Episode 79: George Copeland - Snook Giant

Mill House Podcast

Mill House

Wilderness, Sports, Leisure, Education, Hobbies

5 • 973 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2023

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

At 74 years young, George Copeland still has the fire in his belly to chase the snook tide late into the night. As a young man of 8, he found a passion that would drive him deep into the fishing abyss. On his bike, similar to Steve Huff, he'd race around Ft. Lauderdale looking for snook and tarpon that would regularly be found in Tarpon Bend, New River, and all the canals in the center of a rapidly growing town. He would soon partner up with buddy, Steve Kantner, and spend much of his time bridge fishing where he also met likeminded snook nut, Tommy Greene. These three would refine snook fishing to a religious art form. People would seek them out, bewildered by the size of their trophy fish. They were renowned and eventually became professionals: Copeland and Greene store owners, Kantner a popular author and guide. Before settling into what he'd do for the rest of his life, George tried his hand at guiding for tarpon in the Keys. A prized possession was a boat he purchased from Little John Emory a few days before he passed. He fished with Ralph Delph and other legendary guides, and at 32, he purchased the famous T&R Tackle in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Today, 42 years later, he's still outfitting some of the biggest and best offshore boats on the billfish circuit. So as we follow up with the history makers of our sport, we'd be remiss without the "George Copeland Story!"

Transcript

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0:00.0	George Copeland has been one of the greatest snuck fishermen to ever throw a mullet over the side of a bridge.
0:12.0	He and his good friend Tommy Green caught a pile of monsters for decades.
0:17.0	And on today's podcast, he walks us through those glory years, when sleep was brief and 20 and 30 pound fish were common.
0:26.1	We hope you enjoy.
0:32.0	We broke everything, we broke lines, we broke lines we broke
0:34.8	cooks we broke rods we broke our minds we broke marriages we broke the whole thing we came up with the idea of going out that night and chasing girls and whoever had the biggest pair of pain he's when the pot.
0:50.0	I knocked another arrow and he turned around the other way and I shot him going through the other way so I double-lunged him both ways.
0:57.0	But it was nothing for us to paddle an air mattress out into government cut.
1:01.0	I got him on.
1:04.0	All right now, we're going to teach him a lesson.
1:07.0	I'm just an old guy that likes to fish.
1:09.0	I'm not quitting yet.
1:11.0	And he said, well, who the hell do you think you are, Sue App? And I said, that's exactly who I am.
1:17.0	Life's journey to the grave should not be one arriving with a pretty well- body but rather skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke
1:27.1	thoroughly torn out thoroughly used up proclaiming wildly. Wow! What a ride!
1:35.0	There's something fishy going on here. George Copeland, man, we go way back.
1:47.0	Yeah, quite a ways.
1:51.0	Yeah, it's not that we spent a lot of time together, but when I first got into this whole game of trying to catch a tarpin,
1:57.0	a friend at the time was John Glorial. I bought a bunch of equipment from you. Yeah, you know.
2:04.3	All kinds of stuff. But you were you had a big spectrum in the world of fishing but it was
2:10.3	prominently focused towards snook and we want to talk about that but you made
2:14.7	mention that you used to be a guide in the keys you have a 200 pound fish in your
	...

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