IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Jake Poepl

On the winning team Blaze

This year, for the first time since Jake Poepl has been on the team, Blaze, captained by Waylon Mills, won the World’s Richest Tarpon Tournament.

Poepl will be back this weekend to fish the Howl at the Moon tournament on Saturday, traveling south from his hometown in Minnesota. 

The first time he came to Boca Grande was when he was in elementary school, more than 35 years ago. His aunt and uncle on his mom’s side had a place in Boca Grande for over 40 years, and about 15 years ago, one of their kids – Poepl’s cousin – got married here. During that visit, Poepl, an avid fisherman already, decided he wanted to catch a tarpon.

“I love to fish, fishing is my favorite hobby,” Poepl said, “and so I said, ‘I want to go catch a tarpon,’ and called my cousin Pat, another one of my uncle’s kids, who has also been in Boca Grande for years at this point, so I called him, said, ‘I want to go tarpon fishing. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘Call Waylon Mills.’ I called Waylon, and I’ve been fishing with him ever since.”

Poepl began coming to the island a few times a year, mainly during tarpon season. 

“Like I said, I had a cousin get married there, and then I’ve been coming steadily multiple times a year, kind of since then, and my wife and I bought a place down there just a couple years ago,” he said.

Before buying a place in Boca Bay, Poepl would find wherever he could to rent for the tarpon season. 

“One year, Boca Grande was completely full,” he said. “This was like three or four years ago, maybe it was like right after Covid, when rentals were just full up. So we came down for the Howl at the Moon, had rented a place. Well, the weather came up, and they said, ‘Nope, the Howl at the Moon has now been moved to like two weeks from now,’ and there was nothing available to rent. We stayed up off of I-75 like in Punta Gorda, some La Quinta, and drove to and from the island just to fish in the Howl at the Moon.”

When in Minnesota, Poepl does quite a bit of fishing as well.

“There are similarities, and there are differences,” he said. “But yes, fishing has always been my favorite hobby, hands down. And once I got a taste for fishing in the Pass, and just in general the whole surrounding area. Like, again, with Capt. Waylon, he has an offshore boat, and we’ll go out 40, 50 miles offshore, and it’s just the time of your life, catching grouper or snapper, blackfin tuna.”

Poepl fished in his first tarpon tournament in 2019 during Howl at the Moon. “Then about three, four years ago, Waylon asked if I had an interest in doing World’s Richest, and I said ‘absolutely,’” Poepl said. “So all in all, been doing the tournaments for what, I guess that’d be about seven years now. Yeah, it’s an absolute blast.”

This year, Blaze, led by Capt. Waylon Mills won the World’s Richest tournament on May 14 with eight fish. The team was comprised of Poepl, Owen Mills and Tony Scully. 

In 2020, Blaze won the Howl tournament, but Poepl had only ever placed second in the World’s Richest. 

“Capt. Waylon is damn good at what he does,” Poepl said. “I can’t say enough about being super fortunate and blessed that my cousin referred me to Capt. Waylon, because there’s a lot of really great tarpon captains down there. I mean, I know this firsthand, I see them kicking butt in the Pass, but I just like Capt. Waylon, and we get along kind of like brothers in a way. It’s just been so fun to fish with him, and to be able to have him have enough confidence in myself, and then my buddy Tony and some of these other guys that I come and fish with, that he says, ‘Hey, let’s maybe think about doing the tournaments together.’”

If he was forced to choose, Poepl said that World’s Richest would be his favorite tournament to fish in.

“Besides the amount that you can win is bigger, and all that, that’s great, but, it’s great because it’s two days long,” he said. “It’s the longest tournament; Howl at the Moon is just wonderful, but it starts and it’s done in three hours, and it’s like, ‘Oh man,’ you know, you wish that you had another day. So I would say probably World’s Richest, but I gotta tell you, they’re all fun, and just so much fun to be a part of.”

Poepl’s wife, Megan, usually fishes the Ladies Howl at the Moon tournament with Capt. Waylon as well; however, Jake and Megan are not the only anglers in the family. They have three kids, two boys and one girl, and all of them enjoy fishing and spending time on the water. Their oldest son, who is in sixth grade, is especially passionate about fishing and competes on his school’s bass fishing team. He is one of only two middle school students on the team.

This year, Poepl brought him down around Easter and he caught his first tarpon. “He was pretty over the moon about it,” Poepl said. “He bugs Capt.Waylon about when he can fish in the kid’s tournament. Yeah, no, he loves it. He loves fishing from the dock down there, and not to go on about Capt. Waylon, but we’ve really gotten to know him and his family. They are just wonderful people. He has a 17-year-old son, and when we come down, his son will get a hold of my son, and they’ll go out and fish all day. He comes home hungry as a wolf and tired as can be and it’s wonderful.”

Coincidentally, Poepl’s wife was pregnant with their oldest when he caught his first tarpon, a moment he remembers well. 

“It was the middle of June, I remember. I know that, because that’s when my cousin got married, was mid-June down here,” he said. “My wife was pregnant with that oldest child of ours, and so, yes, I do remember it was about a 100 pounder, and we were night fishing. We didn’t get on the boat until 8:30 or 9 at night, and fished until like midnight or whatever it was, and I think we went five out of six that night, in all honesty. So yeah, I remember, because that’s when I said I want to come do this all the time.”

Find out more: Poepl describes what it was like to win last week’s tournament. See World’s Richest.