Certainly not Gary Giles.

For his tarpon, this Palm Bay angler walks the edges of canals, he casts from piers and docks along creeks, and sometimes he wades the points around creek mouths. And much of the time he's doing it the hard way, with a fly rod.

"You don't need a boat to catch all the tarpon you want," said the 53-year-old North Miami Beach native who started fly fishing 35 years.

"I'm not bragging. I just know where the tarpon will be, and I know how to present the fly," added Giles, a fly tier who also teaches fly casting and guides as a "land captain."

You become a believer in Giles' tarpon techniques when you check the results of the Florida Tech Tarpon Fishing-for-Science Tournament, a three-month long contest last summer that was designed to get tarpon samples for DNA testing.

Of the more than 200 tarpon caught, sampled and released between Daytona Beach and Stuart by the 50 anglers who entered, Giles landed 136 of the fish, most of them on fly gear.

Jon Shenker, an associate professor in Florida Tech's Biological Sciences Department and the organizer of the tournament, called Giles' feat "astonishing."

"It blew me away that one guy could catch so many," Shenker said. "And he's continuing to sample the tarpon he catches for us."

For Giles' style of fishing the best season occurs in the summer months when afternoon rains can become regular events.

And he doesn't fish far from his Palm Bay home which banks on the Melbourne Tillman Canal, a major drainage canal that flows from the west into Palm Bay's Turkey Creek.

"Tarpon by the hundreds move up Turkey Creek and Tillman," said Giles, who sometimes is accompanied by his 16-year-old son Brandon. "Other good creeks are Crane Creek in Melbourne and the Eau Gallie River, and I also fish Sebastian River at times. There are so many places."

Giles starts looking for the summer tarpon in June, first by wading the points around the creek mouths, where they connect with the Indian River.

"But it really doesn't start getting good until we get the rains," Giles emphasized. "That's when the tarpon start moving farther up the creeks and canals because they want that cooler water from the runoff."

Shiners, shad and hordes of other forage pulled along by the current also is a major factor in attracting the tarpon to these backwater areas. Choice spots will be points where culverts and drainage pipes empty into canals.

He finds public accesses to the canals along roadways.

The tarpon in these backwaters are not the giants you hear about along the beaches or around the mouth of Sebastian Inlet. Most are under 30 pounds, and some much smaller juveniles.

"I've caught them as small as 8 inches but most are over 10 pounds," Giles said. "This past year I caught a 60-pounder at the mouth of Turkey Creek, but for that one I was freelining a finger mullet, and I was in a boat."

Giles took the big tarpon during a trip with his friend Capt. Terry Lamielle of Palm Bay who operates Easy Days Guide Service.

"I really never fished much for tarpon until I talked with Gary one day and he told me how easy it was," Lamielle said. "He showed me the way it's done with a fly rod and also finger mullet."

Giles said finger mullet is the better choice of bait early in the season around the creek mouths for the bigger tarpon. He hooks them through the back.

When he's fly fishing, it's not unusual for Giles to hook two or three dozen of the smaller tarpon in a couple hours during the morning or afternoon. Periods following afternoon rains can be especially productive.

"Sometimes, you'll jump 10 before you land one," he laughed. "But just seeing them jump is enough for me. I've had small tarpon jump six feet in the air."

Giles is emphatic when he says there's only one color for these tannin-stained back waters.

"Black. There's no better color," he said, showing a few of his all-black flies. "The tarpon are keying on the minnows and small bream being washed down by the runoff, and everything looks black to them in the tannin water"

Another important factor is the size of the fly.

"These fish won't take a fly that's longer than a business card. Dave Chermanski showed me that years ago."

Chermanski of Merritt Island has been fly fishing Brevard County waters since he was a Florida Tech student in the late 1960s, and he has multiple world records to his credit.

Being a fly tier, Giles' favorite pattern is a floating finger mullet imitation made of black deer hair, black feathers, and a little Crystal Flash for reflection.

If he wants a shallow-sinking fly, he ties a Deceiver-style in all black. He said a black Muddler Minnow also will work, but it must be small, never more than 2 to 3 inches. Giles' flies are available at The Tackle Locker in Micco.

Giles prefers a 6-weight flyrod for the smaller tarpon under 10 pounds, and a 9-weight for bigger fish. His leader consists of 12 inches of 40-pound test Mason mono, tied to 31/2 feet of 30-pound and 31/2 feet of 25-pound test fluorocarbin.

For the canal and creek fish he uses a floating fly line but when he's fishing deeper water, like Sebastian River, he'll use the Deceiver pattern with an intermediate sinking line.

He found early on that the secret to strikes is the perfect placement of the cast to a particular fish.

"First, you want to see a fish. It might roll or you might see its wake. That's when you make your cast and you must get the fly two or three feet in front of his face. He will not turn for it," Giles explained.

"Usually there's flow, so you throw it up current and let the fly drag back across in front of the fish. That's when he'll nail it."