Waiting For Godzilla

A gaudy sunset glowed upriver, backlighting the palm trees and moss-bearded live oaks that flank the stream. In the glassy shallows, mullet competed in a random piscine triple jump. A late-hunting osprey swung past, its white breast flushing pink as it banked into the low light.

"Red sky at night, angler's delight," said Bob Montgomery . "Tomorrow's the day for Godzilla."

Godzilla is the nickname for a collective monster lurking in the warm green waters of the Gulf of Mexico , where Florida 's Homosassa River empties into the sea. He, or more likely she, might measure eight feet in length and tip the scales at well over 200 pounds. Godzilla is blue-green on top and flanked in laser-bright silver. Godzilla comes out of the water with a roar of gill plates reminiscent of a thousand flushing partridges, tea-saucer eyes flashing bright in the spray, a mouth like the intake of a jet engine flailing madly from side to side. Godzilla is also known as Megalops atlantica, or cuffum or tarpum or—most commonly—tarpon. To the serious saltwater fly-fisherman, Godzilla is the ultimate catch: the world's first 200-pounder to be taken on the fly.

The presence of giant tarpon along Florida 's west central coast has been known for many years. Late in the last century, men harpooned them in the shallows when they arrived to spawn in May and June. More than 30 years ago, an outdoors magazine carried a feature story about the lunker silverkings of Homosassa Springs. Harold LeMaster, the inventor of the highly successful Mirrolure, claims to have been taking huge tarpon by trolling and bait-casting in the area since 1950; Lefty Kreh, the fly-fishing guru, was tipped to the hot spot by LeMaster, and Freddie Archibald, a fly-fishing guide from St. Petersburg , about 80 miles down the coast, has been fishing it since 1968. But only in the past three or four years have the heavyweights of saltwater fly-fishing moved into the area for a shot at Godzilla—anglers like Stu Apte, Ted Williams , Al Pflueger Jr., Ben Hardesty, Billy Pate, Carl Navarre, Jim Lopez and Tom Evans, and their even more famous guides, Eddie Wightman, Hank Brown, Billy Knowles, Gary Ellis and Cecil Keith from Islamorada, Steve Huff, Dale Perez and Cal Cochran from Marathon, Bob and Gene Montgomery from Key West , Bill Curtis from Miami .

The move paid off in short order. Last year on Memorial Day, Evans boated a record fish of 177 pounds on 15-pound-test tippet. "We were the only boat out that day," recalls Evans, 40, a big, slow-talking ex-stockbroker from Old Lyme, Conn. , who fishes a month at a time with Steve Huff. "And we had only one fly left. On it I managed to catch fish of 145, 155, 165 and 175 pounds—almost unbelievable odds. At one point the big guy jumped so that he was silhouetted against a pale sinking moon. He looked like a great silver-scaled rocket as he passed across the disc."

And last month Joe Robinson, an insurance man from Miami , fishing with Dale Perez, brought in a fish of 180 pounds, nosing out Evans' record by three pounds. But still no Godzilla.

Three years ago, on his first foray into the area, Evans hooked and lost a fish that he estimated at well over 200 pounds. "These fish aren't particularly longer than the tarpon you take in the Keys," he says, "but they're much thicker and broader. This one looked like a flying jewfish when he jumped. He must have gone more than 15 feet into the air. Then he was off."

In the Florida Keys , where the tarpon are smaller but more abundant and fish-able for a longer period of time each year, most fly-fishermen are content to get five or six spectacular jumps out of a fish and then break him off for another shot. But to the record seekers, even a fish that seems relatively small in Homosassa waters is worth fighting to the finish: what would appear at first jump to be a 155-pound fish might, close up to the boat, prove to be 180—or even better. What accounts for the presence of such a giant race of tarpon on this particular stretch of coast?

"Nobody knows for sure," says Bob Montgomery , who also has fished Homosassa for three years now. "The tarpon isn't a food fish, so the research money is pretty scant. But it's clear that these are a different lot of fish than the ones we get in the Keys. Big tarpon have been seen for years in the passes off Fort Myers , way to the south of here, and they show up from Tarpon Springs , just down the line, clear on up to the Crystal River north of us and even farther. But it's easier to fish them here—with an excellent motel and good docks fairly close to the action—so this is where we come. Maybe these big fish cruise all the way around the Gulf, from Mexico , or maybe they just move around most of the year in the deep water and only come in close to spawn in the spring. We won't know the answer until somebody starts a tagging program."

The abundance of fresh water flowing into the Gulf at this spot might account for part of the answer. The tarpon is a highly euryhaline fish—one that can survive in a wide range of waters, from near stagnant to nearly 100% fresh. A primitive animal whose closest relative is the oxeye herring of the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean , it ranges both sides of the Atlantic, from Cape Hatteras to Brazil on the west and from Senegal to the Congo on the east. Tarpon have showed up as far north as Nova Scotia , but their numbers are greatest in the estuaries and offshore passes of Central America and Florida . They come inshore to spawn in the late spring, usually in shallow brackish water, but sometimes in fresh. Homosassa Springs, a short boat ride upstream from Godzilla's hangout, pumps six million gallons of crystalline sweet water into the Gulf every hour. Dip your hand into the sea miles from shore and you can scarcely taste the salt.