Totally unexpected: Tarpon in the Chesapeake Bay

My latest column (here’s a gift link) describes things we didn’t expect to see or things we didn’t see coming, and tarpon in the Chesapeake Bay is one of them.

Several tarpon have been spotted this month in the Bay. Tarpon are large, silvery fish associated with tropical waters; they are popular targets for sport anglers in Florida. While they have occasionally been seen in Virginia waters at the ocean, in the Maryland part of the Chesapeake they are rare. The state has records of only four tarpon being caught in the upper bay since the 1880s.

Capt. Tom Weaver, a veteran fishing guide, reported seeing several of them last week near Hoopers Island Lighthouse in the middle of the bay. He estimated them to be six-footers between 80 and 100 pounds each. Weaver said “my brain took a few minutes to process” seeing in the Chesapeake a fish he had previously only seen when guiding clients in the Florida Keys.

“It happened to be a slick, calm day,” he told me this morning. “And you usually can’t get anywhere near them. But this time they were laid up in a group, about 200 yards away, and I saw a [fish] roll. My brain said, ‘That’s a tarpon,’ but I’m like there’s no way that’s a tarpon. We thought it was a cobia. We kind of cruised up as gently as we could, and I cut my engine and I actually drifted right on top of them. They’re sitting right under the bow of my boat. . . . I’m like, wow, they’re not moving. They weren’t spooked, which was unusual because normally they’d be spooked by the boat. We had nothing on the boat that we would normally cast at a tarpon. So I dug through my tackle box and found some smaller stuff that might be appropriate. And then we found them four more times, and twice we got a bite out of them, a swipe that didn’t stick, which is not unusual, they’re very hard to hook.”

There is no photograph on record of a tarpon hooked by an angler in Maryland waters. 

Notes the Department of Natural Resources:  “Water temperatures have risen in the Chesapeake Bay in recent decades, and climate change is affecting Maryland’s biodiversity. A number of warm-water fish species—from Florida pompano to cobia, cutlassfish, and pompano dolphinfish—are becoming more common in the Bay and the Atlantic coast.

“Warming waters could be drawing tarpon farther north, or they could be traveling farther in pursuit of food sources like menhaden and shrimp. It could also be a larger northern migration this year. A surfcaster in Rhode Island caught a tarpon this summer.

“Water temperatures have increased in the Chesapeake Bay over the last three decades, with most DNR monitoring stations showing an increase between 1 and 2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1999. This summer has been hot as well, with monitoring stations recording above average temperatures near Hoopers Island.”