Gave the tarpon a shot today it wasn’t a priority fish but sharks were, though I knew we’d had a shot at getting tarpon too. The winds were north in the morning, not my favorite for tarpon fishing, though turned east later in the day. We didn’t find any tarpon where they had been the last week or so, just a bunch of sharks and did get a few sawfish too. So I ended up looking out off of some mainland areas where I hadn’t been yet this year for tarpon. We found a pile of them, almost as far as you could see they were rolling and busting a little bit! We gave it an hour and caught plenty of sharks, and did have a couple tarpon bites thankfully, but they just didn’t want to stay on the hook! At least we had a couple shots though. After that we did some light tackle mackerel fishing to end the day. I’m off tomorrow and it looks like it’s going to be nasty anyways, rain and windy, so good to have it off. Thursday I’ll be back at it, we have a little bit of a west breeze though so that may not be very good for tarpon fishing but I may end up giving it a shot, we’ll see what they want to do! 0 for 2
February 2017
2/20/17 Late February Tarpon in the Everglades National Park
Got out with Steve, Dick, and Floyd today. Tarpon was one of the fish mentioned on their itinerary. We had some bait leftover from yesterday so we went right to it. The tides were predicted to be very weak, and i knew after yesterday we’d be near the slack if we did other fishing first, so we went right to the tarpon area. We didn’t see much for fish in the first few stops. I looked around hard since I’d been seeing a lot of activity and such when I’d been catching them. We spent around 30 minutes checking 3 different areas, but not a whole lot showing. We fished for a bit in one, caught a few sharks and a 200 lb sawfish mud marlin. I talked to another boat who had been fishing up the channel where we had looked first thing, he hadn’t seen much either. So we checked one more spot where I had ran over a few fish the day before. We lucked out and as soon as I stopped the boat, I saw multiple fish on the bottom machine and a few rolling – we were in ’em! First bait out we had a bite in about 30 seconds, though we jumped him off. Put it right back out there and a minute later we were hooked up. A nice 100 lb fish! He jumped a couple times, but then was playing down and dirty the rest of the time. We followed him around and he dragged us for quite a ways. He didn’t give up and we fought him for an hour and a half! We finally got him to the boat on the leader, but as soon as we tried to get him in the hand for pictures, the line went slack and he fell right off the hook! Oh well the boys got some good video at least, I snapped a few pics while he rolled while we fought him. We were very happy to get the official release, minus the boatside pics. After that the tide was very dead, a few more fish were rolling, but no more action out of them. We finished the day catching some spanish mackerel and headed home. 1 for 2
2/19/17 Islamorada Tarpon Fishing Florida Keys
Tried for the tarpon again, today it was slick calm early on in the morning and a light breeze out of the west later in the afternoon. We struggled trying to catch our bait but were able to get enough after a little while. We found a lot of tarpon rolling where they were the day before… but we didn’t have much tide. We had the last trickle of incoming, then it was slack for 20 minutes or so. Tarpon were floating all around us and we couldn’t get much out of them. I know there were 3 other boats in the area and I don’t think any of them had any luck either. Anyways we did catch some sharks. The boys didn’t want to give it much more time after the little over an hour we had spent, we went and did some triple tail fishing and that was very good! Oh well maybe we will get one tomorrow. 0 for 0
