![]() ![]() Since that life-changing bite, Mill estimates he’s fished for tarpon on average 40 to 50 days a year, working with some of the game’s top guides along the way. With a big open mouth that tarpon came up and ate the whole thing. I was young and innocent but I knew something was about to happen. “One came up behind my fly,” Mill recalls, “and then my fly grabbed a bit of sargassum grass, so I just started shaking my rod tip. I’ll never forget that image.”Īround forty years ago, Mill caught his first tarpon on a fly, an oceanside fish near Islamorada. According to many, there’s never been anyone who can feed tarpon a feathered hook better than Mill.īefore fly fishing dominated his life, Mill was a well-known TV-show host before that a broadcaster and, before that, an elite downhill skier who competed at the 19 Winter Olympics. One of three anglers to ever win tarpon, permit and bonefish fly tourneys. His accolades support such bold claims: more invitational tarpon fly tournament wins than anyone, including five prestigious Gold Cups. In the eyes of many guides and anglers, Andy Mill, age 69, originally from Aspen but having fished and hunted across the globe, is considered one of the greatest fly anglers in history. If you’re a tarpon who’s been around a while, traveling myriad edges and banks, occasionally feeding and sometimes making a mistake about what you feed upon, there’s a good chance you or someone you know has met Andy Mill. But sometimes there’s a perfect little morsel just out of reach, skittering away and you just cannot help yourself, so your oversize eyes nearly cross as you hunch beneath it, then you lunge upwards to grab the snack except: it’s not a snack at all, and then you’re in the air, trying to rid yourself of your mouth’s strange sting. ![]() These days such offerings appear at every corner. You’ve also grown familiar with strange offerings that fall from the sky-black, or tan, or chartreuse-some of which move too fast or swim toward you or sink unnaturally. Even though your stay is temporary, and resident sharks want to eat you, you’ve got to eat, too: mullet, pinfish, shrimps, crabs, worms. You’re forty, fifty years old, familiar with banks and channels of the Florida Keys, since they’re part of your annual migration. Not some backcountry baby hiding beneath mangroves but a full grown, one-hundred-fifty pounder, back as wide as a football. Words by Ryan Brod | Photos by Dave Fason ![]()
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