10/30/2026
Before it was the Tarpon Capital of the World, Boca Grande was a mullet camp. A quick history lesson 🎣
1700s: Cuban and Spanish crews ran "fishing ranchos" on these islands, salting mullet for Havana. By 1884 the roe sold for double the fish: $6 a quintal vs. $3.
1870s: A teenage runaway from Key West, Frank Futch, ended up at a mullet rancho on Gasparilla. His sons, grandsons and great-grandsons would guide the pass. Locals still say: shake a tree and a Futch will fall out.
1902: An English angler called it "the most fashionable tarpon ground of to-day." A guide and boat cost "less than a sovereign" a day, about $5.
1907: The phosphate railroad arrived, and the rich men came by train.
1911: The future Gasparilla Inn opened, and A.W. Dimock wrote: "If there is better tarpon fishing in the world than can be had at Boca Grande… I have never heard of it."
1916: On June 9, Benjamin Crowninshield landed 25 tarpon here between sunrise and sunset, a world record then.
2013: Tarpon went catch-and-release only.
2026: Frank's grandson, Capt. Freddy Futch, entered the first class of the Boca Grande Fishing Guides Hall of Fame.
Today, up to 100 boats work the pass at once, and tarpon anglers who live nearby add $108.6M a year to this coast (2011 study).
The secret behind all of it: hill tides. Around the early-summer new and full moons, the outgoing tide runs hardest and flushes pass crabs out of Charlotte Harbor, straight to as many as 10,000 tarpon waiting in the pass, down to its 85-ft hole.
2027 hill tides, Boca Grande Pass (NOAA, strongest ebb):
🌑 May 6–8
🌕 May 19–21
🌑 Jun 4–6 ← biggest of the year: 3.6 knots, Sat Jun 5, ~6:30 pm
🌕 Jun 17–19
🌑 Jul 2–4
🌕 Jul 17–19
Peaks land late afternoon into evening, about twice as fast as the weeks between. Wind can shift any tide, so check the day's prediction.
Send this to whoever you're fishing Boca with in June.
Sources: U.S. Fish Commission (1884) · Boca Grande Historical Society · Boca Beacon · Turner-Turner (1902) · Dimock (1911) · Babcock (1921) · FWC · Fedler/BTT (2011) · Florida Sportsman · NOAA · USNO · USGS
