Pub Date: September 15, 2026
Genre: Fiction/Contemporary
Publisher: South Fork Publishers LLC
Five Teams. Five Days. One Legendary Fish
Award-winning author and three-time tarpon-tournament Grand Champion L.M. “Mark” Weeks welcomes you to Poontown, where obsession, memory, and fish collide.
The Sabalo Cup Invitational is the most prestigious tarpon fly-fishing tournament in the world, attracting an unforgettable collection of obsessives, oddballs, and glory-chasers to the sun-scorched backcountry and turquoise ocean of the Tequesta Isles. For five brutal days, elite guides and determined anglers battle giant tarpon, sharks, weather, rivals, aging bodies, and their own stubborn ambitions in pursuit of victory.
The competitors are as colorful as the waters they fish. A burned-out lawyer chasing one last shot at glory. A French magnate who somehow arrives at every tournament start looking like he never went to bed. A retired exotic dancer turned psychologist battling self-doubt as fiercely as the fish themselves. Together, they plunge into a world where carefully crafted plans unravel with spectacular efficiency.
Naked Frenchmen. Jet ski disasters. Crocodile encounters. Midnight rescue missions. And somewhere amid the chaos swims the fish of a lifetime.
Wildly funny, surprisingly moving, and drawn from decades of real-world tarpon fly-fishing experience, Poontown is an authentic adventure about obsession, friendship, redemption, and the dreams we keep chasing long after common sense tells us to quit.
Perfect for fans of Carl Hiaasen, Patrick D. Smith, and character-driven adventure fiction filled with humor, heart, and unforgettable characters.
Excerpt
Excerpt from Poontown: A Novel of Chasing Tarpon and Glory by L.M. Weeks (South Fork Publishers, LLC, 2026), Reprinted with permission.
The sixteen-pound tippet parted like a strand of hair, and the hundred-pound tarpon, its scale-covered back glittering in the sun like green chain mail, swam free near the surface. It readjusted its enormous protruding lower jaw—slightly dislocated from being relentlessly pulled on—rose to gulp air, and disappeared into the deeper water off the edge of the flat.
Iain Holden smiled. “A little too much heat?”
“Yeah, I figured I might break her off at that angle, but I wanted to push it to the limit.” Greg Johnson fought fish to the breaking point on practice days, and he knew his guide wasn’t angry. He wanted to experience how the rod felt in his hands when he popped the tippet—the weakest part of the clear leader—on a big tarpon. Then, during a tournament, he could dial the pressure back to eighty percent to bring his target to hand quickly without overstressing the line.
Greg’s eyes lingered in the fish’s direction, feeling the familiar mix of exhilaration and frustration from losing a big tarpon. June couldn’t come soon enough. The Sabalo Cup, named after the Spanish word for tarpon, kicked off in just a couple of weeks, and Greg had never felt more prepared or confident.
Everything Greg had done—selling his law practice, fishing obsessively, forcing himself into the gym, practicing his casting until his shoulder whined—had made him the best fly angler he could be.
Landing seven giant tarpon before 2 p.m., an extraordinary number to catch and release in one day, Greg had already experienced the best fly fishing of his life. String after string of massive sea creatures poured into the shallows. From a distance, they looked like ants marching across the flat; as they approached, their size—and Greg’s excitement—increased.
The often-finicky tarpon had been particularly bitey, sometimes even fighting with each other over Greg’s three-inch long beige pink squid fly. “They’re like piranhas today!” Iain said, laughing, after one particularly vicious eat.
At first, Greg had been happy just getting invited to compete in the Cup, but as the years wore on without winning, he wondered if he was just a loser who had abandoned a seven-figure career to participate in a tournament that didn’t even pay out a cash prize. Winning would prove to himself and everyone else that he deserved to fish the Cup.
His knee throbbed as he shifted his weight, reminding him of the previous year’s meniscus surgery. The infirmity had thrown him off balance often enough that he wore a knee supporter when fishing, but he tried not to obsess about it.
Greg also wanted to win for Iain.
Iain was a highly competitive former college linebacker-turned-professional tarpon guide, whom Greg had convinced to be his tournament partner. They’d fished together for decades, and Iain had helped Greg land the biggest fish of his life. Winning the Sabalo Cup would guarantee Iain product endorsements and business from top anglers for the rest of his career. But more than anything, Greg knew Iain wanted to have his name on the trophy alongside his heroes in the guiding community.
Greg believed in their chances in part because he and Iain had already won two of the other major tournaments: the Megalops and the Dimock. But the Sabalo Cup was different. As the oldest and most prestigious of the tarpon tournaments, it was the Olympics of saltwater fly fishing. The others were qualifiers.
And it was crunch time. Unless they won this year, it was the last time they could compete before needing to requalify by winning one of the other tournaments again. And Greg, approaching fifty-five, didn’t think he had it in him to qualify for another Cup.
As if reading the turmoil in Greg’s mind, Iain said, “Given the way you’re fishin’, if I can find you fish, we could win this tournament. All we need to do is beat Nathan and Landon.”
Is THAT all?! Greg thought. “Right. The only problem is they’re the best team on the planet—no pressure there.” Greg knew Iain was trying to be supportive, but five consecutive years of getting your ass kicked by the dynamic duo had a way of making one pessimistic.
As Iain idled back to retrieve the twenty-four-foot push pole he’d planted in the bottom to protect their spot on the sand bar while they’d fought the fish, Greg took two bottles of water from the cooler, then shut the lid quietly and sat on it. Needing relief from working the tarpon in the oppressive heat and humidity that enveloped them like steam in a Turkish sauna, he emptied the liquid in one bottle over his head, savoring the blessed coolness. He mixed a packet of electrolytes into the other and chugged its contents. They had two hours of fishing ahead of them, and he wanted to preserve his energy.
Greg had grown up fly fishing for trout but didn’t venture into the ocean until after law school. He had always loved the sport, and he became addicted to saltwater fly fishing after catching his first striped bass, an eight-pound “schoolie,” by far the biggest fish he’d ever caught on a fly rod.
It was downhill from there. A guide told him, “Striped bass are the gateway drug to saltwater fly fishing. Catch one on fly, and twenty years later, you’re throwin’ pink synthetic chickens at marlin.” That summed up the progression of Greg’s career as a recreational saltwater fly angler, except that tarpon was his drug of choice.
Twenty years later, he fished for more than three months a year during the annual migration in the spring and early summer when tarpon congregated around the Isles to eat palolo worms and spawn offshore on the big moons. He had been fishing for so many days straight this season that he’d lost track of the clock as the days melded into one another and the beard on his usually clean-shaven face grew longer. He loved the eternal feeling of being on the water, in the zone, day after day as if time had stopped.
Greg heard two boats approaching from behind.
He looked back and frowned when he saw the skiffs coming off plane. Each boat carried a guide and an angler. He and Iain knew the guides.
The skiffs had come south from Seminole Sound, through the creek into Archelon, a beautiful and productive basin.
That morning, when Iain had said they were going to fish the rising tide at Archelon, Greg promised to back him up despite his concerns about the Meister brothers, known as the “Archelon Nazis.” Now, with his risk-averse lawyer senses kicking in, he wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to confront them.
Greg had fished this coveted bar in Archelon for years—a place that, on the right tide, held enough fish to prove that he had the chops to win the Cup. If only he could fish it without interference from the guides he saw in the oncoming skiffs.
As the two skiffs closed to within fifty feet, Iain, standing in front of the console with a hand on the steering wheel, said in his south Seminole drawl, “Hi, boys. What’s goin’ on?”
Oh shit. Here we go, thought Greg.
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