Alongside Mangum, these and many of his guides have earned their own solid reputations in the saltwater space. He runs a stable of over a dozen top-notch guides under his umbrella of Shallow Water Expeditions-including Jack Foley and Jason Stacey. His life is built around tarpon season, and the Yeti Presents film 120 Days gives you a taste of just that. He was the masked man in the cult classic Location X-the first film of the Internet age that really showed the world how incredible Florida tarpon fishing is. If you have been living under a rock and aren’t quite sure who David Mangum is, here is a refresher. By today’s standards it was a steal-$18k brand new-and tarpon fishing hasn’t been the same since. It was 1994 when Mangum asked his father to co-sign on the note of his first skiff, a Flip Pallot-designed Hells Bay Waterman. His first tarpon was on an 8-weight, the only rod he owned, and that fish towed him around for the better part of an hour in his aluminum johnboat. The seed was planted, and the journey that created one of the best guides on the planet began.Īfter a couple of summers in Alaska, Mangum put his saltwater guiding career in motion. Mangum was a Florida native, and the 850 area code was an immediate tip-off. When he responded to the advertisement, he discovered that the head guide in Alaska was a Keys captain the rest of the year. He was ready for a change, and the allure of guiding and wilderness called to him. It was the early ’90s and David Mangum was living in Austin, Texas while wrapping up school.
The ad in the back pages of Fly Fisherman read “Alaskan Guide Wanted.” That’s how one of the most successful and recognized guides on the planet got his start-answering a classified ad in the back of this very magazine.
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