Tom Evans has a few fish stories that are worth telling.

But since he is, how should I say this, not the most socially outgoing of Teton County’s extensive collection of extreme-sport fanatics, there’s a chance you didn’t even know that Tom Evans occasionally goes fishing.

Evans is a solid 69-year-old Pittsburgh lad who survived some 30 years of intense Wall Street activity. For adventure, he enjoyed skiing, bird hunting and Atlantic salmon fishing – that elegant recreation pursued by CEO-types and captains of industry – in New Brunswick and other parts of Canada.

After a crummy Miramachi salmon year in 1968, Tom vowed to find “something different” to chase with his long rods and flies. This decision led him to the Florida Keys and an intriguing parade of legendary guides beginning with Harry Snow, Jimmy Albright, Woody Sextant and Steve Huff.

“When I saw those giant silver tarpon cruising in eight feet of clear water, I decided that sight casting a fly to them was the most exciting thing I could do!” Evans recalls of his early Keys outings. Hanging his first 56-pound  tarpon  that he’d boated with Albright, on the hero board at Bud ’n Mary’s Marina was the beginning of a quest that became a crusade.

Tom Evans is nothing if not a determined fellow, always searching for a new challenge. His battle began before saltwater fly-fishing assumed the growing popularity it enjoys today, when only a handful of anglers had the slightest idea of consistently subduing great fish with wispy tackle and skinny leaders. Evans’ early exploits preceded how-to videos,  seminars at sportsmen’s shows, endorsed guides and an endless parade of saltwater magazine articles for reference. Being on the water and getting your tackle and ego crunched into tiny pieces by leaping fish the size of an adult man wasn’t for sissies.

Evans joined a handful of other driven tarpon-a-holics in the mid 1970s in turning a sleepy Florida west coast area popularized by watercolorist Winslow Homer, into a hammer and tong spring tarpon war. More than 30 years of floating around the rocky outcroppings and endless white shallow bottoms of Homosassa taught Evans and his elite guiding corps the real game of handling big fish.

There may be larger tarpon swimming in Africa or South American oceans but no place on earth produced electrifying sight fishing for these mammoth herring between 150 and 200-plus pounds like Homosassa. The International Game Fish Association  record list of silver giants on a variety of fly rod tippet weights, especially 12-pound (6 kilogram) and 16-pound (8 kilogram) and later 20-pound (10 kilogram), still reads like the who’s who of Homosassa regulars.

Of this assembly of driven men, few approach Tom Evans in diligence. And his efficiency at using a 12-weight fly rod to overpower even the biggest tarpon’s awesome strength is legend. Although he wasn’t the first angler to deliver the magical 200-pound silver king on fly tackle (he doesn’t fish 20-pound tippet inshore), his 191 pounder on 16-pound tippet in 2004 with guide Al Dopirak is astounding.

Since exiting Wall Street, Evans’ home headquarters remain in Vermont. He was introduced to Jackson through a ski-racing son, Chan, who came to Snow King in 1983 in the Nor Ams.  Owing to their skiing passion, Tom and his vivacious wife, Tanya, replaced their annual winter vacation forays to Utah with trips to Jackson. In 1988 they purchased a home at the base of Teton Pass.

Back in the mid-1980s when “the big tarpon quit swimming,” as Tom puts it, and Homosassa anglers like himself spent weeks poling around and not even hooking a fish, it was time for other challenges.

Fly-fishing for bluewater pelagic species is the last frontier. Naturally, Tom Evans dove into the marlin chase with the same gusto he brought to finance, skiing and tarpon taming. But he admits that his initial ocean forays between Baja, Panama and Costa Rica for blue and striped marlin “were a joke.” Despite very limited success, Evans – the relentless tarpon hunter – was now addicted to the blue marlin. “Blues are the most exciting fish I’ve ever caught,” he says with emphasis.

Challenges multiply exponentially when a fly rod user moves out of shallow water into deep ocean territory. The first assignment is locating a skillful boating team that understands the limits of the fly rod. Secondly, it often takes days and many gallons of diesel fuel to locate even one fish, which must be brought in behind the boat either with massive quantities of live chum or by trolling fish-attracting hookless “teasers.”

“Fish shopping” is also necessary because most marlin (blue, black and striped) that erupt from several thousand feet of ocean are simply too big to be managed by the leader constraints imposed by the IGFA for legal fly tackle. Furthermore, Tom Evans was determined to maintain his superiority in the almost impossible 12- and 16-pound fly rod tippet classes rather than moving up to the far more practical 20-pound tippet.

It is universally agreed that the overall best gamefishing crews and captains are found in Australia, where giant marlin that cruise in from enormous depths to feed off the endless reef chains regularly destroy even the best equipped sportfishing plans and schemes. Port Stephens, Bermagui, Ulladulla and the volcanic splendor of Vanuatu became Evans’ new haunts. In 2000 he also located Aussie Dean Butler, a very fishy guy who had pioneered a number of fly rod techniques to subdue everything from temperamental barramundi and the indomitable New Guinea black and spotted bass to dogtooth tuna and the major marlin species.

The combination of Evans and Butler didn’t exactly cruise roughshod over the marlin population at first. But once they located the proper boat, captain and crews and reinforced tackle and techniques, the IGFA record department in Dania, Florida, has stayed busy adding  Thomas M. Evans Jr. to the marlin lists.

Tom’s days as a nose tackle and heavyweight wrestler at the University of Virginia were beneficial when entering the blue marlin arena. But two and a half hours of crowbaring a 273-pound blue marlin on a 13-weight fly rod is a physical strain on man and equipment that would defy any NCAA sport currently played. And this by a gent who’d just had an entire medical book’s worth of orthopedic back and shoulder operations.

For comparison, giant tarpon such as the 2004 record fish of 191 pounds that Tom landed on 16-pound tippet probably never got into water deeper than 20 feet. During the battle, Al Dopirak kept the lightweight skiff nearby and the fish within sight. Lots of pressure can be applied with the fly rod in such a situation.

But from a 31-foot, diesel powered Black Watch (Never Give Up) captained by Charles Wheeler in more than 3,000 feet of water off Vanuatu, it’s a whole different story. On the same 16-pound monofilament tippet material (Ande) and only a 12-inch, 100-pound shock leader, a fly rod is almost powerless during a screaming 600-yard run straight down by Mr. Marlin.

For 50 minutes this particular marlin “turned the blue water white” with its surface antics – leaping, thrashing and greyhounding – Evans remembers. When it shot past the boat, mate Russ Housby slammed a gaff into the fish, about two thirds of the way down the body. The marlin kept going and took the gaff along for the deep dive almost to the limits of the Tibor Pacific fly reel’s gel spun backing.

Magically this great fish did not get tail wrapped or bill wrapped during the melee. The two-and-a-half hour fight covered six miles.

On regular IGFA big game tackle, 15 feet of double line and another 15 feet of heavy leader are permitted. A flying gaff (with a rope attached to a removable head) is also allowed for standard tackle but not fly rod records.

Tom’s 18 inches of 16-pound tippet and 12-inch shock leader of 100-pound test to the fly certainly aren’t the same. So leading such a giant fish to the tuna door in the stern was impossible. That’s where mate Housby, Dean Butler, Captain Wheeler and their native mate Richard Phillips all grabbed gaffs and muscled the marlin over the gunwale and into the cockpit, where it pancaked everyone!

According to IGFA records department honcho Becky Reynolds, Evans’ latest blue marlin, landed on Aug. 10, has met all the requirements for a 16-pound fly rod tippet world record. But due to IGFA’s 90-day waiting period for out-of-the-country record certifications (60-day in U.S. waters), this record will be official on Nov. 21.

In the meantime, what is the marlin hunter planning next? Why it’s  going to be Bermagui (Zane Grey’s favorite location) south of Sydney in January and February for opportunities at big striped and perhaps black marlin. “We’re looking for a boat and a crew right now,” Tom reports.

Why let all that back surgery go to waste.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Paul Bruun writes weekly on his adventures and misadventures in the great outdoors.