Photos 1-6
My friend Nick is commercial fisherman who works 3,500 traps for stone crabs in the Gulf and 500 more in the backwater for blue crabs. Wherever he goes, he carries fishing rods and spends as much time with an outfit in his hands as he does pulling traps.

He and I were working a 12-mile stretch of coastline this day until we came across good numbers of tarpon. From noon until early evening, we hooked six and landed five.

I took over 80 photos while Nick was busy fishing, and selected those I felt turned out the best. The key to getting the jumping shots was to keep my eye against the view finder for almost the entire time. Even so, I missed most of the jumps. They happened to fast that I was usually left with only a big splash. I got a splitting headache for my efforts, but the pictures that turned out were well worth it. The camera I use is a Nikon D50 digital with an 18 to 55 mm lens.