Hanna’s First Tripletail
We went down to Islamorada hoping to catch tarpon and expecting to have some shots at other species like snook and redfish. As it turned out, our intrepid group of six anglers ended up catching __ species of fish, including the ones mentioned above, plus permit, various types of sharks, and other finned biters.
One species that I didn’t know much about beforehand but which turned out to be among the most enjoyable was the tripletail. They’re shaped like an oversized bluegill, almost as tall as they are long, with fins that (as the name would suggest) form a three-part tail section. They also have little beady eyes which mean that they don’t see particularly well.
Most importantly for our purposes, individuals tend to hang around floating or vertical objects, like lobster pots, buoys and channel markers. Once you spot one, you have to time the current properly to drift a bait precisely in front of one’s face to get him to bite. On our second day of fishing we were headed through a secondary channel to a distant island when Captain Mark Cockerham suddenly swung the boat around in a circle and headed back to a channel marker, where a tripletail was waiting for me. I rigged up a shrimp a small distance behind a cork, drifted it precisely in front of his face, and caught my first one. It wasn’t 18”, the minimum size to keep, so we returned it to its lair.
Hanna’s opportunity came the next day in the exact same location. She missed her first chance when the drift went awry. Her fish was spookier so she rigged the shrimp without a cork and as it drifted by the vertical pole her line went taut. She counted to three, set on him, and then engaged in a struggle to free the fish from barnacle-encrusted marker. There was no doubt that this one would keep – it was a 21-plus inch “slob,” per Mark’s description.
Here's how Hanna described the experience:
Besides the fact that it’s exceptionally fun to sight fish them, an added bonus is that tripletail are really good eating. On Day Two, our three captains filleted a mess of fish for us, including tripletail, mangrove snapper and grouper, and we took them to local restaurant Wahoo’s for dinner. They served them three ways – fried, blackened and grilled – and we stuffed ourselves, but left room for Key Lime Pie.
