Messing With the Tarpon is a South Florida Tradition

Tarpons are huge. They congregate around any fishing dock waiting for anglers to come back and clean their fish. Guts, heads and other undesirable parts of the catch are carved off and tossed into the waters to allow the tarpons and occasional pelican to fight for the scraps. Some can grow as big as six feet, and if they jump under a dock while you are standing on it, they can sometimes knock you off your feet. Here’s Billy playing with the tarpon the way rednecks do it.

Note how after the tarpon first latches on, Billy hooks his other arm through the gill slit using himself as a human gaff hook to pull the animal onto the dock. And yes, those things have teeth, and it looks like Billy was already bleeding before he caught this huge beast.