Latest / The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 88: Tarpon Town Magic: Fishing, Friends and Firsts

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S6, Ep 88: Tarpon Town Magic: Fishing, Friends and Firsts · The Articulate Fly

• 0:03
  Marvin: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly,
• 0:06
  Marvin: and we're back with an exotic on the salt with Captain David Blinken and special
• 0:10
  Marvin: guest Steve Ramirez. David, how are you?
• 0:13
  David: I'm great. We're down here in Piche, Mexico at Tarpon Town, and I'm here with
• 0:21
  David: Steve and got to watch him experience his first tarpon yesterday on the fly.
• 0:27
  Marvin: Yeah, that's pretty fantastic. I saw the picture on Instagram,
• 0:30
  Marvin: Steve, of you kissing the fish before you let it go back.
• 0:34
  Steve: Well, you know, I always thank them. But here at Tarpontown,
• 0:37
  Steve: they wanted me to kiss it too. So I was happy to oblige.
• 0:41
  Marvin: A little bit of extra love. So, David, talk a little bit about the kind of for
• 0:45
  Marvin: folks that haven't been following this kind of, you know, what to expect when
• 0:48
  Marvin: you come to Tarpontown and what you've seen today in terms of conditions and
• 0:51
  Marvin: what you expect kind of for the rest of your time down there.
• 0:54
  David: Well, in terms of conditions, it's perfect tarpon weather.
• 0:58
  David: It's hot, it's humid, low wind in the morning with a little wind picking up in the afternoon.
• 1:04
  David: We have a high falling tide all day.
• 1:09
  David: And we've got a lot of fish cruising as they do in the summer.
• 1:14
  Marvin: That's pretty neat. And have you had to pour cold water on anybody to get them
• 1:17
  Marvin: out of bed first thing in the morning before the sun comes up?
• 1:20
  David: No, but we've had to pour cold water on ourselves while we're out fishing.
• 1:25
  Marvin: Fair enough. And, you know, Steve, it's interesting before we started recording,
• 1:28
  Marvin: you know, you know, we've been lucky enough to do a couple of interviews together.
• 1:32
  Marvin: And, you know, I know for you, you travel to these destinations and you fish
• 1:36
  Marvin: with fishing friends and miraculously these things become chapters and books or essays.
• 1:41
  Marvin: And so I thought it'd be interesting for folks to kind of understand,
• 1:43
  Marvin: you know, what it is for lack of a better word, when you're on assignment,
• 1:46
  Marvin: you know, are you taking notes? Do you write at night before you go to bed?
• 1:50
  Marvin: Do you just wait until you get home? But I thought we could give folks a little
• 1:52
  Marvin: bit of an insight into that.
• 1:53
  Steve: Sure that's great so i
• 1:56
  Steve: actually uh everywhere i travel i carry these
• 1:59
  Steve: little waterproof notebooks um and when i buy them at rei one of the guys actually
• 2:06
  Steve: asked me do you actually write into rain and i said yeah i actually do all the
• 2:09
  Steve: time so uh so i do take notes not always when i'm right there doing it but sometimes
• 2:16
  Steve: i'll just sit on a rock and start writing.
• 2:18
  Steve: And I also take a lot of photographs that I'm not going to keep,
• 2:22
  Steve: you know, photo of flowers or growing out of a log or whatever.
• 2:26
  Steve: Something strikes me, the clouds, to remind me.
• 2:31
  Steve: So I take my notes and actually just before we got on here, I was taking notes
• 2:35
  Steve: about my day today, which was a solo with Roberto. And.
• 2:42
  Steve: Saw we're seeing easily i saw 100 tarpon each day easily probably more and getting
• 2:50
  Steve: a lot of calf and bringing some to the boat so that's pretty good uh so i'll take those notes,
• 2:59
  Steve: but then the other thing i do is very organic so
• 3:02
  Steve: i'm writing a fifth book which is the start of a new
• 3:04
  Steve: series for lions press this will be part of it it's
• 3:08
  Steve: also going to show up in a different formatted fly fisherman magazine
• 3:11
  Steve: but the way i write i'm able to kind of place myself back where i was and relive
• 3:17
  Steve: it and i never know what a chapter is going to be until i start creating it
• 3:23
  Steve: it's almost like it's being funneled through me as silly as that may sound it just flows,
• 3:29
  Steve: and to this i'm out on the water today and i was thinking hmm what would this
• 3:35
  Steve: one be like Like, I was trying to decide whether I was going to name it in Spanish or English.
• 3:40
  Steve: So I'll get thoughts, and I'll write down things that have nothing to do with
• 3:45
  Steve: fishing, as you know, Marvin.
• 3:47
  Steve: Like seeing yellow butterflies going across the ocean.
• 3:50
  Steve: It makes me think of something. Or hearing parrots and then seeing them in the trees.
• 3:56
  Steve: I know people have told me when they read my writing that they love that,
• 4:00
  Steve: that they feel like they're there.
• 4:02
  Steve: And that's how I do it. But I actually go, I'm able to go back there in my mind
• 4:06
  Steve: and write it with as much passion and depth and description as I can.
• 4:11
  David: I can tell you this. Last night at dinner, Steve was reliving a lot of yesterday.
• 4:19
  David: Watching the fish for the first time, seeing them in the air.
• 4:23
  David: I think if it wasn't a night, it would have been, it would have been a nightmare
• 4:27
  David: had Steve not landed one.
• 4:31
  Steve: Yes, quite a challenge.
• 4:33
  Marvin: And so, Steve, it's interesting. So, you know, I know obviously you don't travel every single day.
• 4:38
  Marvin: So do you generally, you know, have a really good rough draft of that chapter
• 4:44
  Marvin: from that experience before you go to the next one? Or do you sometimes have to?
• 4:47
  Steve: No, I haven't. I know exactly. Well, I know roughly how the book will lay out
• 4:52
  Steve: because I've created it in my mind.
• 4:55
  Steve: And so I know the places I'm trying to go to because I know what the book needs to say.
• 5:01
  Steve: I mean, it is a lot of fishing stories that are interesting.
• 5:04
  Steve: So this one's going to have Portugal and Mexico and maybe something in Central
• 5:09
  Steve: America and definitely the Amazon and then end up in Patagonia.
• 5:16
  Steve: I know what I'm trying to say, but I don't know what's going to happen until I arrive at a place.
• 5:22
  Marvin: Got it. So, you know, the general arc is you're going.
• 5:25
  Marvin: And so, David, you know, you and I have talked and I've met Raul with you in Edison.
• 5:29
  Marvin: You want to let folks know. I know you regularly visit Raul multiple times a year.
• 5:33
  Marvin: You want to tell them a little bit about kind of how the fishing varies over
• 5:37
  Marvin: the seasons and kind of what people can expect if they come with you or if they
• 5:40
  Marvin: come on their own to Tarpontown?
• 5:43
  David: Absolutely. And in fact, there's two distinct seasons.
• 5:49
  David: There's the spring, summer, early fall, where you can get lots of fish numbers.
• 5:55
  David: Numbers but November through April you
• 5:59
  David: have the chance of getting bigger fish maybe not
• 6:03
  David: as many but certainly bigger and I'll give you an idea of size like today we
• 6:08
  David: were catching fish between five and like 20 pounds but in the other season you
• 6:16
  David: can certainly expect to catch fish in excess of 25,
• 6:21
  David: 30 pounds up to like 50, 60.
• 6:25
  David: It's not a regular thing, but they're around that time of year.
• 6:31
  David: So we tend to bring eight through 10 weights is the range of rods.
• 6:37
  Marvin: Got it. And so if I remember correctly, you guys have two more days of fishing.
• 6:41
  Marvin: Is that right? And then you fly home on Wednesday?
• 6:43
  David: Well, I have two more days. Steve has one more day because he's going up to
• 6:48
  David: the Mayan ruins tomorrow. and checking things out in the upcountry.
• 6:52
  Steve: As you know Marvin it's not all about fishing for me hmm so tomorrow role and
• 7:01
  Steve: I are gonna be doing some exploring and I'm gonna see the history of the landscape
• 7:06
  Steve: of his home and I can tell you I've only been here two days and,
• 7:12
  Steve: I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. There's no way I would come down here
• 7:15
  Steve: and fish and not do it here with Raul and Turpentine. There's no way.
• 7:20
  David: It's funny. It's funny. I've been to the Mayan ruins once by choice,
• 7:25
  David: but three other times because we got blown out.
• 7:29
  David: And it's not an everyday thing. When you come in the winter,
• 7:32
  David: you come for five days, you expect to lose one because when cold fronts come
• 7:37
  David: down out of the north, you just can't fish.
• 7:41
  David: So you know we'll go to the Mayan ruins go to art galleries great restaurants
• 7:47
  David: so you have a lot of things you can do here but in that in that winter season
• 7:53
  David: you kind of have that expectation,
• 7:56
  David: it probably happens one set of every four trips but you got to be ready for it well.
• 8:03
  Marvin: I hope you both of you have an uneventful trip back on Wednesday I was lucky
• 8:08
  Marvin: enough to make it out of to dodge when I cast when the crowd flare problem happened.
• 8:12
  Marvin: So I think I've probably used up all of my travel mojo for 2024.
• 8:19
  Marvin: But also too, you know, we're on the countdown. And so in less than a month,
• 8:23
  Marvin: Steve, your final book of the casting series will be out, Casting Homeward.
• 8:27
  Marvin: I know people can pre-order that on Amazon. I will drop a link in the show notes to that for folks.
• 8:33
  Marvin: And also drop a link, David, to Tarpon Town as well.
• 8:36
  Marvin: And, you know, folks, we love questions on the Articulate Fly.
• 8:39
  Marvin: You can email them to us or DM us on social media, whatever is easiest for you.
• 8:43
  Marvin: And as I always say, we need to make David's life easy, so just send them to
• 8:46
  Marvin: me. Don't send them to David.
• 8:47
  Marvin: And if we use your question, I will send you some Articulate Fly swag.
• 8:50
  Marvin: And we're here in a drawing for a Royal Wolf line of your choice.
• 8:53
  Marvin: And David and I, I wouldn't say we're smitten with Royal Wolf lines, but we do like them.
• 8:57
  Marvin: And I don't fish the tropical saltwater ones, but I definitely fish the triangle tapers.
• 9:03
  Marvin: And they're great lines. So send us your questions. and as I always say,
• 9:08
  Marvin: folks, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few.
• 9:10
  Marvin: Tight lines, everybody.