After several Tuesdays had passed only a few brave fishermen remained. We had been in a serious slump and only myself and two of my friends, Colin and Nick, had joined me this particular night. Neither of them had caught a tarpon yet or anything of good size, but on this fateful night that would all change.

The night started as any other. I was the first to arrive at the bridge and I started out by trying to catch some live bait. Colin and Nick arrive not long after, and Colin was armed with his big offshore reel. We had seen some large sharks in the area recently and thought it best to be well prepared. Colin dropped his bait straight down from the bridge, and it wasn’t look before he hooked up with a big tarpon. I had promised Colin a big fight and some serious acrobatics, but this large tarpon did neither. Of course, he was using a massive reel spooled with 80lb mono. The fight was quick and apart from a few close calls with the bridge pilings, the silver king did little to escape. I went down to pick up the fish, and to my surprise it was much heavier then the previous tarpon I had caught, and I could barely lift it out of the water. Colin’s first tarpon, an honest 100 pound fish!

Colin kept just a single scale to remember his first tarpon!

It was no more then a beer or two later when I hooked up. Another Tarpon! This one was clearly much smaller, but it fought well and showed off its acrobatic skills.

After catching two quick tarpon, things got quiet. This was often the case with night fishing for tarpon. If you weren’t around during the small window of opportunity, the fish simply would night bite. We sat around for quite some time watching the tarpon sit perfectly still in the dark water below. It was clear that they were no longer feeding and seem to gather just to be social. In a last ditch effort we let about a hundred yards of line out of the big reel to drift down in the current. We had no idea what was out in the darkness, but we would soon find out. We all sat back finishing the last of the beer. The big rod leaning against the rail in front of us with the line alarm engaged. There were no cars passing at that moment, and everything was quite. A lout click broke the silence and we all peer at the rod, the tip started to bend and both Colin and I looked at Nick. “Your turn.”

He lunged for the rod, and as soon as he picked it up, the reel started screaming. He set the hook and we waited for the sound of a splash, a telltale sign a tarpon was on the other end, but we heard nothing. Whatever it was, it was big. We all thought it had to be a shark, we had never seen anything else besides a tarpon that was big enough to pull that kind of line in the area. As cars drove boy they saw Nick fighting the fish and they stopped. All traffic was at a standstill in either direction as people got out of their cars to watch. Not long after we got a glimpse of something orange, clearly not a shark, and not as big as we had believed either, but this fish fought like it was six feet long. Nick got the fish to shore as the crowd applauded when they saw the big snapper. The hook popped out with alarming ease. I tried to pick up the fish to get a photo with Nick, but the brute still wasn’t done fighting and with one last thrash of its tail, it flew out of my hands and into the water, disappearing into the darkness.

Tarpon Tuesday continued until once again I was the only fisherman. I spent my last night on Tortola alone at the bridge that had brought so much joy and excitement to me and my friends and I promised myself I’d return.

Matt from This River Is Wild managed to get some awesome footage the other day, showing just how tough it is to convince a tarpon to bite.

Read his report at This River is Wild.

Here are a few of his catches from the BVI!

Check out more at thisriveriswildflyfishing.blogspot.com/
Keep it up bro!

If you don’t have an Ugly Stik, heres you chance to save $25 off the regular price of an Ugly Stik Tiger from our OpenSky store! Just leave a comment below to let us know you are interested and we’ll pick a winner later this week! And if you already have an Ugly Stik, no problem! You can use that $25 toward any other item in our shop valued over $50!

Many things about Fishing Fury have grown over the last five years. We started this site to cover our own fishing antics and legendary ability to catch fish. Early on we were both young and single, every weekend was spent fishing without question. As our readership grew we expanded our coverage outside of our own personalities and in to news and events that we found interesting or incredible, everything from current events to videos and photos, while still publishing our own 100% original editorial content. We’ve also started our own community forums where readers and contributors can talk about anything.

Together we brought our legendary fishing powers to places like Little Vermilion Lake, Baja California Sur, the Toronto Islands – all over Ontario, the British Virgin Islands, even the famous flats of Key West.

These days we’re both approaching 30 and our tastes and ideas of the world have matured, well Clive’s probably have. Clive is now living in Nova Scotia with his lovely wife Gillian and their totally awesome son. Clive has grown a beard, forgoing the handlebar mustache, and still makes fun of me for not even being able to grow either. I’m still living on my own, happily employed doing what I love, and living in Ontario.

We’ve got a lot of great things planned this year so keep your eye peeled for updates. Here’s to another 5 years!

PS. If anyone needs an island fishing guide and has the cash to cover my expenses to get there, I’m all yours!

On really cold days I ask myself, why would anybody want to live in a place like this? Why not live somewhere that has warm weather all year long? In 2005, in the middle of the winter I decided that I had had enough of winter, and packed my bags and headed south to La Paz, Mexico to meet up with Jon and fish the Sea of Cortez.

I’m glad I did, it changed my life. After a month in the desert I met my wife to be, Gillian, but after almost six months we both agreed that La Paz was not the place for us. We headed back to Canada, specifically Mississauga, Ontario – the town I grew up. I had friends and family there, and got my old job at the bank back right away. By the time the chill of fall was in the air we both decided that staying for a freezing winter was not an option.

September 2005 marked one of the happiest time in my life, my return to the British Virgin Islands. Since my sister, mother and I left the BVI when I was five, I had only visited a handful of times. We arrived with nothing more then the shirts on our back, a tent, a camera, a laptop and of course, my fishing rods. We spent our first several weeks camping near the beach at Brewers Bay during hurricane season while we looked for an apartment to rent. After a few months settling in, things were going great. We lived in a small apartment on a mountain top with a brilliant panoramic view of several islands. Best of all, the ocean was a five minute drive from our apartment, and the sea was full of tarpon!

British Virgin Islands tarpon

Our time in the Virgins Islands had a lot of ups and downs. In the end, financial difficulties and health problems ultimately caused us to leave. We returned to Canada, and spent a year in Ontario, and have since relocated to beautiful Nova Scotia. I currently have two jobs, (three if you count Fishing Fury, but this is a labour of love, and as you can see by the lack of advertising, this doesn’t exactly bring in any income). Things are going great since we moved to the east coast, but it’s winter, and it’s cold and I don’t like the cold.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about life in the BVI. Since I can’t experience it in person, the next best thing is to read about others enjoying the sunshine and fishing. There is one blog that I check regularly to get my BVI fix, The Captains Log Blog. If you plan to visit the BVI or the Carbibean, these site will give you a taste of what you will get to see. And if you are looking for a sailing charter (with fishing), look no further!

images via Sail Dive BVI

Hey Clive…believe it or not it was your fishing fury website that alerted me to their presence! Cheers, Wayne

If you have any stories or photos about how Fishing Fury helped you catch fish, let us know!

Digg this video!

And lastly, if anyone out there is going to be participating in the Virgin Gorda Easter Fishing Tournament and you need and extra set of hands on board, don’t hesitate to contact me!