My name is Captain Doug Henderson, I’m a 5th generation native to the Forgotten Coast of Florida. 

Because I was raised where Floridas Big Bend meets the Panhandle mean’t I would grow up in one of the premier inshore fisheries Florida has to offer. My home waters range from the Apalachee Bay to St. Joe Bay.  That area includes Saint Joe Bay, Apalachicola, Carrabelle, Alligator Point, Panacea , Steinhatchee, and Cedar Key.  These waters are home to Species such as Speckled Trout, Redfish, Jacks, Cobia, and the famed Silver King (Tarpon). As a young man I used artificial’s in search each of these species.

Soon after I moved to the Tetons in search of the famed skiing & annual snowfall levels. Powder snow pulls on your attention but luckily for most of us it eventually melts as spring arrives. This just so happens to coincide perfectly with Floridas gulf coast tarpon season. It’s almost as though it were designed that way. So I still found myself on the Florida Flats during the months of April – Sept. In Wyoming I began fly fishing the main fork of the Snake and the South fork of the Snake in eastern Idaho. The very next summer was 2000 and along with a new millennium brought a new idea and way of fishing. I knew I needed to be involved with sight fishing tarpon along the gulf coast flats.

This sport was new to Northwest Florida then and only one person was successfully Fly Fishing to swimming fish. I gave him a call to book a day and he assured me that these Panhandle fish eat fly’s regularly.

We left the Dock one late June morning with him saying to me “You ready to see some fish?”  We dropped the hook and I got a few practice casts with the first 12 weight fly rod I’d ever held in my hands and here came the first string.  I made a 50ft. cast and he said “LEAVE IT!” He then instructed me to put some strips in when suddenly the eat that haunts so many tarpon fly anglers dreams happened. The bucket mouth of a 190+ pound Tarpon ate the fly and ripped every bit of fly line and a large portion of backing from the screaming fly reel. This all happened in several seconds and she was gone forever! With shaking arms and feeling weak in the knees from an unanswered adrenalin rush I looked up at the Captain and said, “That’s it, I’m all in!” I bought a Skiff a few weeks later and have spent all my spring & summer months honing my Fly Angling/Guiding skills on the gulf coast flats from the Everglades to the Panhandle ever since.

Capt. Doug Henderson