4/12/17 April Tarpon Fishing Florida Keys Full Day Trip

Got out with Brent and his son Colin today after some florida keys tarpon.  I had gone early looking for bait and we found a little bit, was able to catch a couple dozen I split with my partner so we had some good live baits when we got out.  Tried a local channel where we found a few fish rolling, but no bites.  We tried another and there the fish were much more active.  We had several bites and some cheap shots, before finally hooking into a nice fish.  Brent fought him well and he made some magnificent jumps and we landed him after about 20 minutes or so.  We went back and started to get rained on, then it got sunny.  We had one more cheap shot then it seemed like things had slowed down.  So we ran into the backcountry.  Tried a channel back there and didn’t have much action, caught a small shark and made a few moves.  Finally on our 3rd move we had a big tarpon bite but we missed him unfortunately.  After that the tide quit and we ventured even further to where we had had good fishing several days ago.  Tide was coming in good out there, but not much activity.  We moved around a couple times, and finally the sharks started to bite a little after almost an hour of fishing.  We caught several, then Colin had a good tarpon bite finally though unfortunately he came off the hook quickly as well.  That was about it we had a bit more rain then ventured back home.  The boys were good enough to let me stop and restock on bait for tomorrow, as we went through all my bait and even reserves today trying to catch that second fish!  Oh well it was good tarpon fishing and we landed one so I was happy.  Nothing done terribly wrong on the part of the anglers, just bad luck… some days they don’t wanna stay on the hook!  Hopefully tomorrow we see as much action.  Brent and Colin will be back next year for sure they said.  1 for 6

Capt. Rick Stanczyk