Story by Christine Cunningham
Photos by Caroline Clabaugh & submitted
Growing up deep sea fishing in New England led this
ocean-loving fisher girl to crave her chance to take on
the king of all kings in Boca Grande!
Working in Boca Grande for four years as the art director of this magazine, I have been lucky
enough to have had many chances to go out tarpon fishing with my co-workers. But as of
Saturday, May 12, 2018 – the day of the 2018 Ladies Day Tarpon Tournament – the third
tournament I had participated in, I was still a tarpon virgin. On Gasparilla Island, when you have not caught
your first tarpon, that’s what they call you. My co-workers enjoyed teasing me about this fact and were
always rooting me on when we went out – but all to no avail. No luck here. I was still a virgin. Sigh.
I have to admit, it was a bit disappointing. I
have always loved to fish, especially what we call
up north “deep sea” fishing, which means
traveling a few miles offshore on a boat to fish.
I had usually been pretty good at it, actually. I
had been raised vacationing in southern Maine
each summer, where I was afforded the chance
from the ripe age of 5 to go out fishing with
my parents each year. After their divorce my
mother and I still went every chance we could
when we vacationed anywhere there was deep
sea fishing. I will never forget our favorite boat
that went out of York Harbor in Maine when I
was young, and was called “Porpoise.” Wayne
Perkins was her captain. Over the years, my
mother became friends with the captain and
his wife and we were always treated like family
when aboard, even to the point of getting to
help out when the boat was extremely busy. I
learned to bait hooks with fresh clams and how
to unravel crossed lines, how to take a
customer’s fish to the back of the rocking boat
and mark it with a knife, before putting it into
the big 30-gallon barrels on deck.