Russell Kleppinger: 814 Tarpon in One Year and the Science of Tarpon Vision

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 78 with Russell Kleppinger.

Russell Kleppinger: Scientists tell me that approximately, like, to break it down, they see 5,000 times better than our eyesight on average. When a tarpon is born, it has rods when it's a little tiny fry. Those rods are like night vision, like black and white, like a flare, basically. As it starts to develop, he starts developing cones. We have three. Three allows us to see the colors that we know. When he develops, he has five. So he has night vision plus color vision that in the light sample studies, they've proven some things that blow my mind. And they tell people this and the customer, like, really? And then you explain to them. They can tell us apart. They can facially recognize humans and tell them apart, and they can see ultraviolet light penetrating the water. Like a dog whistle we can't hear, we can't see their rainbow of colors. It's so much more diverse than anything we could our eyes could perceive. I tell people it's like the predator mask. I'm Russell Kleppinger, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: Today, we've got a mad scientist, crazy man. His name is Russell Kleppinger. And Russell is fish Russ on Instagram, at fish Russ. And I got interested in wanting to talk to him because he put a post up and he said he had caught his eight hundred and fourteenth tarpon of the year. So I don't know if everybody knows a lot about tarpon. I know enough about tarpon to realize that 814 of them is a whole lot. And if this guy is catching 814 tarpon in a year, not jumping, not seeing, he caught eight fourteen tarpon, so he's doing something different than other people I want to find out what that is so I'm asking some questions and it leads to a very interesting conversation with Russ And, really, really enjoyed it. I hope you will too. Stand by because you're gonna learn how a tarpon is the superhero of fish. Alright. Russ. Yes, sir. Super glad that that that we could make time to do this. Absolutely. You are the tarpon king.

Russell Kleppinger: I don't think so, but I

Tom Rowland: I I don't know. Tell me, the reason that, I've initially reached out to you is because I follow most everybody on Instagram and follow you on Instagram. And I'm reading this post, and it says this is the eight hundred and fourteenth tarpon of the year, I think. Is that the right number? 08/2014. Correct. So in 2000, '18 Correct. Landed 814 tarpon.

Russell Kleppinger: In about seven months.

Tom Rowland: That's pretty incredible. I mean, I don't know. Good year. Well, that's that's a that's a very good year, but there aren't a lot of places that could sustain that. Like, for example, you could you could catch a lot of fish in Key West Harbor, but the the the season doesn't last as long. So you're fishing where? Mostly government cut?

Following the Migration: 814 Tarpon in Seven Months

Russell Kleppinger: Well, I move with the fish. Okay. So that's why I can catch more because most people live in the location and fish the location. I have a condo right here in North Miami, and I can fish Lauderdale, Miami, Key Biscayne. And when the fish leave, I have my little fish shack down in Islamorada, and I go down there, and then I follow the migration. I fish Islamorada, Then I work my way down, you know, Long Key, right in your neck of the where's Duck Key, and then I'll jump to the Bahia Honda. Key West is just too far of a drive for charters, but, you know, I'm very flexible. On clients, it's tough. It's difficult because, like, what time do we meet? Where? I'm like, I just just show up here, and we'll see what the weather does and Right.

Tom Rowland: Where we're gonna meet at, which ramp we're gonna fish from. And so how does this how do how do you get to the to the place where you have you have your place here, and you're in Miami, and you're moving with the fish all over the place? How does that happen? Probably from a very young age, I'm imagining.

Russell Kleppinger: No. I mean, just fishing for a living for twenty six years. You know? It's just I've been I used to rent in The Keys, and then I bought that place, like, four years ago when it was in foreclosure. I found a little conch shack down there, you know, instead of staying with friends or renting a place for the season. But that's a new it's going on five years now, new acquisition, having an actual home in The Keys. You know? Right. I'm 46. It's like it's not cheap. It takes a long time for a fisherman to save that kind of money.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It sure does.

Russell Kleppinger: To swing two places. You know?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But you're obviously working a ton to catch 814 tarpon. You gotta be I try. Days did you do last year?

Russell Kleppinger: People ask me. I have no idea. I don't know.

Tom Rowland: People used to ask me, can I fish with you on Saturday? I'm like, I don't. What day is that? How many day? I don't even know what day

Russell Kleppinger: is this. You text me. Like, call me back on Sunday. I'm like, tomorrow, I'll be back.

Tom Rowland: Well, no. Actually, what you said

Russell Kleppinger: That's something.

Tom Rowland: And and I text you back

Russell Kleppinger: the way I texted

Tom Rowland: you today. Tomorrow. Yeah. You you said, well, no. That's not gonna work because I'm not coming back till Sunday. And I thought about it for a second, and I thought, this guy fishes it a lot. Like, he probably doesn't know what day of the week it is. I'm like, well well, tomorrow is Sunday.

Russell Kleppinger: Sounds like my bad.

Tom Rowland: No. That just that just was perfect because that's just I I just my it used to drive my wife crazy, but I I would never know what day it was. I would go by the date. Like, I'm fishing you on the eighteenth. I'm fishing you on the nineteenth.

Russell Kleppinger: Not a Monday through Friday job.

From Fish Market to Full-Time Guide

Tom Rowland: Right. It's not. So how did it start for you to become a professional fisherman?

Russell Kleppinger: My dad had a boat. I fished with, you know, my family from birth. And, Where where did you grow up? Right here. I was born, like, ten minutes away from here. K. And, grew up here and grew up a lot in The Bahamas and in The Keys and, you know, with the with the family just moving around fishing. And my dad was not a very good fisherman, but, you know, he enjoyed it. We had a boat. We had fun. My brother was more hardcore into it, and he kinda got me into it more. But I just always loved it. When I was a kid, I got a job at a restaurant here that my dad's friend owned, and I was cutting fish at the fish market. One of my buddies who worked there, he needed a a vacation. He was gonna go home for Christmas. So they said, hey. Can you come in next week and cut fish? And, like, three years later, I quit when one of my dad's friends had a sport fish boat, and I went to The Bahamas traveling as a mate. And then I just started in, you know, mating and traveling, and I was like, I stayed on that job six years. My first sport fish boat, we went from Maine to Venezuela several times and just mostly billfished, you know, and bluefin tunas and the elephants up north and just traveled. And then from there, I just started running boats and spent a lot of years, you know, blue marlin fishing. And then when the economy downturned in o eight, the job I had right here locally would just sit at the dock and go nuts, you know, cleaning a boat. Right. So I was like, well, I used to have a little charter business as a kid. I was like, I'm a start it back up so I can do something to keep my, you know, keep my passion going because, you know, I'm sitting here cleaning a boat all day long, cleaning bilges. It's like, I'm gonna kill myself. I gotta go fishing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, but that that's where a lot of, of people kind of end up. And I it's interesting with the economy like that. I never really thought about that. That people still have the money to own the boat, still have the money to maintain the boat, but the big trips from from Maine to Venezuela or something like that are not in the cards

Russell Kleppinger: this year. And he wanted to travel and do more stuff, but he was busy as a doctor, the last guy that, you know, that that job I had full time. And it just, I would just started, you know, doing back you know, fishing at night here because I'd work in the day, and then I come home. And at lunch, I go grab my shrimp. And then at night, I'd take off, and I go tarpon fishing. Mhmm. And and my old clients were fishing with me again and stuff like that, and, it just kinda progressed. And, like, that's when social media was just kinda starting back then and you know? What role did that play? Did that help you to regain your your your customers and and establish some new customers? Or A lot of new. I mean, because it's a whole new marketing avenue. Right. You know, my old customers would still call me on my telephone, but, you know, I mean, I've never had a website in twenty six years.

Tom Rowland: Yeah?

Russell Kleppinger: I've never used a website. It's all been word-of-mouth or referrals or stuff like that.

Websites, Social Media, and How Guiding Has Changed

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, today, I I mean, I think that social media trumps websites as far as as driving business, I would imagine. I was lucky enough, and I don't know why, but I had one of the first websites of any fishing guide in the Florida Keys. And it's very strange story because in high school, I was terrified of computer class. I didn't wanna go there. The the guy got all mad because I flipped the the door on the floppy drive too hard and broke it one time. And these things were not I mean, it wasn't like you could go down to Best Buy and get another one. Like, these things were you ordered them, and it was like in the movie War Games where you took the phone and you put it you put it on this physical

Russell Kleppinger: Right.

Tom Rowland: I just

Russell Kleppinger: have an email machine like that in The Bahamas that hold hold the telephone and get

Tom Rowland: my emails. Machine. That's funny. But for whatever reason, I decided that I wanted to get a computer. And what I what I wanted to do is I I thought I could I thought I could keep a journal better like that because I wasn't I didn't I hadn't developed a habit of writing longhand. And I tried many times to write down what I had done. And then I somehow I thought, well, maybe if I did it like this, then I could somehow search it. And so that was the reason I got my first computer, which was a a little Apple laptop. And then I start you know, modems are becoming available, and I I got online. And what I found online was this fishing forum, and it was called FBN, Fishing Broadcast Network, and it was on by the by AOL. So it was yeah. That's that's dates it right there that it was an AOL product. But you could get on there, and you could talk, and people would ask questions. And and so I would go on there as a guide, and people would ask all these questions. Man, I started booking trips, like, a bunch of trips. And so then I thought people are like, you need a website. Like, what's a website? You know? And this was I didn't even know anyone who did it. And, so I somehow came across somebody maybe on that fishing forum, but this guy was in Canada, and he built my website for me. And, I mean, it just the way you know, now you can go on. You can build website.

Russell Kleppinger: Your phone is everything.

Tom Rowland: I know.

Russell Kleppinger: I mean, I used to that thing I started with was called pocket mail, and you'd, like, type out a message and open it up and hold it to the telephone and push it. It just go and sit there and send emails in The Bahamas on, you know, on a pay phone.

Tom Rowland: And Yeah. Yeah. It has really changed. I I've seen I've seen a lot of changes with social media. Like, used to be the, you know, the guy that was working the most and and, you know, the first to the ramp and the last to leave, that was the guy that people referred business to. And, you know, if you checked your messages too quickly, people knew you weren't fishing. And boy, has it changed now. I mean, it's it's so instantaneous. But you do a really good job on your on your Instagram, and I and I'm there all the time. And sometimes, it's during the worst weather. Like, for instance, just recently, the weather dropped. I mean, I mean, the temperature dropped a significant drop. It was, I don't know, it was 62 in Key West. I don't know what it was up here in Miami. But so I'm looking and scrolling through the Instagram, and damn if you don't catch them that night too. So what is it about government cut? I've never fished there, and I really wanna fish with you there one day. What is it about this government cut that is such a tarpon factory?

Why Miami and Government Cut Stay Warm

Russell Kleppinger: So I have a theory. I've been working a lot with scientists and learning things and speaking and, you know, satellite tagging fish and tracking them and learning different things. And, you know, depending on global warming and all that kind of stuff, but in general, Miami has something that's super special. And on the Atlantic Coast, billfish at least. Right? Generally, we have the the support here of infrastructure. So when you leave Biscayne Bay, there's a lot of grass out there and shrimps. Right? They're still alive. So you have food. Okay? And when it's cold and it blows and blows west at, you know, 30 out of the West, the temperatures are in 40 degree range, and my nose is running, I'm freezing to death, and I'm catching tarpon. It's insane to think about that when it's 40 degrees out and be airing out, you know, five, ten tarpon in a trip in a four hour because that's even when it's better fishing. And that's the craziest part. If you look at the topography of The Keys, and you come out of Duck Key, you come out of Key West, how far is it to the edge of the reef? Seven miles,

Tom Rowland: six miles, three maybe even four miles. Now what

Russell Kleppinger: happens at the reef? Warm water. Uh-huh. Okay? And as you come north up that reef line and you have the Gulf water, which gets cold and shallow, when you get to, like, Ocean Reef, it start to slowly tear through. When you hit Fowey is the first time it changes. And at Fowey, it comes into Key Biscayne, and that reef line stops, that barrier reef. Now the currents with the east wind can blow in closer. Right? Mhmm. So from Key Biscayne in Miami area, you get the warmer waters that come in towards your beaches. They're not six miles out. Mhmm. Okay. Now those fish have a consistent temperature. It can get freezing cold, and alls they're gonna do, like the red fish in the creeks, they just consolidate.

Tom Rowland: All up. Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: So when you're down south in The Keys and people say, oh, The Keys. Yay. I have a house here. I'm not fishing there.

Tom Rowland: Not this time of the year.

Russell Kleppinger: No. And the reason's because it's cold, and that cold water has so much inconsistencies. But here and, of course, you know, the whole Florida's having water troubles, but it's still the fish come here because the water temperature stays consistent temperatures. If it gets retarded cold, look out the window. They're gonna move out a 100 yards. That's all they gotta do.

Tom Rowland: Really? And so were you taking temperatures? Like, say say, for instance, you're getting temperatures that drop in the keys. You're you're reading water temperatures. And are you reading water temperatures on your boat, on your GPS, or whatever you're using that are significantly higher than what you're hearing other people are getting? Of course. I mean but not just like I mean, that's just what happened. In that government cut area, for sure, it is just always warmer for the reasons that you just told me.

Russell Kleppinger: From, basically, from Key Biscayne to, like, Sebastian.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: Right? And now now Jupiter is where it changes. Because Jupiter like, when you sailfish, south of Jupiter's live baiters, north of its trawlers. Right? That's where your your water moves offshore. Right? And that's where the the drop off gets further. But Jupiter, to keep its cane, you got a real tight drop off close to the beach. Right? So you got consistent temperatures. But when a cold front comes, it gets a lot colder in Jupiter. Than it does in Miami. Mhmm. So the colder the winter, the more it shoves them down and piles them up here. Wow. But now if you look at Lauderdale, there's canals. There's no seagrass. There's not really any food. You know? I hear the guys up in, like, Sebastian have a good tarpon fishery and the Fort Pierce guys have, but as soon as that what temperature drops Yeah. They gotta come to me. Yeah. So then you have a situation here where and the most retarded weather to ever tarp and fish in, you have warm water coming in from the Gulf Stream current because our reef line is so close. And if the bay gets freezing cold, they just push in the inlet or offshore, you know, a couple 100 yards and come back in. It's so close. It's not seven miles to reef in Key West. You know, if you fish some of the places in The Keys in the spring and the weather gets terrible and it's filthy water, what do they do? They disappear. Mhmm. They go to the divers, see them on the reef line all the time. The minute the weather breaks, boom, they're right back in. That's a seven mile run. Here, it's a couple 100 yards.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. They seem ex also, like, even between even between Long Key because my partner, Rich, has this theory, and he's seen it in action many, many times. But for me in Key West, if the wind clocked to the north, the tarpon it was death to the tarpon. West was even worse, but a north wind was really, really bad. Rich at Long Key Bridge says no. At when it clocks north, they eat shrimp all night long. And he's gone out there and seen it, and that seems like what's going

Russell Kleppinger: I I thought that's what

Tom Rowland: was going on up here

Russell Kleppinger: with you. Same thing to a certain temperature.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: And then they're like, okay. I gotta bug out, and they jump to the reef line. But, you know, what I what I understand is that that gulf body of fish sits offshore out there, and some filter into the Everglades. You know? And then when the temperature drop, they rush back out. And then as the barometer stabilizes, they trickle back in, and there's a lot of movement. Mhmm. You know? The movement here is very minimal

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: Because the temperature's consistent. What happens when it gets cold and blows? Shrimp run. Mhmm. The terrible weather causes the food to move.

Tom Rowland: Right. And then you're where the tarpon are.

Russell Kleppinger: So there you go. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: You know

Russell Kleppinger: what I mean?

Counting the Numbers: Landing Ratios and Circle Hooks

Tom Rowland: Well, 814 tarpon. Now when you count those numbers, those are to the boat? Or

Russell Kleppinger: released. Yes.

Tom Rowland: That's released.

Russell Kleppinger: That's not jumped. That's not hooked. That's

Tom Rowland: So you must That's

Russell Kleppinger: to the leader.

Tom Rowland: I mean, that's very interesting. Because one of the questions I was gonna ask you is, what is what is catching 814 tarpon teach you in a year? Because, obviously, you're doing you've got some stuff dialed in, like, you know, your hook, your leader. Everything is dialed in to where you're landing a probably a fairly high percentage of of fish that you're hooking.

Russell Kleppinger: It depends on their size and their and the and the angle of the tide. If you're the fish under, like, 30 pounds, you you're, in my in my case, my my opinion is that your landing ratio is much lower. You know? The 30 to 50 is so so. Once they get fifty, seventy plus, I believe it goes way up. Mhmm.

Tom Rowland: I have my theories on that. Why do you think it is?

Russell Kleppinger: I think it's like a dog and a cat. You put a string on a cat, and he's backflipping and going nuts. You put a string on a dog, and it looks like, hey. What's up? When the rod bends over slow and just the circle hook has time to do its thing, everything goes properly. When that little bugger closes his lips, he's this ain't right, and he's doing backflips in the air before anything even has time to take a set. It's just tough. Mhmm. You know? The little ones are just they're in the air so fast. They don't just turn and make a run that things don't have time to work properly. Mhmm. You know?

Tom Rowland: And then there's no weight too. I mean, you know, reeling down on a fish and putting a circle hook in a 100 pound fish is is is an easier thing to do when that as that fish moves slower like you're talking about, but also there's physical weight there. Right. So you're pulling that hook into something that is not not just turning directly to you. To you.

Russell Kleppinger: And then when it's not there's a mouth closed and flying through, you're shaking his head at you. You know? And then it also depends on the angle. You know? Like, I learned bill fishing. It's so important is the angles with circle hooks, and then I took that with tarpon.

Working the Angles

Tom Rowland: The angles being where you what do you mean by that?

Russell Kleppinger: So, for example, if I'm drifting a bait down like, if I'm anchored, I'm drifting a bait down current and, you know, he the fish is facing me. He eats it. He's facing me. When he opens his mouth, like, worst situation. Right? If I'm drifting and and I'm, say, the the current's pushing north, for example, or, you know, pushing and I'm drifting a bay, for example, and I got tide heading north, and I'm drifting south. So he's in the current stemming it. You know? And he eats my bait. I'm already past him, so I'm pulling towards his tail. So when he closes his mouth and goes advancing forward from the tension, the angle is correct. I'm pulling towards the corner. If he's facing me, if I'm drifting, you know, the same way as the current or if I'm anchored and stuff like that, it's harder because he's coming at you. Same with Billfish. You know, when I started with the circle, it was blue marlin and sailfish, and I was trying to figure it out. And that's when I learned about putting the rod tip in the water is that, you know, your rod's up here and you're winding. When it comes out, everything is flopping, coming tight. But if you put the rod in the water and wind, the belly always creates the correct angle.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: That he could be jumping at you, and the boat could be accelerating right. But as long as you're toe in the belly, you're gonna get that angle every time. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's you gotta work your angles.

Tom Rowland: So when you're when you're instructing your anglers and the tide is such it's either ripping or it's slower or whatever, you're thinking about that and you're talking to your your anglers

Russell Kleppinger: about that. I'm so okay. We're gonna jump from here. We're not gonna get as a higher ratio because the wind and the drift is gonna set they're gonna be, you know, coming at us. You know what I mean? Or and, you know, most of the time, I don't I'd tell the anglers, you know, because people get ants. Don't let them hold the rods.

Tom Rowland: You want them in the rod holder?

Russell Kleppinger: Rod holder. Don't send the hook. If I learned a trick, if if clients wanna hold rods or if I have a a spread of drifting rods out and then I give them a casting rod, The trick that I've learned is I make them put their rod tip in the water and reel it. So they cast out a bait or a lure, and I said, you can't hold the rod level. You have to keep it in the water at all times if you wanna fish a rod by hand. And they're like, okay. I wanna fish a rod. And you just they're so focused on keeping the rod tip in the water while they're working the lure. When they get the bite, they press down and reel. If it's level, knee jerk reaction. Set the hook. Set the hook every time. And then they're like, I'm sorry. I got excited. But if they're focused the whole time on putting the rod in the water, like, the first second guide in the water is just keep it in the water and reel, then you've already broken whatever they're naturally trained to do, and they just wind down and press it in the water and stay tight, and you have your better situation.

Why He Gave Up Treble Hooks

Tom Rowland: Even with, treble hooks, j j treble hooks? Or are you changing trebles. You're changing them to single circles?

Russell Kleppinger: I only use circle hooks and and j's. You know, like, some some a few different j hooks, extra and a lure and something else, but very few. I don't use trebles on anything. I've learned better.

Tom Rowland: Now you say you've learned better. Is that because you don't wanna hurt yourself, or you don't wanna hurt the fish?

Russell Kleppinger: All of the above.

Tom Rowland: I don't I don't like them at all.

Russell Kleppinger: I've had

Tom Rowland: worst thing I've ever seen is a double treble. I do not like those.

Russell Kleppinger: I was at East Cape with my boss at the dam messing around when it was broken in the old days, and the current ripped around it. We call it a little baby tarpon. And I used, you know, the long shank dehooker, and I had the four x treble hooks on my Rapala. And I grabbed it, and I was holding it. Gonna dehook a little 20 pounder, and he jumped. And a treble hook is a welded fang hook, a fang hook with a welded hook to it. And my dehooker wound up being on the welded hook. And this is a new hook, and when the fish jumped, the welded hook broke off. So he jumped, and he had the rear hook in him in his face, like, but but the side of his face, like, by a socket and swung the front hook and buried it through my finger and went into my bone and landed in the water shaking his head. And, it was very painful.

Tom Rowland: Well, yeah, because that fish is not through shaking his head No.

Russell Kleppinger: No. No. I went into a bear hug with a throw of treble hooks in my hands. And, and then, that was $9,800 later. They had to do surgery and put me to sleep and put the tendons back together on my fingers because they couldn't just tear it out because it ripped through the tendons, and I'm shaking his head. So I lost the mobility of my finger. And I said, okey dokey. No more treble hooks.

Tom Rowland: And I'm I'm with you. I do not like them at all. I will be looking at a barracuda coming in. Rich likes to fish double treble hooks. I don't like to I'll I'll fish a single treble hook or I'll change it to a single j. And, the barracuda's coming in, and I'm like somebody said, you afraid of that barracuda? I said, no. I'm not afraid of that barracuda. I'm afraid of that top treble hook right there.

Russell Kleppinger: I need a long dehooker.

Getting Hurt on the Job: Hooks, Leads, and Boga Grips

Tom Rowland: That's right. They can get you badly. Have you ever been you ever had any other injuries from fish?

Russell Kleppinger: Lots. I mean, that's what we do. You know what I mean?

Tom Rowland: Serious ones. Like like like you just told me.

Russell Kleppinger: Seven hooks taken out of me. I mean, I had well, blew my mind, smashed me in the face pretty good and

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: Scarred up a little bit. I've had

Tom Rowland: And you missed the bill?

Russell Kleppinger: No. No. I did not miss the bill at all.

Tom Rowland: What happened?

Russell Kleppinger: I reached down to let a fish go. And when I reached down for the leader, the fish jumped and was coming in the boat. He just just came straight up, was coming in the boat, and I turned his shoulder to him to, like, knock him back in the water. And he came around his building, smashed me in the face, and cracked my tooth and you know?

Tom Rowland: And what part of the world is that?

Russell Kleppinger: That was right here in The Bahamas.

Tom Rowland: Well But Good thing you can get to a dentist.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. So, you know, there's, there's, you know, the swivel's the most dangerous thing in billfishing. In Venezuela, you know, you get the leader and you hold on to it, and the fish jumps and stretch it out, and the swivel comes back and goes, you know, through your shirt and sticks in you, through your gloves, sticks your hand through people's cheeks and smash their teeth. It's when you're light tackle fishing and the whiteys are jumping all over, and that little swivel comes back or snap swivels, and it's through people's glasses. And, I mean, I you know, you get the swivel tattoos, we call them. You get stuck real good, and you pick one out of your chest.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: But that's you know, this this game is different. I think leads are the most dangerous thing in the game. If you're fishing something, you know, leaded or a jig head or something like that when a fish jumps and shakes his head. You know? And then you got the bend in the rod and the stretch of monofilament leader or mono. When it comes back, it's just a rocket.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. What do you do? You fish a lot at night. Right? So are you do you wear glasses or something?

Russell Kleppinger: I make my fly clients wear clear glasses, like motorcycle glasses.

Tom Rowland: But when you're handling the the fish?

Russell Kleppinger: No. I should, but I don't.

Tom Rowland: Man, I tell you what. I mean, when you're talking about a jig head, I mean, it sound it sounds like you're not fishing that tackle for

Russell Kleppinger: I do sometimes depending on the depth of water, but it's, I tried, like, circle hook jig heads and different things. But even if you fish a a, you know, a leader or something with a lead on it, I mean, when the fish jumps and it all stretches out, the the lead is the most dangerous part of the game.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. For sure.

Russell Kleppinger: You know, I've had one client pretty badly hurt by lead, and I had one pretty badly hurt by a Boga Grip.

Tom Rowland: Really? Yeah. What happened with the Boga Grip?

Russell Kleppinger: I have this this group of English guys, and, I don't know, it's, like, twenty years ago, and he caught all those first little tarp in, like, 40 pounder, 30 pounder. And, I had him in the water with the Boga Grip, and he's letting me just gonna get a picture. And I turned to get my my camera, and he swung the fish in the boat. And I was like, no. No. No. No. No. This is before it was even legal to do this stuff. And he swings it in a boat, and his buddies got their cameras. They're taking pictures. And he lets go of the bogey grip, and he holds two hands under the belly of the tarpon like this, and the fish swung its head. You know? And and then when he when he wound up, when he came back around and clocked him in a bogey grip, knocked him out. I can see that. And hit him dead forehead and knocked him out. He he has the giant tumor on his forehead when he woke up. He was asleep. Tarpon landed on him, crapped on his face, slime all over him, and he was

Tom Rowland: unconscious. Wow. Well, that's a mistake that he's not gonna make again.

Russell Kleppinger: It was it was it was, it was pretty painful, actually. I'll try to find the photograph. It's it's a classic. We were you know? Because the guys fishing me for so many years. It's not like a first time customer. Oh my god. You're okay. All his buddies are cracking up laughing. I'm picking the tarpon up, releasing it, reviving them. And, but it's you know, I've had eight tarpon jump in my boat and a lot in other people's boats. You know, big fish can come in, and especially if they get under the gunwale, if you got rods down there and

Tom Rowland: That's just a mess. There's no there's no, there's no

Russell Kleppinger: It never ends well for the fish or

Tom Rowland: the boat. No. It's it's horrible. I I I can't say that I was wildly opposed to not being able to bring a tarpon into the boat anymore because, you know, some people are, you know, thinking that you can like, a tarpon has a funny way of all all fish do, I guess, but you get there's like a tipping point, and you've got just the head in the over the gunnel in these little skiffs. You know? And then your friend comes over to check it out too, and now the whole fish slides into the boat. And, it can happen accidentally very easily, but, man, that that's not anything that you want to have happen. The you have a different Boga grip now.

Russell Kleppinger: I'm working on one. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: The tarpinator? Oh my gosh.

Russell Kleppinger: That's what a Boga grip

Tom Rowland: is a giant hematoma on this guy's face from the Boga grip. That is pretty bad.

Russell Kleppinger: That that was a good one.

Tom Rowland: He looks like he's conscious there, but Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: He was. But, he was, he was laughing in the picture. We'd clean the slime off him and the poop all over him, and he he was there. It's like and his buddies were on the ground crying, laughing.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Russell Kleppinger: But he was always the guy who always got hurt. He always did stuff wrong, never listened to anybody, so it's just kinda, like, par for the course.

Tom Rowland: And so they got what he he got what he deserved, I guess.

Russell Kleppinger: You know, that was, I never seen somebody get literally knocked out by a Tarfum. That was the first knockout I've seen.

Tom Rowland: I I, yeah, I don't think I've ever seen anybody get knocked out. That's that's pretty bad.

Russell Kleppinger: Unconscious. Like, knees buckled, like, prize fighter. Tyson hit him. Just dropped him. Fish slamming on his face.

Tom Rowland: Does he still fish with you now?

Russell Kleppinger: He does. He's been fishing me for they've been here about twenty years.

Tom Rowland: Wow. That's awesome.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. That's a group comes from England every year.

Satellite Tagging and What It Reveals

Tom Rowland: Yeah. So are you said that you're doing some tagging and and, working with scientists and stuff?

Russell Kleppinger: I've done satellite tagging with them and research with them, and, you know, it started for my own selfish you know, I wanna get the emails every day and see what these little buggers are hiding. I let a fish go, and it was cool to see them come out and swim up the beach and then find another school and then come back down. And I could get the emails and know where the pods are traveling because I'm getting updates straight from the scientist of where the tags are pinging.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Russell Kleppinger: So it's like having a, you know, beacon on your dog. I can Right. Be like, oh, here comes another school. Here, that fish is over here. He's back in a pod.

Tom Rowland: You know? And so what like, are you seeing you know, that's obviously one that's that's on his little milk route staying close by. Are you seeing other data where there Lots of data. It's it's mind blowing data. Well, help me out. Like, you're seeing some that are traveling, long way and some that are staying close because I've always had that feeling. Like, that's what happens. That there are definitely you know, when you're in The Keys and you're fishing and all of a sudden, there are no tarping around or very few and then there's tons, it seems like those fish are coming in from somewhere else. And then they there's a period of time, and then they're gone. But then you have these other resident fish that all of a sudden, the weather slicks off, there's tarpon everywhere. Like, where did those come from? Like, they didn't swim from Africa overnight.

Russell Kleppinger: Right.

Tom Rowland: But what what what is your tagging information told you about all this?

Russell Kleppinger: What I'm what I'm led to believe is that there's different groups of fish. So you got your Atlantic body, the ones that come down the coast and spend the summers in Georgia and the Carolinas. Those are the ones I'm picking on over here. And then those come down to the Keys, right, From Miami, when when the barometer stabilized in the spring, they push down. Your Caribbean body of fish will come, you know, Saint Thomas, Puerto Rico, you know, all that, Cuba, and they come over to spawn. And then you've got your golf body of fish that you know, the Boca Grande body of fish that goes way up in the Panhandle in the summers, and they come down and go into Boca Grande. And some of those fish break and head down in the Everglades in the winter. You've got your, like, Costa Rica, you know, Mexico body of fish that comes up from there, and they all kinda get together and have a party, and they spawn. And,

Tom Rowland: And and is any of the tagging work that's being done showing that these different schools, like you say, they all get together and have a party and they spawn, are are these different groups getting together, or or is, like, this Atlantic body kinda staying together?

Russell Kleppinger: And I'm not exactly sure on if the bodies mix, but I believe that they do. Yeah. But I know that when they're here, when they show up here like, when you see them daisy chain. Right? What they're doing is like a dog's on each other's butt. That's what a daisy chain is. When they come in and start circling, that's the male smelling the female's hydration level. So it's interesting because the female, when she goes to spawn, you know, it's not like what kind of car you got or whatever. It's about the male being exactly ready to sperminate the eggs when her eggs are ready. Mhmm. So that's how she picks her partner. So when you see those, you know, the daisy chaining, those are them smelling each other. And when you when you, you know, you can mark mating pairs. You can catch them, and you'll see when you catch the female, the male will be right there with it like dolphin. You know, you catch a mahi. You see them, and you know that it's already they've already paired. You know what I'm saying? And they're they're making the route together because they've already found a match. And fish don't all spawn exact same day on the same moon. Different groups will head off at different times depending on when they're ready. Mhmm. And they push you know, I mean, you live in the Keys. You know what what's going on. They they push offshore in this huge group of thousands of fish, but there could be one on the new moon. There could be another group on the on the next full moon. Right. You know? They they they go in different intervals. And the female, she can drop between 4,000,008 eggs, and she can drop that twice in in a season. Now twice in a month, she can go out and spawn again if she does not spawned out. But what the tags show that's so impressive is when the guys are dolphin fishing in those giant schools of tarpon out there is that the tarpons dive to about 200 feet deep. And as they're diving, they turn belly to belly. And every 33 feet in atmosphere, so their pressure starts increasing. And as they're, you know, sending you know, swimming down together stomach to stomach, the pressure's squeezing the eggs and sperm out of the two, and then they're mixing, and they get fertilized. Then our southeast trade winds blow those eggs back towards the shore. Each egg is like a little clear balloon with a drop of oil in it. And, you know, we all have our theories. I'm not a scientist. But if I had to say, we're at a catastrophic tipping point right now, is my theory. And these fish, they have to gorge themselves to spawn. That little clear drop of oil makes the egg float. That's the fat. She has to gorge herself to put the fat content in her body so her eggs don't sink out there.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: Right? And one thing about fishing at night is you learn the amount of food available by hearing the fish popping. Right. And twenty years ago, they were frothing. Ten years ago, they were popping. Now it's so few the intervals at night of shrimps and crab passing out the channels that there's not enough food is what I think by spending my time on the water for these fish to build their fat content up. You know? Look at the keys. We sit there. Every bridge pylon's got a guide on it or a cost you know, a guy in his boat. Right?

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: We're beating on these poor things, and they're trying to just hang out and eat and get ready to spawn. So we're not helping the situation. I understand that. We're just trying to make a living and catch some fish and let them go as humanely as possible, but what I see is that this fishery is with with the grass and the keys, all that red slimy weed that's coming out and the grass flats, there's no at night, the shrimp aren't flowing. The crabs aren't flowing. The fish aren't up popping. I'm having to fish baits with the split shot on them instead of a cork. I'm a have to fish deeper to get my bites because they're not up in the water column. Right? So that's not a good sign. And my buddy who's what I can see to be the best of the best on the West Coast, He's telling me that he's catching fish in October that when he's getting into the boat, they're sperming and egging out next to the boat. Really? Because when Boca Grande this year had the red tides, the sharks were really bad in the past is what I'm told. The fish could not stay there because of the shark problem. They went offshore to spawn, but the red tide stopped. They kept playing ping pong. They tried to come in. The sharks eat them. They tried to go out. The red tide stopped them. So they were sitting up rivers. Thousands of fish were sitting inland where they shouldn't be, and he was wearing them out as giant groups of fish. It was awesome fishing, but everything was wrong place, wrong time, and backwards. But every fish he's catching is still full of eggs and sperm that should have spawned out.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Russell Kleppinger: And I think that and and from what I know and what he's telling me, what I'm seeing is we missed the breeding cycle on the Boca Grande, that that group of fish last year in 18. So when do you do you, you've made this relationship with these scientists. Have you expressed this theory to them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're well aware

Tom Rowland: of it. And then that what is their response from a scientific point of view? Is is that possible? Is that, I mean, is that surprising to them at all, or they're in an agreement with this?

Scientists vs. Fishermen

Russell Kleppinger: They're scientists, not fishermen, so they think totally differently. You know? They have to cut fish up and and gut them to find the eggs in them to believe it. You know? They have to come about their theories with different processes than we do as fishermen on the water.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, we we were actually talking about this in this last thing that I did with Captains for Clean Water, and there were scientists there. And I was asking about, you know, are fishing guides beneficial for collecting this data? And one of the things that came out was that for the scientific method, there are certain ways that you have to collect data so that it is a scientific process and that that this is going to stand in the in the, you know, in the textbooks or whatever, that this is, you know, true science, and so there can't be any you know, I saw this. They have to document it some somehow. So I just wonder they they probably do believe it right away, but they still have to do their work.

Russell Kleppinger: They have to come up with their conclusion Right. You know, scientifically. And working with them, you know, it's a different mentality. I know how I like to handle a fish. Scientists are terrible. Well I've never seen

Tom Rowland: fish handle scientist out there.

Russell Kleppinger: Badly ever is a scientist handling fish. You know, when they put that tag in it, we're not talking like, you know, a sailfish with a little pen. We're talking literally like a 10 inch stainless harpoon that they're putting in the tarp and trying not to hit his backbone so the tag doesn't come out. Then when they tag fish at a Honda, they had a 100% shark rate. Every fish that got tagged there got eaten. Now are the sharks bad down there? Yes. They can be. But I think that when you wear a fish down that much

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: And you drag them and lip gaff them and stretch them and tail rope them and measure them and tag them and take samples and then let them go.

Tom Rowland: Listen, man. You can hook them at Bahia Honda for thirty seconds, and the big hammerhead eats them. So, lip gaff and and drag them around.

Russell Kleppinger: The process is

Tom Rowland: A 100%.

Russell Kleppinger: It's very invasive. You know? And Yeah. In Miami, I think that the tagging bodes better because there's a lot less sharks

Tom Rowland: Right.

The Shark Problem

Russell Kleppinger: In certain places. Now last year, we had a shark population that became a problem and, down on on around around the cut. And, you know, the fish left. And I found them other places, and I won't fish them in I won't fish them in an area. The sharks are bad. Right. And, you know, probably can't say it on the radio, but as you as you probably see at the Bahia Honda and other bridges in the Keys, what locals do to deter sharks eating your fish is, you know, the one thing sharks are terrified of is the smell of a dead shark. Mhmm. And it's not politically correct, but it may save thousands of tarpon's lives.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: And you see it happen, and it's it it's functional.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm. You mean, like, what you're saying is killing them, and, I mean, I've seen that sharks hung from bridges

Russell Kleppinger: Tied to pilings.

Tom Rowland: Tied to pilings.

Russell Kleppinger: Guys get mad after watching hundreds of tarpons destroyed and the fish leaving. And somebody you come out the next day, and you smell something. You look around, and there's a tail of a lemon shark or something from a flat, you know, sitting there and miraculously, all the tarpon come back and all the sharks leave.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's an old trick from the from the commercial fishermen that they used to Yeah. You know, when the sharks were so bad, they couldn't yell a tail or whatever, and they would just catch one, chop it up into pieces. And then the my my friend that's a commercial fisherman lifelong commercial fisherman would say that the sharks would actually eat the pieces of the other shark. And then he his feeling was that it hurt their belly, and then they all got sick, and they left. But, I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's One

Russell Kleppinger: thing and when I watch the stuff about, like, pilots, the shark repellent that they made in the old days Mhmm. Was boiling sharks. The smell of a boiled shark was like the shark repellent. Like, that was, like, the one smell they couldn't stand. So

Tom Rowland: We tried that. We had a little show kinda it never made it off the ground, but it was it was called Shark Man, and we were going to do all these different things with sharks. And one of the things that we were going to do with sharks was to test shark repellent for for people. And so you have a very experienced diver that goes down, gets all these bull sharks are coming around and open this can. What happens? Like, because the scientists aren't going down there and doing that. So it's like you put somebody that has a lot of experience that's around sharks all the time, go down and open this can of shark repellent. Does it deter the shark, or does it not deter the shark? And, so we were testing all of these different things, and it was pretty interesting. I was actually quite nervous about it because when you open a can of shark repellent on a bunch of sharks that you're pretty sure aren't going to bite you or attack you or whatever, and now you're doing something that you've never done before

Russell Kleppinger: Don't know the reaction.

Tom Rowland: Exactly. It could be catastrophic. It could rip your arm off. You know, a shark that would have no problem with you there, and they're feed you know, they're feeding the sharks and doing all this stuff, and then you open up this weird thing. What does that do? It actually barely did anything, but that's how they, made it is they would, take these small sharks. They'd put them in a 55 gallon drum, put the top on it, leave it out in the sun for a while. And let me tell you something, man. The smell of that, oh. I never forget. Oh, never will I forget it. And this was this person's job was to go open these barrels and see if they were ready. And when they were ready, they would be completely putrefied and liquefied. And can you imagine, you know, August in in The Keys opening this thing up? You didn't have to open it to know it was ready.

Russell Kleppinger: The flies told you.

Tom Rowland: Dude, I mean, you'd smell that thing from a 100 yards away. It was the worst smelling thing ever. And then they would take that liquid liquefied, putrefied shark, and they would somehow pour it out, then they would work with that and refine this down into something that they could bottle and into this aerosol type thing where when you open it, it shoots out. And, oh, it was horrible. So I don't think that product ever got off the market. It may have been effective, but I don't know how they

Shark Shields and Repellents

Russell Kleppinger: ever There was one called Shark Shield. Did you ever see that one?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, we our underwater diver uses it all the time. It shocks him more than it shocks anything

Russell Kleppinger: else. Killed

Tom Rowland: me. How?

Russell Kleppinger: I I borrowed one because I was in San Salvador.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: And we're, like, by the hump. We're gonna dive Green Green Island, like, on the North Point. And, I said, man, it's really sharky here in the edge right there. Like and my my the guy in the arena had one, and he said, here. Try it. He's like, just get in the water and turn it on. And I was like, okay. And, I swam down, you know, and I looked under a ledge with some lobsters. And when I got inverted, the tether, you know, continued to fall. And I'm underneath there, like, on 35, 40 feet of water, like, as far as I can go, and I'm digging around and checking a lobster out. And a tether hits me in the chest and lights me up and electrocutes me. And your muscles, you know, you flinch, and your air goes away. You now you have no air, and you're sitting on the bottom, and you're electrocuting yourself. The stupid thing that I'm trying to keep the shark to is all my air is gone. I go shooting for the top. I'm like, I'm gonna black out before I make it there, and my buddy was watching. Of course, they were dying laughing. But I think if you know, they're watching me, and they they're laughing. But if I would've, you know, blacked out, they probably would've got me back up in time. But Let's hope.

Tom Rowland: But But that's what I said immediately was was, yeah, our diver uses one of those, and it shocks him more than it shocks anything else. But the thing oh, you know, you're going, and then and the waves are going like this. And so this this tether is floating Yeah. Underneath you in between your legs. And sometimes as the as the, you know, the waves are going like this, the tether you know, you get out of out of, sync with not everything's going up and down at the same time. So this tether comes up

Russell Kleppinger: and gah. That I'm well aware

Tom Rowland: of it. So I have no no doubt that if that thing actually touched a shark, a shark wouldn't like it. Right. But it's supposed to be putting off an electrical field Right. That the shark doesn't like either. And that that was one of the things also that we wanted to test. Did that thing work? And, I mean, I don't know. It was kinda like one of my friends before, they put the the shock collar on their dog that they love so much. They wanted to make sure that it wasn't too bad, so they put it on themselves and ran through the I've

Russell Kleppinger: done that.

Tom Rowland: Through the fence. Yeah. It works. You don't wanna do it again.

Russell Kleppinger: You can set, you know, the the the number, like, one through a 100. Do you know what I mean? You can put it yourself to see what it's really like before you wanna test it on

Tom Rowland: the mobile. But But it's hard to know, whether it's on one or a 100. And, you should

Russell Kleppinger: Mine has, like, a remote with a digital readout.

Tom Rowland: Oh, it does? Because mine

Russell Kleppinger: only beats it. I don't know. This one you could set. You know what I mean? Just hold it yourself and press the shock, you know, and feel it.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: But your skin is so soft versus their hair and thicker. You know? Right. A little harder penetration.

Tom Rowland: Dog that needs needs, has always needed that on the highest possible setting because I I call it

Russell Kleppinger: Slow learner.

Tom Rowland: You have, like well, just just, you know, lab. It's a lab, and, he's very driven dog, very alpha, and it takes a lot to get his attention.

Russell Kleppinger: I

Tom Rowland: understand. So I always set it on cattle, like, on the cattle setting because you have, like, one to a 100, and then you have bull or cattle. Like, you really need to get something's attention. T Rex? Yes. T Rex. And, man, even even when it does get him, he's kind of, like Determined. Think I could make it through if I just had a little more speed. But that Shark Shield, I'll tell you what, that's that's, that is a that is a product that I'm sure works, but, boy, you have to be careful. I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble like that. But at 40 feet, I've I

Russell Kleppinger: I really don't diving. I mean I know. It it's it's it I'd I'd rather deal with a shark next time than try to play with that thing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. The sharks, man, the sharks have been

Russell Kleppinger: I think that they're they're changing the fish's behavior and migrations. There's places that I fish here in Miami that there's never been tarpon before, in my opinion. Like, I've never found them there, and all of a sudden, I'm finding them there. And, like, I always joke, and I said the keys is full of robots. You know? Nine to fivers. They're banker hour fishermen, and they just they just go do the same thing. They don't explore. They don't they don't get outside of their box of comfort very often, most guides.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. They're definitely guys on milk route.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. Milk routers. You know? They

Tom Rowland: They're definitely those. But then there are also

Russell Kleppinger: Of course. There's all levels. I mean, I was saying as a general basis. You know? And and from a financial point of view, I mean, I get it. Like, they make way more money Mhmm. Because they can go around their morning trip, their afternoon trip, maybe a sunset trip, and they go to bed. And me, I'm the retard who's out there, you know, starting a trip at at three in the morning to catch the tide, and we're crushing them. And and then I'm beat up and exhausted, you know, and I fish, like, another morning or whatever I can fish and sleep in my truck at the ramp and then, you know, try to make it home alive. And, you know, it's not the best business plan. Those guys, they make way more money when they run their scheduled trips. It's easier to tell the customer, it'd be here at noon at this spot. You know? And

Tom Rowland: Mhmm. Well, that's gonna be that's they're gonna run a a a an eight to noon. Right. They're gonna run a one to five. Yeah. And then they're gonna run, you know, a sunset trip, and they're gonna do that every single day no matter what the tide is. And that, you know, that's that's fine. I always I I I never did the half days. I just didn't like half day. I mean, of course, I'd take a half day if that was all that was there, but I would encourage full days all the time. And one of the things that I was it was probably a very poor business decision.

Russell Kleppinger: But We're fishermen. We're bad businessmen to start with.

Tom Rowland: Well, some some are good. Some are good businessmen. But like you're saying, if if you're gonna say, okay. Well, I'm gonna get this engine, and it only burns a little bit of gas, and I'm only gonna go no further than that island out there, and I won't catch plenty of fish. And and it's gonna be great. And no matter what tide, that's just my little milk crowd. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna burn two gallons of gas, and Right. I wanna make a lot of money, and they will. But then there are those other guys that say, I'm going wherever the fish are, and, like you're saying, whatever time of day that is

Russell Kleppinger: Whatever city, whatever ZIP code, whatever time.

Tom Rowland: And I never I never was concerned about fuel. I just always thought, you know what? There'll be the days that I only burn two gallons, and there'll be the days where I burn the entire tank. And, you know, it'll all it'll all like

Russell Kleppinger: a bait aholic. I waste so much money on bait.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, when you're buying shrimp the size of the ones I see, on your Instagram

Russell Kleppinger: page cheap. They're easy. So what tell

The Rig: Shrimp, Crabs, and Bait

Tom Rowland: me about catching 814 tarpon. What kind of what are you not really what's the rig in in government cut?

Russell Kleppinger: It it depends on the depth the fish are at. You know? Sometimes it's a jig head, but, generally, I try to use a circle hook, you know, with a a light up the leader. You know what I mean? But But what's the bait? The winner, I'll say is your shrimp.

Tom Rowland: Only shrimp. That's it. And you don't have much problem with jacks and back catch and some other

Russell Kleppinger: you catch some muttons or little groupers or, you know, a mangrove or a jack or something, but, hey, the Roger Bennett is charter fishing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I like that. But some places, you know, the blue runners just if you put a shrimp out there,

Russell Kleppinger: do you The key is the topography is different. There's so much other stuff to eat a shrimp. Yeah. You know? And, basically, the way the way I run my my situation is that once they get big enough to put on a circle hook, you know, I start using shrimps. And, you know, so, you know, starting, like, January 1 is, like, for the year. You know? You're shrimp fishing January and February. And then March ish, you know, they're getting a little smaller. You know? So you start incorporating some crabs in because they cost more money. You don't wanna be using them just yet. And then you you know? So you're kind of

Tom Rowland: think the crab's a better bait? If they were the same price, would you just go with crabs?

Russell Kleppinger: No. I I really don't. I mean, I think they eat the shrimp really well, but so do all the trash fish. So if they're too small and the trash fish is bad,

Tom Rowland: they'll eat How big is crab do you like for the Miami fish?

Russell Kleppinger: I always all the same. I don't I'm very weird, and I don't you know, like, I see these guys that fish these massive crabs.

Tom Rowland: I've never caught a tarpon on one. I swear. I've never caught one.

Russell Kleppinger: Them slack tide baits. When the when the tide goes slack, if I'm fishing the keys or bridges or something or if I got a drift going in a slow tide, then I want that big flapper swimmer out there. You know? Then I'll fish a bigger size crab like like my buddy calls them, cigarette packs. You know? I'll fish one that's, you know, size of a cigarette pack

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: During that slack tide. But if the tide's moving, that's a lot of track. You know? And Right. That they're just harder to eat. And I think they they select they they cut you out of the game on other size fish. You're just gonna have to be a beast to eat that thing. Those mediums smaller fish are not gonna, you know, you're not gonna get a bite. So I try to use smaller sized crabs. You know?

Tom Rowland: I've, that's been my experience. Like, the bigger the crab, the fewer the bites, and I get bored with it and tired of it. And I just don't I I I just for a long time, I didn't have very much confidence in crabs and tarpon. And then when when I started using the smaller permit sized crabs or smaller, then it was the whole it was everything changed. And then if you do catch a snapper on one of those, it's gonna be a it's gonna be a one that you're pretty happy to get.

Russell Kleppinger: Or a hog or something. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: But, so so you fish the shrimp for a little while then the crabs, and then how long does that last?

Russell Kleppinger: I I generally January, February, and the March is shrimps. In March, start shrimps and crabs. April, shrimps and crabs. And then I'll also pilchards, you know, in April, and then, you know, the mullet start mixing in in the game. And then, you know, April's, like, just like all kinds of different bait. Ballyhoo's, pilchards, mullets, cigarminos. And so with your schedule, are you able to to catch all that bait yourself, or do you have to,

Tom Rowland: I mean, you're running a lot of trips, and you're running them at all times of the day. So how do you collect your bait like that? Is some of that you're buying All

Russell Kleppinger: the trips I buy you know, the mullets, I generally catch up here. Down in The Keys, we buy them. You know, if I can't catch them readily, then I'll just buy a mullet, but it's expensive. Yeah. And that's why I charge a little extra in The Keys for the cost of bait. And like I said, I'm a bait baitaholic, and, you know, the mentality I I take to tarpon fishing is, like, the opposite of what everybody else does. Now people, like, that know me, they just laugh, and they're, like, you were stupid.

Tom Rowland: Oh, let's hear it.

Fishing a Big Spread of Rods

Russell Kleppinger: I mean, you go kite fishing. Right? Mhmm. They got out two kites. They got six baits out, three in each kite. Then they got a flat, a mid, a deep rod. Right? Maybe a king rod with some wire down there. Mhmm. And they hook up. They don't reel stuff in. They start casting baits at the one they got on. You know, I I used to have 16 rods in my boat when I'm tarpon fishing. You know, a lot of time when I hook up, depending on the situation, I've got a bridge and piling, stuff like that, but I don't reel my other lines in. I generally start putting more lines in the water because I think there's fish around now. Mhmm. And that usually yields yields more multiple hookups. You know?

Tom Rowland: Well, judging by your Instagram, I've seen plenty of triples.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. And I don't when I hook up, I start throwing more rods in. I'll have five, eight rods. I'm making a giant mess, and sometimes it's just a cutter at the end of it because this becomes disaster. But I ruin lots of tackle. I I mean, when I hook up, I just start putting more baits out. I don't I don't, you know, I don't do what the opposite guy does. Drinks two rods or four rods out there and puts one or two in the water.

Tom Rowland: Well, it makes tons of sense because that you know, it you're you're you have a tremendous offshore background that a lot of people don't, you know, that come some people come into this world through the fly fishing trout world, and then they're they're coming into this world and, oh, tarpon eat mullet too, and I'm gonna do some of that. I wanna learn about it. And then we've hooked one. Now I don't wanna lose him, so let's reel everything else in. But from the offshore world, it starts with catching bait. You don't even put a rod in the water until you build this up, and now you've got the yellowtail in a giant ball behind you. You keep feeding, keep feeding, keep feeding, keep chumming. Now it's time to put a line in the water. And then when you hook one, you leave them in the water for a second because they throw up everything they just ate. They're mahi's. I mean, it's cool

Russell Kleppinger: when you're you're you hook one, you start chumming the rest of them.

Tom Rowland: Exactly. And you hook one, and that's the that's been the common thing. It's like, leave that guy in the water, and they're they'll stay around. And for that, I I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work for tarpon because you've obviously come across some sort of a group of fish or a single fish or whatever. And when fish bite and fight, it brings other fish in, for sure.

Russell Kleppinger: I I think so. And, you know, I I get a lot of lot of multiple hookups, and I fish again, I mean, I fly kites for tarpon. I use planer boards for tarpon.

Kites and Planer Boards

Tom Rowland: Now when you're flying kites for tarpon and and planer boards, are you doing that in government cut?

Russell Kleppinger: Depends on where I'm at. I do it in the keys.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. Well, see, it can be incredibly effective down there. And I've done that too in channels and stuff where you you fly a kite, and the kite is the ultimate presentation.

Russell Kleppinger: It's I do I don't I love it, but, you know, it adds more complications to the to the fishing. But the hookup ratio doesn't seem to be quite as good, you know, because you got

Tom Rowland: that that goes back to the angle that you're talking about?

Russell Kleppinger: No. I think the angle's okay. I think it's that if the clip doesn't pull down and everything comes tight, if it opens and he feels any tension and comes up jumping too fast when it's trying to come tight, like, you can't fly helium like you would sail fishing and and kite fish. You need to have a good sustainable wind that the kite can get pulled down with tension, you know, to where you can maintain that no drop back, no slack. You know? Can't fall out and wind the slack tight. You know what I mean? Because he's gonna be up shaking his head. Right. And I've been trying these planer boards out, and they're problematic with weeds. But, like, this

Tom Rowland: With the planer boards, the way that I've used planer boards and and not very much in saltwater, it's more in freshwater, but the boat is moving. But I would imagine that you can use planter boards with the tide where you're stopped and anchored, and then you can use the tide to push it out there. Is that what you're doing? Or are you moving both?

Russell Kleppinger: Anchor, or you control a motor, or you can drift. Mhmm. You see them striper guys and the wallow guys That's

Tom Rowland: what I've done with them.

Russell Kleppinger: I mean, sometimes these wallow guys are striper guys, they're fishing 10 rods off a planer board. They've got 20 rods they're trolling. Mhmm. And I was like, really? You know, the problem is if it's weedy. You know? Yeah. But you can set a planer out there, and instead of having your eight foot beam boat or nine foot beam boat with the wind blowing and two baits, you can have mullets out, you know, in the current, you know, fifty, seventy five feet on each side. Right. And then you can have another planer here and fish them in line, or you can have them on a kite reel and set them out their eclipse and have drop backs. You know? You just gotta keep the line out of the water for the belly of the weed. And, It's a great idea. Now you can set spreads, and you can set one mid water. You can put a kite up. You can just get as stupid as you want with it, but I got hooks in the water. You know? Lots of hooks.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, it's the same thing with the with, you know, the offshore kite situation is that the, you know, the reason that that's effective is because you're now covering hundreds of yards of water as this 36 foot boat or whatever. Right. Hundreds of yards on the right side of foot 10 foot

Russell Kleppinger: beam, eight foot, nine foot beam Right. Is now

Tom Rowland: massive. And and and even then, even with hundreds of yards, you're still talking about the ocean, and you're still talking about, you know, these fish may be swimming in deeper water or shallow water today, but you just you just increased your chance of coming across these fish much much more. So I like that with the planer boards and the tarpon. I might try that at, at one of the bridges because that

Russell Kleppinger: It's just about the weed. Yeah. You know? And I put glow sticks on the planer boards at night and try different things. I put glow sticks in my bobbers. And it's funny because the one guy down there, I saw a few people, they've been watching a lot. You know? And now they're starting to I see glow sticks flying by me at night, and I'm laughing, and I'm like, they're catching on.

Tom Rowland: But they do they know that they're on a planter board, or they're just throwing glow sticks out there?

Russell Kleppinger: I mean, they just did on on the cork or, you know, sometimes I tape them to a cork or I put them on a planter board or I do I put them on my leaders. I try all kinds of just I'm like nuts. I just do all kinds of stupid stuff to try to see what works.

Tom Rowland: So what do you think of all of the innovations that you've tried and and come up with, you know, probably laying in bed, looking at the ceiling, thinking, you know what? I think that would work. What do you think has been the most effective for you and Tarpon?

Russell Kleppinger: Just the concept of, like, putting out as many rods as humanly possible. That's, like, the best concept. Instead of the one rod show or, you know, the standard dude throws out two live mullet and a dead mullet on the bottom or a dead mullet and, you know, two dead and one live or whatever. I mean, I tried to, you know, be a porcupine of just stuff going on. You know? And, I think that when you understand tarpon, you respect them more. And the more you can learn about, like, you know, if you're a hunter, like, you're prey Mhmm. The more I learned from the scientist, the more I was like, wow. I had no idea how amazing these fish really are. Because I was I loved them, but once you really understand tarpon, then you're, like, much more involved and in love with them when you respect them. Like like, the way I try to and I try to treat them a certain way. I try not to let people touch them. I mean, how old do you think tarpon get?

How Old Is a Tarpon?

Tom Rowland: Well, that's a very good question. I think they get very old. And when I say very old, I think you can have a 60 year old fish. Older? Older. 100 year old fish.

Russell Kleppinger: The oldest, you know, scientific the otolith that they otolith is the ear bone, as you know. Yeah. And they cut them out, and they got rings on them. And the oldest otolith that they've studied is 83 years old.

Tom Rowland: 83. And how big was that fish? Do you know?

Russell Kleppinger: I don't know the weight of it. But I know that you're a 30 pound tarpon. How old is he?

Tom Rowland: Well, I I don't know this. I would love to know all these things. But my my personal theory is that they're gonna grow from about six inches to about five pounds rather quickly, and then they're gonna slow down. But I don't know. Well, tell me what

Russell Kleppinger: you know. Those fish are almost 10 years old.

Tom Rowland: 10 years old for a little 30 pounder.

Russell Kleppinger: Wow. Thirty, forty pound fish. Those are they're they're nine years old, you know, depending on their food source. They had fish that they put microchips in. They, like, did shocking and, like, back bays, the Everglades and stuff and places. And and they went back a year later and other, you know, other times, and they'd shocked these bays. And they, you know, they'd scanned the fish, and and it was actually smaller.

Tom Rowland: Smaller.

Russell Kleppinger: If it wasn't enough food, it it shrunk. It didn't grow. Wow. The thing that I've learned about tarpon that makes me, like, so crazy with them is that is is is a world of fish. It's Superman. There's no other fish in the world like it, period. Like, not even close. Like, Superman is, like, way faster, way better, sees better than us. That's a tarpon. They see how how well do you think they see? Like, I'm saying it, but you know, of course, they see well.

Tom Rowland: But Yeah. Well, I think I think because of their, they're a very nocturnally oriented fish, I would say that they have incredible eyesight.

The Superhero of Fish: How a Tarpon Sees

Russell Kleppinger: What is their scientific name?

Tom Rowland: Megalops Atlanticus. Giant eye.

Russell Kleppinger: Exactly. Right? Mega megaopticus. The megaopticus Atlanticus. The biggest eye at the Atlantic. Scientists tell me that approximately, they like to break it down. They see 5,000 times better than our eyesight on average. Wow. When a tarpon is born, it has rods when it's a little tiny fry. Those rods are like night vision, like black and white, like a flare, basically. As it starts to develop, he starts developing cones. We have three. Three allows us to see the colors that we know. When he develops, he has five. So he has night vision plus color vision that in the light sample studies, they've proven some things that are blow my mind. And they tell people this, and the customer, like, really? And then you explain to them. They can tell us apart. They can facially recognize humans and tell them apart, and they can see ultraviolet light penetrating the water. Like a dog whistle, we can't hear. Mhmm. We can't see their rainbow of colors. It's so much more diverse than anything we could our eyes could perceive. I tell people it's like their predator mask. You know, he could be in night vision. He can go to thermal imaging. He can go to color. And the time it takes him to blink, they can switch. And what the light sample show study show, they had them in tanks in controlled rooms, and they'd pull them out and cut their eyes out and see what they're doing in the dark. You know, the scientist are scientists. Mhmm. And they took small fish, and they put them in these tanks and controlled the light in the room. At night, the rods are at the front of the the lens, and the cones are in the back. They were night vision mode. And then at sunrise, sunset, like, kinda different ambient lighting, they can be both at the front of the lens overlapping. So they can use, like, night vision with color

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Russell Kleppinger: And whichever is better. And then when the sun's up, the rods will recede to the back of the eye, and the cones are at the front. And that happens, like, in the time it takes to blink, their eyes can adjust. So they have the most advanced eyesight in the world. There is according to scientists, there's nothing in the world that swims that sees better than a tarpon, period. Not one fish. So you're dealing with a fish that has incredible eyesight. They did a few studies. One was that when they were doing an odorless study, they put a few tarpon in a, like, a big above ground pool. My buddies, when I caught them and gave them to them, they hand fed them like pets, like Robbie. So it's like a charter dock pets. Right? Now there was three of them in there. They inject them with a chemical, put them in. One year to the date, boom. They're gonna bring them out, kill them, cut out their otolises, and see where the stains at, see how much it grew. Scientist goes over, puts a hook in the water with a piece of bait, fish jumps, pulls hook. They can't catch him. They lost their confidence. Hand fed pets. Spent the whole day. They couldn't catch him. Next day, they couldn't catch him. But now their study is not gonna be accurate because it's not three hundred sixty five days. Right? So they call my buddy back. I'm like, hey. Like, what are we doing wrong? We can't catch these things. He shows up. He's got fluorocarbon. He's got live bait. These fish are sketched out. They're throwing bait. In the morning, it's gone. But, you know, it lays on the bottom of the pool, but they won't eat it. They tried to to drag a net across. They jumped over it. They had to drain it down and shoot them with spear guns to cut their eyes out. And it was over their otoliths out, and it was, like, three days later. So it wasn't exactly, you know, to date to see the stains on the, you know, on the otoliths from the injection. But that quickly, they lost the confidence of the fish. And this is what I'll tell you a really crazy story. At the labs over in by Tampa, they did behavioral studies, the FWC scientists. And they had four tanks, and those four tanks had one scientist that went there, you know, guy in a white lab coat, feeds a fish. And after three months of behavioral conditioning, they were pets. You could hand feed them just easy as pie. They knew you. Right? And that tank never got introduced to another person. But after three months when they'd become behavioral socialized to the point that they were total pets, then they introduced two scientists to the tank. White lab coats. And each day, they did the same, you know, scientists. So they walk up and they'd walk in a circle and feed them and, you know, and, you know, play with them and hand feed them. When they introduced two scientists to the tank, they walked up and then they separated and went to opposite ends, and they walked around both the buckets of food, guys, and white lab coats in all four tanks. Every tarp in the tank stared at the guy who fed them, turned their tail to the new guy. Wow. They didn't pay attention to the new guy. They all knew who daddy was. So they proved they could facially recognize the people and tell us apart and know who was the guy feeding them and who was the new guy. Don't pay attention to him. Wow. So that proves the level of eyesight that they have. If you look at them, you know, on a timetable, before the dinosaurs walked the Earth in the Jurassic period, the Devonian era was here. They've been dated back to the Devonian era. So before a dinosaur was here, there was tarpons here. So they've got hundreds of millions of years of evolution. It's the only saltwater fish in the world that can breathe air. It's gills have valves. If he jumps and rips a gill plate out and starts bleeding to death, he can turn a valve and shut it off. You cut your jugular, you bleed to death. Mhmm. He can turn a valve off and stop that gill from bleeding. He's got the best eyesight in the entire world. After that, he's dumb. He wants to eat and not get eaten and stay warm. But he has a few senses that makes him super special.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: And he gets to be at least 83 years old. They they also have

Tom Rowland: a good sense of smell. I mean, if you're chumming for sharks, sometimes they I mean,

Russell Kleppinger: I don't know any studies on smell, but I know that I've chummed them, and they come to chum

Tom Rowland: them. Right in there.

Russell Kleppinger: Right. But I'm saying I I I don't know any data on that, but I know that it works real good. It works great in Key West Harbor. Oh, yeah.

Tom Rowland: I can tell you that there's a lot of people making a living by putting stuff in the water.

Russell Kleppinger: I think part of that's behavioral conditioning to the location.

Tom Rowland: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's fascinating.

Handling Fish and Getting the Shot

Russell Kleppinger: You know, I tell people when they want that picture next to the boat. You know? And I'm like, how old are you? And they're like, oh, 30, 40. I'm like, how old's your dad? And they're like, oh, he's 60. I said, well, here's your dad laying there. You wanna kill him for a picture? Right. That that fish, it's that big. That buck 50, that 200 pounder, it's a really old fish. So and once once they put that mental image in their head that that's their dad on the end of the rod, then they wanna be delicate with it. You know? They change their whole game of, like, drag them in the boat, get a picture, hurt them. You know? I don't even let them touch them. Hold the leader. Now I've got the lip device I've been working on and trying to come up with better methods to release the fish without hurting them. I mean, I'm terrible. Like, I know, like, my carbon footprint on tarpon is you know? I'm one of the worst offenders because I'm out there torturing these poor things because I catch the most, joke the most, jump the most. You know? I heard them out of spots. I know when I start catching them and they get mad at me and they leave. You know? I know my my pressure I put on them, and I feel guilty about that. So I try to keep keep them as healthy as possible at the same time.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm. What about what about the idea that through your experience, you can take what you have learned and help to preserve hundreds of thousands of tarpon.

Russell Kleppinger: That's what I try to do with every customer and every you know, like, I'm building this new lipping device. It's, you know, similar to a giant BOGA, but I can't tell many times if if you you know. I mean, the customer goes next to the boat and he grabs the leader and he reach out and touches the face of the fish. The second you touch him, he freaks out. Mhmm.

Tom Rowland: A lot

Russell Kleppinger: of the time he freaks out, starts shaking his head and smashes it in the boat, gives himself brain damage. He's dead. He's shark food. So in my mind, I'm like, well, I have a responsibility to try to come up with a better method. Right? Lip gas penetrate the membrane at the bottom. Okay. Fine. But what I think is the worst part about the lip gas, if it was so small that it literally went around the bone and clipped in, it wouldn't be so bad. But every lip gaffe is a six or eight inch gaffe or better, and it goes in the mouth every time they shove it straight in. So now it goes in eight inches and then rotates down and then comes in here and then rips all the way up to here. So we're not talking about a pinhole at the chin. We're talking about a eight inch, you know, incision and laceration all the way up the entire bottom of the chin, which ruins their vacuum feeding abilities. Mhmm. And then the fish can still shake his head and smash in a boat.

Tom Rowland: Right. Yeah. I don't like the, the lip gaff

Russell Kleppinger: very much.

Tom Rowland: I don't see that many people using them anymore. Honestly

Russell Kleppinger: Now what do they do? They take a glove and they put it on, and the fish goes to jump, and they take their hand and shove it up his gill plate. Right. And they grab his lip, and then they lock their hands together. Now that glove is rasping on the gills, damaging their ability to breathe, killing those fish frequently. Their gills are super sensitive. And those studies they did with bonefish, they were telling me that when you take a bonefish out of the water for a picture, you know, the guy, like, holds it up. I I'm trying to remember the exact I mean, don't quote me on this, but it was something retarded. It was like, I think you said it was, like, 14 after out of the water when they're breathing and their gills open and close. The membrane goes, like, drier, and they start sticking together. And they're, like, losing the ability to create oxygen because the gills touch each other and rip apart every time they they open their mouth and flex their gill, and it it damages the membranes. Now they're one of the most delicate ones. You know, bonefish are super delicate, but, you know, at, like, twenty seconds when that gill's going dry and they're flexing their their mouth breathing, they're ruining the the membranes. And with guys with gloves, you watch all the tarp and stuff, and the glove goes in, you know, with a face grab hashtag face grab, and I'm I mean, I used to drag them in a boat. I used to do all that. I used to shove my hand up there to control the fish and get it to the customer, and then this guy has no idea what he's doing. He shakes. He drops and bangs him on a deck, beats him to death. So that's why I'm trying to evolve and come up with the best solution possible for us to make a living and not kill these glorious animals is this giant, you know, lip gripping device, like a giant style Boga

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: That you can clip onto his face. But with the length of it, it's not just controlled by your wrist. It's two handed so that when he shakes, he cannot hit his head on the boat. It's long enough that you can bump the boat ahead and keep his lips underwater and swim the fish, swim them in and out, revive them, open it, and push them away upright. They're if you've I'm sure you've seen their their their their, their ability to react to the they call it the tonic state of immobility. It's incredible. I mean, I've had fish eat the bait, a rod bends over, and he jumps. And he pulls the hook and lands upside down and just floats away Mhmm. And sinks to the bottom. I've taken my anchor as it was deeper water. Look at him, drop the anchor, hit him on the bottom sitting there, and he'll spin it and take off.

Tom Rowland: So often with the rod tip of of a fly rod. You know, you're in eight feet of water or whatever. A push pull. You you let him go, and and he sinks right to the bottom, and you touch him with the fly rod and gone.

Russell Kleppinger: So what I learned with the scientist is that, like, you know, sometimes when I would catch them, I'd flip them over and get them to go to sleep, and then I take the hook out, and I control the fish and do what I do. And then I turn them upright after, you know, after I got the hook out, and then I'd release them. Mhmm. But they seem to be they're they're so, like, the gladiators at heart. You know, some fish, like, sailfish. I don't have a lot of respect for them. They got no heart. They eat. They jump around. They flop, flop, flop, flop, flop, turn brown. Boom. You back up. Boom. Pop them off. Get a picture. Like, rarely do you have, like, an epic battle. Like, a jack, he didn't give up. An amberjack, a permit, a tuna. When that tarpon's on, he's fighting for his life. You know? And if he's got some depth of water to him or a little cooler water like Miami, he's gonna hurt you. You're gonna remember that fish, that client. Mhmm. Now in The Keys, when the water temperatures get warmer, they burn out quicker. You know, we have more advantages. But in this fishery, in this cold water, they're silver tunas. They're brutal. I have fish with three hour battles sometimes on huge fish. And, I mean, world class anglers pulling as hard as they can, and you're like, this is stupid. But in cold water, they're not overheating. And if he gets deep, if he gets in 50 foot of water, I've let him go past the cruise ships out there in the shipping lines. They just swim offshore, and they just keep going. They're like flying fish or jumping around. You're like, is this ever gonna end? You're marking them 300, 200 feet down. He's just swimming and comes up jumping out there, and he's just cooled off and but it it's it's just a different dynamic. If you by the time you get them to the boat where they're beaten, right, to where you can put your hands on them, you have a responsibility, in my opinion, to be as delicate as possible because he's at, like, the edge of death. And once you've gotten him that far, it's your responsibility, in my opinion, to bring them back. And, you know, I drag them, but, generally, doesn't sound good. I don't take the hooks out of my fish in the old days. I never took a hook out. I use barbless circle hooks, and I get the leader on the fish. And I'd have the guy lean over, hold the leader. I'd troll the motor ahead. Don't let him touch him so he doesn't freak out and jump. And I just drag him with a trolling motor and get the fish paddle, and after they got a few shots, I'd let him sink down, you know, four or five feet, take a wrap, and just glide along and let him just start thumping. And he'd start getting stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. And I choke up on him, and I keep him pulling straight, and I'd pop him off. And he paddles away with a barbless circle hook, and I didn't touch him. I didn't you see what happens. The guys catch the fish. Right? Then they beat him down and try to get the hook out of the fish. Then they hold him for the picture. Right? And then they try to let him go. He's at the tipping point. Like, you look and his tail down, his lips up, his stone cold, Steve Austin, stop breathing. You gotta turn him upright, and you push him. He's falling on the side, And that's your dad. That's a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old fish, 80 year old fish if he's huge. So I try to educate the clients and explain it to them. And a lot of the times, you know, depending on the area, how sharky it is, or depending on how hot the water is, I'll either say, this is your fight time. If you can't catch them that time, we're breaking them off. You put the pressure on and make them work harder. Not gonna let them just, you know, wimpy lean on them. You put the coals to that fish. And, you know, the first harping ever, okay, you know, you try to be a little gentle with the guy, and he wants his picture. But I tell him after that, that's it. You know? We get the leader and a fish comes up jumping. I take a wrap. I mean, you don't see a sailfish guy catching everyone to the bill. Mhmm. You get that leader, get a wrap on him, pull on him, put him in the air, jump him, jump him, break him off. Let him go right there while he's still in good shape. So one of the reasons I can catch more fish is I don't try to beat everyone to death. Right. Now, of course, you know, a lot of clients, first tarpon, okay, their first one of the night, whatever, if they get a really big one. But other than that, I try to burn through them and not spend so much time catching every single fish to beat it to death. And, you know, you can get doubles, get leader on this one, boom, handed around, grab that leader, fish jump, break them off. One's on over here. Start pitching out two more baits.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It seems it seems really easier for someone who's catching 800 in a year, catching, and then jumping probably thousands more to to be like, yeah, don't worry about that one because there's gonna be another one. But there's lots of places where catching one is rare. I mean, like, some of these fisheries that are being pioneered in other places, North Carolina, South Carolina, where they don't catch a lot. So catching one is a really big deal, and they want that picture really bad. And so many people want that picture really, really bad of, you know, their trip to The Keys or whatever. My personal opinion is that the video or the picture of the thing jumping by the boat is aesthetically more pleasing to me than a semi dead popsicle tarpon on the surface right there. And so I think a lot of guides in what I was doing was was I had a camera slung around my slung around you know, I'd pull and the camera's over here, and you pick it up and, you you know, you know when they're gonna jump. They're gonna jump right now. You could see it happening. It's really slow. Yeah. And if you can do that, I think, you know It's

Russell Kleppinger: better than a gun.

Tom Rowland: The guides aren't going to have a professional photographer on the boat. That's ridiculous. But, you know, you you have a phone in your pocket. And

Russell Kleppinger: Run the video. Yeah. Pause it. Freeze frame it. How many guys are getting great shots or sitting with their phone? Fish jumps. Yeah. He's videoing it. He goes back. Slow motion, pause. There's the shot. Freeze frame. Here's your picture.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And not to mention that it probably gets you 20 different 20 more trips on when you post that on social media. I'm with you. I think that there is a responsibility. You you certainly have a responsibility to the fish. Tarpon is one of my three favorite fish for sure. And, you know, I'm I'm exactly, on the same page as that. The more I learn about them, the more incredible of a fish they are, and I don't think we really even know that much about them. In the time that I've been fishing for them, we've learned a tremendous amount more about their I mean, there was some, you know, thought that every tarpon you see swam from Africa. Like, in the old Billy Pate videos and stuff like that, it's like, this is what they do, and it's like but it was 60 degrees, and then it got to be 85. And now there's 50 of them sitting in overnight. They're just all super fish. They really are super fish. But, you know, there has to be some, you know, local fish and then some some truly migratory fish. But I I look I I hope that, you know, people like yourself that are catching so many and are doing so much, continue to work with the scientists and continue to to do that so that we can learn more about these fish and and and protect them.

Russell Kleppinger: It's amazing the things that I learned from these scientists. I mean, blows my mind, the stuff that they're I'm like, really? And it makes you you know, you wanna be a good hunter, you gotta know your prey.

Tom Rowland: You know?

Russell Kleppinger: And, like, tricks I've learned. I mean, I I never realized how good their eyesight was. You know?

Tom Rowland: It when you tell me that, it I find it amazing that we can ever get one to bite.

Russell Kleppinger: Right. Exactly. I'm like, how did I ever catch these stupid things if they're this, you know, this good eyesight? But, you know, they gotta eat. Right? And the people like, oh, man. There must be a million shrimp running. You crushed them last time. I'm like, well, there was no shrimp running, but my shrimps were in the water with hooks in them, and they were hungry, and they ate them. It wasn't competing with thousands of other shrimp. So the fishing was actually pretty good because there wasn't much other food around but mine. You know? But it's like things I've done that, like, that I never realized, like, stupid things. Like, I learned a trick. I I don't leave my boat in neutral.

Tom Rowland: Why is that?

The Little Things That Add Up

Russell Kleppinger: What happens when your boat's in neutral?

Tom Rowland: I don't know. You don't go anywhere. You just sit there. Your engine's running.

Russell Kleppinger: I'm saying, like, if you're if you're drifting, if you're trolling, if you're anchored and your boat's in neutral, your prop's turning on the current. Alright. Generally, we all have stainless props. These big, beautiful, shiny four blade, three blade stainless props. And I was like, man, I can't get these fish to get near me. They're just freaking out. I'm being so quiet. And I'm like, I gotta look like a freaking helicopter over the head. Right? I put the boat in gear. I start fishing a boat in gear all the time with the engine off, but in gear. And all of a sudden, my fish are coming so much closer because that prop isn't sitting there spinning.

Tom Rowland: Right. I was like, oh, this is clear water. You got Miami sunshine.

Russell Kleppinger: See that.

Tom Rowland: Florida Keys sunshine.

Russell Kleppinger: They can see me. He can see that good. He see looks up. Instead of being a shadow or a boat, like, I got this thing spinning. Right? So if I don't have my engine on, it's like I put the motor in gear. You can if you dive, right, you can hear the clicking of the lower unit. You can hear the transducers clicking.

Tom Rowland: Absolutely.

Russell Kleppinger: You hear the transducers making all these noises. You know, sometimes I turn off my electronics. Sometimes I turn off my my put my boat in in neutral and put it in gear. I turn my livewell pumps off. I put my bubblers on on rubber mounted pads. And, you know, you don't the same thing that you see in the daytime is like you're pulling and you can see a string coming at you, and then you bend them and they go around you. Mhmm. Those same things happen at night exact same way, except you don't see them because it's dark out. Right? But you start learning things like, well, if I'm gonna drift this bay or if I'm gonna troll a motor to this spot, if I'm gonna sit here and my hole is gonna be in the wind and I'm gonna be making a chime slap. Right? And then you could you could see floating fish spook away at a distance. Mhmm. But then when you learn, alright. Well, if I come in with the wind at my stern across this spot and I drift it or trolling motor and I can, you know, counter myself with it by turning the motor or trolling motoring it, and then you spook a fish and you see a boil and it's three feet from the boat, you know that you snuck up on him that close. Right.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: You know? And then you could turn your livewells on if you have old like, I used to have the old SureFlow pumps.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Russell Kleppinger: Anyway, it was like a blender. Right. Terrible. I use the rules. They burn out all the time. They don't last for anything. They always burn out, burn out, burn out. Then you go to the Sureflows that don't burn out. But, I mean, people are like, is your bilge pump running dry? What is that noise? You could hear from the dock. Right? And that's the SureFlow. They suck, but they don't burn out as fast the rules do. And then I switch those hooker electric pumps, and they have a rheostat switch. Right? Mhmm. So I can turn my volume down real low instead of going because it's just, like, it's very gentle. So I can turn my my sound down. And I swear to god, like, I've I like, you see it. Like, you have to understand it's like throwing grenades. You know? When you hook a big fish and he jumps and lands and you push to school, you know, it's like playing frogger. And you're all the time trying to play in high and go seek these little bastards, and you slip in and you hook them. And then, you know, somebody comes up with their spreader lights on next to you and puts out the bait. You're like, here comes a UFO. Right. That's a UFO to these guys. Like, you know, alien abduction. Boat comes in, spreader lights are on, million candle power spotlights are going on, and it's like, okeydokey. I turn my running lights off. I have an extra set of running lights up high that put no ambient light in the water. So they boats can see me, but I'm not using my LED four mile super bright lights that I can see the bottom at night with.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: Well, if I can see that, don't you think they can? If they can see 5,000 eyes better than me

Tom Rowland: Yeah. They absolutely can.

Russell Kleppinger: You know? So it's like you start sitting there, and you're, like, analyzing everything, and you're going crazy. You're, like, driving yourself nuts. We'll be like, what can I do to get the next bite? You know? Let me shut my lights off, shut my pumps off, put the boat in gear so the prop isn't turning at night. I can see my shadow on the bottom at night.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: Well, this water's crystal clear. I'm gonna go down to 30 pound leader, and I'm gonna fish side planters and get that bait 70 feet out. Because when I come in and I push them and I bend that school like I would in the daytime, I'm gonna bend them out into my baits. Because if it's right here, he's just gonna push away.

Tom Rowland: Interesting.

Russell Kleppinger: You know, it's all these little things you start, like, putting together in your head. The same thing you see in the day happen at night. You just don't know it. Mhmm. But when you start, like, getting nutty about it, all of a sudden, you're catching a lot of fish.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: And you just start changing, like, one, two, three, four, five, ten, 20 different little crazy things.

Tom Rowland: Well, each one of those things I remember one time, I was talking to Tim Hoover when I was a very young guide, and Tim Hoover was winning all the tournaments. And he was nice enough to talk to me about it. And he was like, well, I just pay attention to the details. I just, you know, make sure the hooks are sharp and you know, he just started naming a couple of things, and he's like and then, you know, I get a 1% advantage on all these different things.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: But if I do 50 of them, I get a 50% advantage.

Russell Kleppinger: Out of the game. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: And you know what? I don't know if his math was right or whatever, but it it made sense. And I started thinking, okay. Well, that's what it's all about. It's all about these details. And if, like, for example, you know, I come up here to talk to you about catching 800 tarpon. Like, how in the world are you doing this? But when you start talking like that, like, you're paying attention to every little detail, and you're taking a 1% advantage anywhere you can get it, and you're continually doing this in a fishery that, you can fish during the time when there aren't tarp in other places, and then you're moving to another place where they're tar it makes total sense. It's a it's, it's for sure. I see exactly how it's happening. It's

Russell Kleppinger: it's funny because, like, like, I see people live in boxes. And if you just do what somebody else showed you, you're never gonna be different. You're never gonna change the game. You're never gonna get ahead. You know? And I'm nuts. Like, I don't make any money. I stay up all night. I go crazy. I'm changing lights, changing pumps. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. I'm putting rubber under my bubblers. I'm doing this. And, I mean, you know, if you dive, like, and you hear a Jew fish, right, when he spooks and he goes, and he runs away. Right? Like, wow. Man, I can really hear loud stuff down here. And, you know, you could open a hatch on, like, a Kevlar boat and hear the barnacles popping on the pilings around you when it's really quiet out. And you're like, listen to how the sound resonates. You know? And and then you're thinking, I'm trying to hunt the sneakiest bastard on the planet. I need to change the game and, like, you know, I only use a red headlight at night. Mhmm. I don't put any white light in the water. You know, at the end of the game, you know, like, I try to, like, manage my herd. You know? Like, sometimes I'll hook fish, and I'll drift away or driveway and a fish jump. But I know, like, the herd pushed a little bit. You know? And you have to mat mentally, like, you know, draw pictures in your head of what's going on. And so and the clients are, oh, no lights. Just be quiet. Just let's let's just get out of here. I'll go scope out, you know, say, 200 yards a line and then get over there. And then okay. Now they they, you know, crank up the drags. You fight the fish to me, and now we get our lights and our pictures way over here. And then we do this giant U-turn and then shut down and, you know, either running or idling or wherever the spot, how big it is, and, you know, and, like, you fish a bridge, and you see these morons that hook a fish and run straight up their own, you know, line and go right back to the piling and tie up. And then you see the charter guys that hook the fish, and they run down current, go down the bridge, and then go around to a giant u-turn, and they come in from the top. And then they slip in and turn and then tie back up again while their spot's cooling off instead of plowing right back up over their spot. Mhmm. You know, which is all these little tiny things that, you know, you change the game with by respecting the fish and knowing that, like, everything you do makes them react. Every light you turn on, especially the shallower the water it gets. You know? If you're in 50 foot of water, you know, you could slip a little. You know? You can do certain things to be, like, stupid and, hey. You're still gonna catch a couple fish, but the shallower it gets and the clearer it gets, the more of a ninja you gotta be. And and, I mean, you get so stupid with it sometimes. Like, you're like, well, this headlight has, like, a half dead battery, so I'm using these till I, you know, till I get away from the fish. And then I have a second headlight on my head with a with a fresh battery that I'll try and take pictures with and then come back in and just be like you know, and clients are just like, they're like, okay. And then they see it all work, and then then they laugh when they leave. Like, I know. I know. No lights. No lights. Okay. I know. I know. No. You know, cooler lids. Okay. Know this. Okay. Know that. I mean, the same fly mentality the guy is in the daytime. Don't drop your hatch. Don't do this. Don't do that. It's the same fish. You just don't see them spooking around you. And if you bring that same craziness to the game like the fly guys bring, except you just put lots of hooks in the water.

Tom Rowland: And perfect baits.

Russell Kleppinger: You know, the bait has a lot to do with it. I when I buy my crabs in the keys, they're 500 at a clip. Mhmm. Not many guys buy 500 crabs in a clip. It's expensive. Yeah. You know, shrimps are cheap. They're easy. Shrimp, stupid shrimps. I love shrimp. They're so nice. Mullet are expensive. If you have to buy them, the crabs are crazy expensive. $3.04, $56 a piece. Mhmm. And you look in a guy's live well. Like, I always tell people, I said, you know, if you go to battle, you better be prepared for war. Right? When you look in a guy's boat and there's two rods and four baits in the well, like, what is he expecting?

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: If there's 16 rods in a boat, and on a four hour, I bring 25 crabs minimum. If I have less than that, I'm freaking out. Like, that if I if I see 25, like, damn, we're really low. Like, I need to get that load here. I've generally got a 100 or two in the boat just in case, but I'm keeping them with fresh water and changing them and you know?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Not not many at all.

Russell Kleppinger: I generally have a 100 to 500 in my boat, my wells running, and, you know, keep them alive.

Tom Rowland: You can always justify things like that. Like, you know, you come down to a $6 crab, and you're like, okay. I've got a $120,000 boat. I've got, you know, $30,000 worth of tackle. I've put I put $500 worth of gas in the boat today. I have, you know, I have a $6 drive, $2. Truck to pull all this with, and this person is paying a thousand dollars. So am I gonna run out of bait? No. Not running out of bait. But, you know, that there there's other things that have to happen, though. You you have enough experience to where you know that you could buy 500 crabs at a time, and you're gonna keep them alive, and they're not all gonna gonna die overnight.

Russell Kleppinger: Gotta feed them.

Tom Rowland: Right. You gotta do all kinds of stuff, and that all comes with a tremendous amount of experience and a tremendous amount of failure. Like, I've killed so many shrimp. It's like I'm a shrimp murderer, you know, trying to trying to figure out how to keep my other. Yeah. And then, you know, I've killed tons of crabs by keeping them with shrimp, and and I don't know what it is about shrimp. But when they die, they kill crabs like it's poison. I mean, it's just bad news. So I just don't keep them don't keep them together anymore. But, I mean, you know, you have to be a a a certain experience level to to have enough confidence to buy 500 crabs.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. I mean It ain't cheap?

Tom Rowland: No. It's not cheap, and it's gonna be a hard lesson when you wake up in the morning and every single one of those is dead.

Keeping Bait Alive

Russell Kleppinger: You can take I'll tell you this. You can take a 10 pound bonito, ten, twelve, 15 pounder. Knock the sides off. I'm gonna drop them in a bait pen with, like, 500 crabs in it. Mhmm. And, you know, so there's, like, a carcass with, you know, a lot of meat on both sides of it and then the two filets. And you go out there in a couple days.

Tom Rowland: Gone.

Russell Kleppinger: You know what's left?

Tom Rowland: The the otoliths? Nothing. They they

Russell Kleppinger: Sometimes a cheek plate.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Russell Kleppinger: Sometimes a cheek plate.

Tom Rowland: I know. They go after

Russell Kleppinger: The backbones, everything is gone. Like, it's like Jesus thinks he's eating human if he fell in there and died.

Tom Rowland: Like I guarantee you, you could get rid of a body.

Russell Kleppinger: Unbelievable. These crabs are and they got no claws.

Tom Rowland: I know.

Russell Kleppinger: No claws. The thing's mean as hell. Yeah. He's in the well killing the other crabs.

Tom Rowland: You know what you know what kills them real good, though? Pen fish. Try keeping five pen fish in there with those crabs, and they'll eat the legs

Russell Kleppinger: off all

Tom Rowland: of them.

Russell Kleppinger: The trigger fish, the file fish get to a pen. If it's not double walled, if it's in water, and they start ripping all the legs off. We looked at it, and there's three filefish just ripping away.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Like,

Russell Kleppinger: that just cost me $300. Yeah. Holy crap.

Tom Rowland: I like the

Russell Kleppinger: Get my spear gun up.

Tom Rowland: I like the double walled.

Russell Kleppinger: You got a double walled pen.

Tom Rowland: Walled pens. That's a that's an excellent

Russell Kleppinger: When all their little legs hang out, everything gets ripped apart. You gotta double wall the pens with shrimps and crabs. Mhmm. Triggers, files, pair like, all that kind of stuff that's worst enemy.

Tom Rowland: You get octopus in there? I never have. I have. I had a in my canal would get an octopus in there, and octopus wins.

Russell Kleppinger: Oh, to

Tom Rowland: The octopus finds everything.

Russell Kleppinger: Everything. You're not stopping heaven.

Tom Rowland: I mean, he is he if if it it gets in there, it will be the only thing. And you leave it in the water long enough, it will be the only thing left in there, guaranteed. 100%.

Russell Kleppinger: That's the smartest thing. Like, stupid. I've seen the scientists and stuff at work, like, studies and incredibly smart animals.

Tom Rowland: Smart animal and also super, super incredible in the way that they can fit anywhere. And there's this there's this there's this video my son my son showed me on on, Instagram or YouTube, and it's this giant octopus. I mean, this thing is giant. And it's on a big boat that has scuppers on the side, and it starts to stick its legs out there. And the mate you can hear the mate talking to the tourists that are on the boat. And one of them is like, are you gonna help him get out? And he goes, oh, no. He'll get out right there. And there's this little hole about like this on the scupper on the side of the boat. And he goes, if he can fit his beak through there, then he can fit anywhere that his beak will fit through because he can compress his body to anything else. And, you know, there's other videos of of pretty large octopus getting in beer bottles underwater and then coming out and changing colors and doing all this. But this this one of this this giant octopus fitting through a hole like this is pretty incredible. I mean, they those those that's an incredible animal. That's another animal that, if you if you really truly started learning about that, it will blow your mind.

Russell Kleppinger: They're they're just retarded smart. My buddy worked at a lab in The Bahamas, and they put food in a Mason jar and screw it on in front of them, hand it to him. He grabs it, unscrews the lid, pulls the food out. They had the latch on it. He'd reach up, open the latch, grab the mason jar, bolt they had to keep locks on the cage. I mean, it's super tight seals. Those things are crazy. I put one I've caught them and put them in, like, in the live well on a sport fish or something. And they come like, hey, guys. Check out the thing I caught last night. You know what? I'm on my anchor watching. Gone. The hell did he go? Gone.

Tom Rowland: He went he probably went through the the the the I don't know. Pipe, the drain pipe.

Russell Kleppinger: Wherever he went, they're gone. Every time.

Tom Rowland: They can go anywhere that they can fit their beak. They're they're,

Russell Kleppinger: I mean, they're they're the similar super smart animal. And that's, like, if you take those mentalities and put them towards tarpon you know? And it's funny because it may sound cocky to say or conceited. Like, I don't think there's anybody in The United States that releases as many fish as I do because they don't put in the effort. They're not as crazy. They don't fish eight months a year for tarpon. They don't put in as long a time of houses, different locations to chase these stupid things. And, you know, it's funny because, like, there there becomes, like, two groups. The people that know me and then are my friends, and we work together in trade trips and, you know, we help each other out. And then there's, like, the haters out there. Like, there's impossible. No. He could do that. That guy lies. And then the other one's, like, send you customers this time of year when they they have clients that wanna catch tarpon in January and February. And you're like, I got you. No problem. You know? And then if I got a customer, I send it to them at a time of year, like, in Boca Grande, their spot's good or whatever, and you work together. But it's funny. Like, you contacted me, and you have a charter business, and it's like, you know, you can converse with people. And then there's the other side of the coin that that just if they can't do it, they don't believe it.

Tom Rowland: Well, you always that's exactly what I was just about to say, that if if somebody has only caught five tarpon ever

Russell Kleppinger: Their best day ever.

Tom Rowland: Then it's impossible that you could be doing that. But what they're not hearing and what this podcast will help them to understand is that you're a mad scientist, dude. That's what you are. You're a mad scientist. And, you know, there there are some crazy fly guys out there. There's some crazy offshore guys out there. There's craziness. And when I say craziness, I'm talking about complete obsessive OCD behavior where you are going to try to get every advantage that you can possibly get. And if there is anything that you can do to even if it's in your own confidence to to help you to catch one more fish Yeah.

Russell Kleppinger: You're

Tom Rowland: gonna do it. Bass fisherman the term bass fisherman are that way. They they want every single advantage. They turn off their electronics. They're doing everything. They're using push pulls. Some of those guys are using push poles, and they're those guys are smart. And not only are they smart, but they're fishing for millions of dollars.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. Little green fish pay all the money.

Tom Rowland: Right. Well, I mean but it's the same thing. It's not about the money. It's about, you know, it's about trying to figure out what what you can do better. And the basis of all of that is respect for the fish. And just like you're talking about, if you wanna be a good hunter, you need to know a lot about your prey. If you wanna be a good fisherman, you need to know a lot about those fish, but you also need to know a lot about the way that your behavior affects those fish, and that's within your control. That's what I like. I

Russell Kleppinger: Your footprint There are

Tom Rowland: plenty of things that you can't control about the tarpon. You can't control the weather. You can't control what another boat does. You can't control a lot of these things, but the things that are within your control are, you know, are your bait pumps loud? Do you do you slam the hatches? You know, how do you enter the spot? How do you exit the spot? Are you you know, all of these kind of things are within your control, and those are the type of things that really make an exponential difference and and go between catching 200 tarpon a year and catching 800 tarpon a year.

Hooks and Final Thoughts

Russell Kleppinger: I'll make you laugh. Maybe. Today, on the way back, I stopped at this one tackle shop in the West Coast because I could buy split shots in bulk. And they have that's like eel cloths. It's this big bag. Like, you go to taco shops anywhere in The Keys, and they're, you know, a little bag

Tom Rowland: five a piece.

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. And it's, like, $56. Right. Buying this big, huge bulk bag for, like, $10, but they're shiny. They're fresh leads. And I bought, like, 400 split shots today. And I take them and I put them in a bag bucket of salt water, and then I lay them out in the sun. So they get that gray dullness to them Yeah. Because I don't like shiny leads. When I look in, they're real shiny. I don't wanna use those leads. I leave my leads out to get gray. Like, when I used the bluefin tuna fish, the guys, we would they taped their leads up with magic marker all our swivels and our crimps. Uh-huh. So there was no, like, light reflecting off it. And then you think, well, this is the smartest little bastard in the world for the eye vision. And if I did all that to catch these tunas, you know, so I don't use shiny weights ever. I would buy all my lead in advance, and I What

Tom Rowland: what kind of hook do you use?

Russell Kleppinger: My normal my go to hook is a seven o VMC circle hook, the normal wire one.

Tom Rowland: Is that a red hook? It's black. Black. They make a red hook, though. VMC. Right?

Russell Kleppinger: Yeah. I think they do.

Tom Rowland: What so do you you're are you concerned with, shiny hooks?

Russell Kleppinger: No. Because the hook is a normal black hook, and it's not it's if it's if it if it's, you know, anything than what it is, it's rusting. You know what I mean? So it's not like I don't use, like, a like, the SL 12 hooks. Like, they have the new black ones, and they see the the regular silver ones. And I did okay with the silver ones too, but but I would paint my silver hooks. I had magic marker them or I'd or I'd paint them or I'd I'd tried, having stuff plated so I wouldn't damage, like, the chemical sharpness. My buddy is in the in the aircraft industry, and they they they chemically like, not cadmium, and they plate these different things. And I give them hooks, and I have them plate them for me. Because when I was doing different things, like tuna fish, and I wanted the sharpest hook, but I didn't wanna you know, if you sharpen it, then you take that chemical coating off. Yeah. And something happens when you troll like, one of the best blue on hooks I use for little tunny is an SP 600, a Gamakatsu live bait hook. Mhmm. It's incredible. They quit making, but fuse the Gamakatsus and stuff, the live bait hooks. They're great hooks. But if you rig them on a 900 pound cable with a crimp, something happens with that that black carbon hook and the cable, that electrolysis, and the tips fall off after, like, four hours of trolling.

Tom Rowland: What?

Russell Kleppinger: Try it. Troll them four or five hours, you bring them in, the tips are rusted off missing. And I was in all these different things, and I try and I my buddies at the his dad is a, you know, airplane parts company, and they have plating machines. And I've had everything sandblasted in the academy and plated, you know, plated with this, plated with that. And and I'd go trolling and try different hooks and tune efficient. I'd plate different hooks and try different things and, you know, trying to have the sharpest hook possible. You know, if you're trolling it, the electrolysis builds up on them with the stainless crimp. I rig them on mono instead and just try different things, but it, you know, your tarpon fishing, I think that a dark hook is good. You know? It may not reflect the light as well, but, it's, like you said, it's all the stupid crazy things you do. Like, I leave my lead out in the sun and turn them gray and dusty. You know? They're like, you know, they get your fingers dirty. They're not those shiny new brand new leads out of the out of the bag.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, it obviously works. And you are a you are a wild mad scientist, and and the the things that I've heard about you are true. I can I can tell you that, I I wanna you're you're the kind of guy that I'd like to go fishing with? I have the same mad scientist bone in my body, and, we will get together and do it. So tell us we've been going for an hour and forty eight minutes. Can you believe that? Wow. Once you start telling stories, it goes pretty fast. Tell them how they can get in touch with you and where they can find you.

Where to Find Russell

Russell Kleppinger: My phone number is (786) 290-3474. Instagram, fish Russ, one word. You can follow my stories on there all season long and or the page or Russell Kleppinger on Facebook. Awesome. Awesome. Best ways to reach me.

Tom Rowland: Alright. Well, if you wanna go and catch a tarpon, this is the man. It's got a lot of them and, and obviously knows a lot about them. So, anyway, until next week. We'll see you. Alright, Russ. Great conversation, man. I appreciate it. Appreciate you coming. Appreciate all you guys listening. I hope you learned something about tarpon, something about guiding, something about a work ethic. If you feel like it, run over there to iTunes, rate and review the show. Love to see some ratings pop up there, some reviews. Apparently, that makes a huge difference in being able to get this show to more people, having to be more popular building that audience, and really appreciate the people who have rated and reviewed the show so far. If you haven't, please take a second, run over there and do that. That'd be super awesome. And if you want to, you can hit me with an email, podcast@saltwaterexperience.com. Let me know who else you wanna see on the podcast, and I'll do my best to get them on. Alright. I'll see you next week.