This species is the real deal.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer. E-mail: kallyn800@aol.com

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