By the ripe age of 11, Kyle Wrenn had posted over 100 tarpon releases--one of which was this monster on the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers.

The Caloosahatchee River is as storied as any in the annals of tarpon fishing. In fact, the river’s mouth was the site credited with one of the great turning points in angling history—the place where the first tarpon was taken on rod and reel, in 1885.

Less than three decades later the Caloosahatchee’s mid-reaches were featured in the first and, some would say greatest ever tarpon treatise, A.W. Dimock’s The Book of the Tarpon.

Today the Caloosahatchee only faintly resembles the meandering stream that once began in a waterfall at Lake Flirt—long since dynamited by pioneer dredger Hamilton Disston. Disston thereby connected the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Okeechobee via the river of the Calusa. His dredge work was greatly expanded by the world’s greatest plumbing firm, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which with the South Florida Water Management District has denuded the river bottom of every oyster and blade of grass it once fostered, through devastating freshwater releases from The Lake.

Even so, the Caloosahatchee just keeps rolling along as a tarpon fishery—arguably the most consistent tarpon hole in Lee County, which counts among its destinations the waters off Sanibel Island, Charlotte Harbor and world famous Boca Grande Pass. One tarpon attractor those spots don’t have is the Florida Power & Light plant that keeps the river just downstream of the Orange River outflow, at the point where Interstate 75 crosses the Caloosahatchee, a steamy 10 to 12 degrees warmer than the ambient water temperature. Like other old-fashioned plants with no recirculating cooling pond system, the Fort Myers operation is famous for attracting manatees by the hundreds. But manatees aren’t the only critters that avoid migrating to more southerly waters by hanging out in the Caloosahatchee.

At the peak of winter weather a boater on the river might be surprised to see, by some unseen command, several hundred tarpon roll up all at the same time for a breath of frosty air. The fish that do that trick are mostly juvies—tarpon of less than 40 pounds or so—but their mamas and papas also overwinter in the power plant effluent, if not so conspicuously. And it is those fish that provide what likely is the surest shot at a tarpon a spring angler can hope to take.

Those who would argue are not among the members of the Cape Coral Tarpon Hunters club, largest in the county. Many of its members get a jump on the annual club contest to see who can catch the most ’poons in a season by focusing on resident river fish, before the arrival of migrant tarpon coming up the Gulf shore from the Keys. And lately, all have been humbled by Kyle Wrenn, who won the Cape Angler-of-the-Year contest at age 11, largely by employing the river strategy.

In the 2003 season Kyle rolled well past the century mark in lifetime tarpon releases, a quest that earned the Skyline Elementary student status as a club master angler. That is a milestone not yet reached by Kyle’s dad, Mike, although that’s due more than anything to the traditional interpretation of angling that says credit for a catch goes to the fisherman wielding the rod. Mike Wrenn does everything but, and is a true master of river tarpon fishing.

Thus last May 1 was truly a Mayday day for the local tarpon population, when Kyle and Mike rolled out of their home Cape canal and motored little more than a mile upstream toward the Midpoint Memorial Bridge. Kyle already had two dozen notches in his rod(s) for the season, although he was in a temporary slump. Only days before he had gone 0-for-7 on tarpon hookups without getting a fish to the boat, and the lad’s disposition clearly did not bode well for any tarpon that dared pick up his baits this day.

Mike pulled the boat off plane as it glided into a marked channel running between the Okeechobee Waterway and channels coming off the Cape shoreline. Even at first light, one boat already was fishing at a channel intersection, but Mike preferred idling up a shoreline channel—actually a dredge hole parallel to the river bank—closer to the bridge. On the way to his spot, the black glints of tarpon backs breaking through the onyx surface made dropping anchor anywhere a serious temptation.

Mike finally shut down in 20 feet of water near the channel’s edge, about 100 yards upstream from a channel marker. The winds were light, so he put out only 30 feet of scope in order to give boat-circling fish as little rope as possible with which to hang themselves up.

One thing that makes deep holes along the Caloosahatchee shorelines especially attractive to tarpon are continuous 1⁄4-mile manatee buffer zones in which boats travel no faster than slow speed. That minimizes traffic from boaters who have no patience with such restrictions, and it virtually eliminates panicky flight by the tarpon as boats idle past.

With tarpon rolling all around, Wrenn wasted no time preparing and putting out baits, one at a time on 7- and 8-foot rods with 60-pound mono spooled on 4/0 reels. In fact, many anglers might choose to add a little time to Wrenn’s routine, which is expedited by reaching into a livewell boiling with live hardhead catfish, and grabbing them barehanded before quickly halving them on the adjacent cutting board. Wrenn is careful when grabbing cats to take them into his hand head-first, with his thumb and forefinger clasped around the pectoral spines, and the dorsal spine positioned harmlessly between them. It is worth noting that catfish spines are covered by a venomous sheath that inflicts severe pain and can cause serious infections. An alternative handling method is to catch a live cat in a dip net and grasp it by the roof of the mouth with pliers.

In neither case is it necessary to debarb the cat, which only injures and sometimes leads to fatal handling of the bait. Because Wrenn believes absolutely fresh cats are one of the keys to his success, and because he likes to catch them the evening before he goes fishing, he puts them in the livewell with no more handling or other trauma than necessary.

Wrenn preps his tarpon baits by cutting off a cat’s head with a slice angled slightly forward, from just behind the dorsal spine, down to the pectorals. Subsequently trimming off the tailfin lobes keeps the bait from spinning and reduces resistance when retrieving, besides making the tail resemble a tarpon ice cream cone. The cone topping in spring often is a gob of gelatinous eggs that Wrenn believes makes a bait particularly appealing. The heads, also oozing eggs, are put on ice for use if tails end up in short supply. They are good baits—not so castable as tails, with a tendency to float if the air bladder isn’t popped, but good enough. Again, no debarbing is necessary, as long as the heads are carefully handled. The tarpon just don’t care.