Got out today for a full day and tarpon was on the agenda. I hadn’t been focusing on them a lot as of late, as other fishing had been very good. Most the ones I’ve been catching have been whilst doing other things, or just spending a short time focused on them. Though there had been lots of fish around and the fall mullet run going on. We gave it a good go today though and invested a few hours, leaving the options open for Plan B if necessary. Early on tarpon were showing everywhere, busting pods of mullet. Though no big concentrations of them, really seemed you could sit anywhere and thered be a few around. We fished hard, around the end of the tide, through the tide change, and then again on the start of the incoming tide. Moved 3 or 4 times, and just no bites from them. We managed several big lemon sharks, and a few big blacktips. Finally after hour 2 and a few moves, we jumped a big 100+ lb tarpon but it was shortlived and threw the hook immediately. After that, we decided to try plan B and were able to still catch a good handful of nice snooks, some nice reds, a decent black drum, juvenile goliath grouper, and a tripletail! Wonderful thing about our fishery when things don’t work out, you often have other options. We then fished some shoreline and got into some numbers of redfish and snook, though smaller size ones. We still had some time to try for tarpon a bit for the last 45 minutes. Gave it another go, but no love.
So sometimes things visually look much better than the actual fishing/catching is, as we saw tarpon busting all day long. But as can be the case with fishing, they just weren’t interested in our offerings. Maybe just too much other bait out there. So I would say if you really, really want a tarpon it’s possible you just might have to invest your whole fishing day to do it. But it’s kind of hard to do when there is so many other productive options with quality fish. Though I’m always game to try. 0 for 1
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
