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In Conversation with Terry Shepherd
In Conversation with Terry Shepherd, award-winning broadcaster and author of the Jessica Ramirez Thrillers. A deep dive into the people and support systems behind the stories we love.
In Conversation with Terry Shepherd
L. Mark Weeks - Poontown: A Novel of Chasing Tarpon and Glory
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What happens when a high-powered international lawyer trades his Tokyo firm for the unforgiving saltwater flats of the Florida Keys? In this episode, Terry Shepherd sits down with L. Mark Weeks to discuss his transition from the legal world to becoming a three-time Tarpon Tournament grand champion and the author of Poontown: A Novel of Chasing Tarpon and Glory. We dive into the psychological pressure, technical precision, and raw obsession required to pursue the ultimate catch.
In This Episode, We Discuss
- 🎣 The Allure of the Silver King: Why tarpon are considered the perfect game fish and how they can turn a casual saltwater fishing trip into a lifelong obsession.
- 🤝 The Angler-Guide Dynamic: The delicate, high-pressure relationship between tournament competitors and why mutual support is the ultimate secret to winning.
- 📖 Fact vs. Fiction: Why Mark chose the freedom of a novel over a memoir to capture the intense, secretive world of elite tarpon fishing without exposing real-life locations or revealing private secrets shared on the skiff.
- 🧠 Mental Endurance: How the grueling discipline of an international law career translated into tournament strategy and helped him handle the psychological weight of elite competition.
About the Guest L. Mark Weeks walked away from his position as managing partner of a major Tokyo law firm at age 56 with two distinct goals: win an elite invitational Tarpon Tournament and write a novel about the experience before turning 60. He successfully accomplished both, becoming a multi-fly rod world record holder, a three-time grand champion, and the best-selling author of Bottled Lightning and Poontown.
About Terry Shepherd Terry Shepherd is the host of "In Conversation," bringing listeners deep into the minds of today's most fascinating authors and storytellers.
Links & Resources
- Get your copy of Poontown: A Novel of Chasing Tarpon and Glory: https://geni.us/Poontown
- Visit L. Mark Weeks' official website: https://lmweeks.com
- Connect with Terry Shepherd: https://TerryShepherd.com
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In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.
SPEAKER_02What happens when a lifelong obsession becomes a test of identity, endurance, and nerve? For author L. Mark Weeks, chasing tarpon was never simply about catching fish. It became a second life. One that took him from the trout streams of Idaho to the saltwater flats of the Florida Keys. From an international legal career to the unforgiving pressure of elite tournament competition. Weeks is the best-selling award-winning author of Bottled Lightning, a multi-fly rod world record holder, and a three-time tarpon tournament grand champion. At 56, he stepped away from his position as a managing partner of a major Tokyo law firm with an ambitious goal. Win one of the legendary invitational tarpon tournaments before turning 60 and write a novel that captured the strange, obsessive world of the people who pursue the Silver King. And he accomplished both. His new novel, Hoontown, a novel of chasing tarpon in glory, drops readers into the skiff for five punishing days of competition, where a single perfect cast can create a champion, a throne hook can shatter a dream, and the greatest opponent may not be the fish at all. Mark Weeks, it's great to have you here. Thanks for the conversation.
SPEAKER_01I'm delighted to be here, Terry. I should have you narrate my book and uh make a book trailer for for me. So thank you for that great introduction.
SPEAKER_02You grew up fly fishing for Trout and Steelhead. What was it about tarpon that turned a lifelong passion into an obsession?
SPEAKER_01Well, I went to law school in New York, and after law school, I wanted to start fishing again when I had a little bit more time after I'd been practicing for a little while. And I went to the Orvis shop in Manhattan, and I asked this guy, Paul Dixon, actually still a friend, where where I could go fishing within 50 miles of New York City. And I was thinking trout. And it's and he gave me a book that actually was like fishing within 50 miles of New York City. And he said, But you know, the real excitement is in the is in the salt. And I'd never thought about saltwater fly fishing. And I said, Really? He said, Yeah, you can catch big striped bass and bluefish and false albacore. And so he invited me to this um uh this lecture they were having, and then they had a a a one-day tutorial on a beach. And I hooked an eight-pound striper on the beach, and as they say, stripers are the the gate the the gateway drug to saltwater fly fishing. So I was hooked, pardon the pun, and I just became obsessed about saltwater fly fishing. And then several years later, somebody said, Well, you really ought to try tarpon. And I knew this guy from New York who had moved to Florida be to become a guide, Alan Finkelman, and so I I made a couple of dates, arranged a couple of dates with him, and I went down there, and I was just struck by how beautiful the water is, the turquoise water, and then all the different environments, the oceanside, which is beautiful, clear water, and the backcountry, which is more murky and the fish behave differently. But when I was with Alan, I hooked my first fish in this turquoise salmon in, I'm sorry, tarpon in turquoise water. And there's your, you know, pre-tarpon life and then your post-tarpon life. And this fish was probably 90 pounds or so, came slide. It was it was not in a school, it was by itself, came sliding along. After all sorts of miscasts, I finally got the fly in the right place. I hooked it, it jumped clear out of the water, like a six-foot-long fish, and that just blew my mind. It threw the hook, but but that was it. My life had changed forever. And so I every year I tried to find more and more time to get down there, you know, between family and and work. Um, and it it just be it really did become a lifelong obsession.
SPEAKER_02Your goal was to win one of the major tarpon tournaments by age sixty. How much did setting that deadline change your life?
SPEAKER_01Well, so that deadline was very important to me because if I didn't set that deadline for myself, it wasn't going to happen. And I had this great guide. I was living in Japan at the time, I had a great guide that I was fishing with for 14, 15 days a year, Andy Thompson, and he had an angler that he was fishing for the tournaments with, or maybe three. So I thought I was really struggling with how am I going to get the right guide, even though I wanted to do it. I'd signed up for a couple of the tournaments, I was on the waiting list, but I still didn't know I was gonna come together. And one year, I think I was 54 at the time, I was fishing with Andy, and he told me that his his angler um had a child and basically had to drop out of the tournaments because of spousal pressure. And so I said, Look, Andy, if you will fish me in these tournaments, I will promise to come down and practice for three months a year. That's and he agreed to do it. So that's when I started in at 56, and I said, Okay, I'm gonna give this five years, and we're gonna try to win one of these big one of the big three tournaments. And you know, if it doesn't happen, then I'm out. I'm not gonna beat a dead horse. And I wanted to I wanted to win, at least one, but I also wanted to live the experience because I'd heard so many stories about these tournaments. Ted Williams, the famous baseball player, started one of the tournaments, the Gold Cup, which is the oldest uh of the tarpon tournaments in the Keys. And I just wanted to experience what it was like to be down there for 90 days, because whenever I was in the Keys, it was sort of like visiting Neverland as a lost boy. You forgot about everything else. Work went away, family went away, any problems you had went away. Whenever you spoke to somebody who was tarpon fishing, whether they were 18 or 82. It was always the the tarpon, the weather, the anglers, the guides, their significant others. That's all we spoke about. And you met people who were down there living in their car fishing for a tarpon, and then there were people living at Ocean Reef in a $10 million home who were just as obsessed. And we all spoke about the same thing. So it really did remind me of Neverland. And then Bob Rich, who's written many books about fishing, he he wrote about Andy Mill and described him as Peter Pan. And I had the privilege of meeting Andy later, and he really did sort of embody that sort of ageless, eternal person who was the best at what he did. And I wanted to be down there for three months and experience what that was like, and then write about it because I thought there was a story there.
SPEAKER_02We're talking with L. Mark Weeks about his book Poontown, a novel of chasing tarpon and glory. His website is lmweeks.com. For listeners who have never fished for tarpon, what makes the Silver King such a formidable opponent?
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess so. There are two aspects to that question. One is why do people become so obsessed with them? And then the second one is, you know, what makes them so challenging. The to answer the first question, they are if um I think Steve Huff, a famous guide, said, if you ask Guide to design the perfect fly rod game fish, he would say, I've already done it, here's a tarpon. Because tarpon um get quite large. The world record on fly on 20 pound is 202 pounds, the all tackle is I want to say 278 or something. So they get quite large, but they live in very shallow water, spend most of their time in shallow water. And you can catch them in water anywhere from three to seven feet typically, and most of it's sight fishing. So you see them. So you see this giant torpedo, you know, six feet long, eight feet long, whatever, lying there, and you get to throw a fly to it, and they will eat the fly. Now, sometimes they won't, but uh, and then they you find them in in different conditions because tarpon can breathe air, they can live in the high oxygenated ocean water, but they can also live in the very low-oxygenated uh warm water of the Everglades, for example. And they behave very differently in all of those places. And they but they all do one thing. Once you hook them, they go airborne. And that is just one of the most thrilling things you can experience. And that's what gets people obsessed about them. Now, why are they so challenging? They're so challenging because every every step of the way from feeding them to getting them to bite to landing them is technical. So you have to get the fly in the right place. They are more sensitive than you think. If you throw it past them, strip it back at their face. It's like a cockroach running at you across the floor. They will freak out. If it's too far in front of them, the fly sinks and they'll swim over it because they won't typically swim down to get it, and on and on and on. And then when you hook them, you have to hook them a certain way because they have very hard mouths, and often they'll times they'll throw the hook. You also have to wait for them to close their mouths and turn, or you'll just strip it right out of their mouth and they have very large mouths, and it can take more time for them to close it than you think. And then uh you have to clear the line without getting it wrapped around your hand or something on the boat or the butt of the rod or the reel. And then when they jump, you have to bow to them to throw them slack so you won't break off the the tippet, and and uh right up until the end game of when the guide grabs it, and they will find ways to screw you at any step along the way. And and they're also big, you know, you're it's like you're playing with farm animals, basically. They're they're big animals when a guide goes to grab them by the face. Nobody likes to have somebody else's hands in their mouth. Sometimes they freak out and they jump up, they've been known to break the nose of guides. So it's just technical from beginning to end, and that's one of the things that makes it so rewarding when it's done right.
SPEAKER_02You and Captain Andy Thompson won the Don Hawley Invitational twice and the HLM Tarpon Cup. What made that partnership so successful?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh as another uh very famous guy, Randy Tao, said there there comes a point in the anglers' career where they they they top out. So no matter what they do, um they're not gonna get any better. They can it's it's just like a basketball player. You know, you can practice as much as you want, but and you may be a very good at it, but you're never gonna be Michael Jordan, for example, or a golfer. You're never gonna be Tiger Woods. You could spend 24-7 on the golf course, you're never gonna be that good. But so you know they're gonna top out, and then the angler knows that not every guide knows no guide knows everything and can do everything. And but you're a team. So at some point in time, the question becomes how well do you gel as a team? And do you mutually support each other? And for Andy and me, it was all about the mutual support. And I think that was one of the secrets to our success. And we fished in our own boat. You know, we just talked about what we were doing, we didn't obsess about what other people were doing because we had no control over them. You often didn't even see other competitors, even though there are 25 boats on the water in the tournament. So it was that just mutual support, I think that was one of the things that um uh really helped us win.
SPEAKER_02Is elite tarpon fishing more about instinct, preparation, teamwork, or emotional support?
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's about all those things. The preparation is definitely key, practice is definitely key. I think as an angler, um there is is no more important tool in your kit, so to speak, than your guide. And so finding a good guide is is paramount. And a good guide can be somebody who's seasoned, who's at the top of their career, or it could be a junior person who's coming up and you you know is going to grow into a brilliant guide. From the guide's perspective, they want a competent angler who's going to listen and and hopefully grow. And you you need that whole combination in order to win.
SPEAKER_02We're talking with L. Mark Weeks about Poontown, a novel of chasing tarpon and glory. His website is lmweeks.com. At what point did you realize your years of notes and stories could become a novel?
SPEAKER_01I think so. I started tarpon fishing until then one, and I started keeping notes from the first day. And I thought when you're on the water in a skiff with somebody else, sometimes with a friend and the guide, or sometimes with just the guide, you hear these great stories. And people will sometimes tell you things on a skiff that they won't tell their therapist. And whenever I heard a great story, I would jot it down. And then, of course, I read there's a long history in the Florida Keys about tarpon fishing and bone fish fishing and permit, and then they have offsh great offshore fishing as well, but just decades and decades of these stories. And so I read quite a few books about it as well. But after before I started tournament fishing, even then I felt like I had enough for a story, but I didn't have enough to write about uh a tournament. I I wanted to know what it felt like to go from zero to hero and back to zero or just stay at zero and and just how that felt to lose at and how it felt to be on the water on a day when which would otherwise be wonderful if you weren't fishing a tournament. So there's an old saying that um there's nothing like a tournament to ruin a great day of fishing, and it's really true. If you weren't fishing a tournament, no, you may break off a fish or or it may jump off and and you feel like you've had a wonderful day because you went out there, you saw saltwater crocodiles, you saw manatees, you saw dolphins, you know, wonderful things, osprey, wonderful things happened. Okay, you didn't get a fish to the boat, but still it was a great day. Well, if you're in a tournament, you don't care about all those other safari-esque things. You just want to catch fish. And if you don't catch your fish, it doesn't matter how many you jumped because you didn't catch your fish, so you're going back with a bagel or a zero to the dock. So all of a sudden, you know, you're you're tormented. I'll give you I'll give you an example. One of my best days of fishing ever. We fed 18 tarpon and jumped like 12 or something, and but we only caught six, only six, which is a fabulous day of tarpon fishing. And I should have been ecstatic about it. Well, I didn't sleep that night because it was the first day of a tournament. And I thought I had totally screwed up our chances of winning that tournament. Now we actually went on to win, but that the the point is that the tournament just can suck all the joy out of it. On the other hand, it makes you a much better angler for those fun days.
SPEAKER_02Why did you choose fiction rather than memoir to tell their story?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a good question. I think for the same reason that I did not put the story in the Florida Keys, or the same reasons, which are one, the Florida Keys has this very strong personality, and I didn't want it to be about the Florida Keys. Carl Hyacon and many others have already written about the Florida Keys. I wanted it to be about tarpon fishing and the feeling that tarpon fishing gives you, and the feeling that tournament of fishing gives you. I didn't want to burn spots, you know, I didn't want to reveal any spots. And uh I didn't want to um uh out anybody, so to speak. So I wanted to make it uh complete fiction. Plus, if it's fiction, you you have more um leeway to play with uh different themes. And and also there's a lot of uh memoirs that have been written.
SPEAKER_02So I just thought fiction would be more fun. The name Poontown come from.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's another good one. So it's as an aside. My project manager and all of my editors, my copy editor, proofreader, line editor, and developmental editor are all women. And although it's not just women, but I've had a lot of people say that I should change the title. But but the reason it's called Poontown is Tarpon have many nicknames, and one is Tarpoon, and sometimes that's shortened to Poon. And so people will say, How many Poons did you jump today? or I caught a big poon today, or something like that. And over the years I've heard many people refer to Isla Murata as Poontown or the Florida Keys as Poontown, and and that just seemed to be the most compelling title. So that's what I've got.
SPEAKER_02You have said that people reveal things on a skiff that they would never tell a therapist. Why do you think the water creates that kind of honesty?
SPEAKER_01I think people feel safe out there. I never thought of it that way, but it's actually kind of a safe place. Um an often a male safe place, although obviously women tarpon fish as well, and there are some up-and-coming anglers that I think um well, female anglers who are winning tournaments, and I think eventually you're going to have some of a woman anglers going to win the gold cup as well, which hasn't happened yet, but I think it's just a matter of time given given the pipeline of of strong women anglers. But you just get out there and you, you know, your inhibitions fall away because you're like in the Everglades, for example, you don't even have cell service. And so, you know, you're with people you trust typically, or you wouldn't be out there with them. And so stories often flow.
SPEAKER_02Talking with Mark Weeks about Poontown, a novel of chasing tarpon and glory. LMweeks.com is the website. How do you balance the technical details of tarpon fishing with the need to keep the story accessible to non-anglers?
SPEAKER_01So that's another great question. This goes back to your uh question about the memoir. Uh why not make it a memoir? Why, why, why write fiction? And when I first started writing, I created all these addenda. One was a note about fly casting, where I explained the mechanics of fly casting over several pages. And I realized, first of all, that's sort of presumptuous and pretentious because there's a lot of books out there, great books out there about uh fly casting and the mechanics of fly casting and how to and it's not supposed to be a how-to book. It's supposed to be a novel. And as you know, novels are supposed to trigger people's at a at an emotional uh level. So I through the editing process, I really cut it back to um what I thought was the absolute minimum of information about uh the fishing that I needed to give the the reader for them to appreciate the story. And that balance was challenging, but my editors helped with that because none of them fish. And so I knew I was getting things right when they stopped saying, wow, this is just way too much information about how to cast a fly, for example.
SPEAKER_02People suggest that the true battle is not with the fish, but within the competitors themselves.
SPEAKER_01What are they really fighting? Well, they're fighting themselves. I mean, they are they are obviously fighting with the uh with the fish, but it it's really um uh uh about how well they can do. And I think in that way it's similar to golf, although it's more of a team sport sport than golf, because um you you have a you as an angler have a guide, and so you have to work as a a team to succeed. But the um the interests of the guide and angler are different. The guide, you know, from a self-esteem standpoint often has a career um and can go back to that career. But for the guide, let's say they they you know don't do well in the tournament, they can go um back to practicing medicine or whatever they're doing. But for the guide, it's it is their career. And so they tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves, and if they're not careful, they can end up that can translate into more pressure on the angler that they can put on the angler that they would otherwise not put on the angler if they were just fun fishing. And if a guide is not careful, they can crush their angler, uh, which can be counterproductive. So it's really a lot of it is about how how are you going to gel as a team. And you know, depending on who you talk to, there are different ways of doing that. But I know there's one famous angler who's won all the tournament tournaments and has always been an amazing angler. And like he's the guides tell me he's the best caster they've ever had on their boat, for example. But he and his first guide, he's got a different guide now, they really struggled for years and years and years before they even won one tournament. And another guide told me it was because they weren't they were always, you know, like cats and dogs, and they weren't able to gel as a team.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Did your career as an international lawyer prepare you for the strategy and pressure of tournament fishing?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell It prepared me for how to prepare, if that makes sense. And it and it prepared me, it helped me be disciplined about it. And I knew also going in what what my limitations were. And so it helped in in in that sense. Because practicing law is it can be like manual labor in that the hours are very long and can and it can be physically as well as mentally taxing. So I think that discipline helped me on the tournament circuit.
SPEAKER_02Most of us who come to the keyboard to tell stories have done something else beforehand. What advice would you give to someone considering a major reinvention later in life?
SPEAKER_01You mean like becoming a lawyer? I'm sorry, becoming a writer? I I I well later in life, of course, it depends on how that that's defined, but um and and at the uh the risk of totally nerding out and being boring about this. Um I would say make sure your financial ducks are in a row. So, you know, make sure you can afford to do it financially before you um uh jettison the career. Because um, as you know, writing um as a way of making money can has a some very unique challenges. What's next? Oh, that's a good question. I I've had a lot of demand for sequel for for bottled lightning, and uh so I think I'm going to start. I've got an outline of that. I have a pantser, but I actually sort of an outline came fully formed in my brain at one point in time, so I uh I've written that down. Um I have an idea for a sequel to Poontown, and there's a book uh my father died in an accident, traffic accident on a mountain road when I was uh 19, and I have an idea for a murder mystery that um has been triggered by that, and I'd like to write that. But I my list of books that I would like to write or stories that I would like to write is very long, and so I um I need to get at it if I'm gonna get through my list.
SPEAKER_02What do you hope that readers will take away from their encounter with Poontown?
SPEAKER_01Terry, that is a wonderful question, and I want them to feel the passion that I feel for the sport, and um I want them to feel the eternal nature of it. Now, obviously, you know, time goes marching on and there's nothing we can do about it, but as I recall, there's an a something there's an ancient Chinese saying, I think um maybe that's just apocryphal, but to the to the effect that each day of fishing doesn't count towards our allotted days on Earth. And I don't know if that's true, but that's how I feel when I'm uh fly fishing for tarpon.
SPEAKER_02The book is Poontown, a novel of chasing tarpon and glory, written by our special guest, L. Mark Weeks. His website is lmweeks.com. A fascinating conversation. Mark, thanks so much.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Terry. Really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00In conversation with Terry Shepherd is a copyrighted presentation. All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepherd next time in conversation.