2/17/14 Half Day February Tarpon Fishing Report

I got cancelled today last minute so I went bait fishing this morning.  Wind had been blowing north and was still chilly the last few days though the water temperatures  were not extremly cold.  This morning it was around 72 degrees.  Anyways some friends came, Capt Dave and his buddy Gary.  We caught lots of mullet we found in a big mud on a flat.  Gary had never caught a tarpon and that was a bucket list fish for him, so I told him we would give it a couple hours.  I wanted to see what was going on anyways.  We set up in a channel close by the marina where there had been fish previously before the cold weather.  After a half hour or so we got a bite on the dead bait, a nice 75 lb fish.  We chased him and got some good jumps as you can see from the pictures and landed him in about 25 minutes or so.  We tried another area and caught and released several blacktip sharks.  So some shark action and a nice tarpon in a couple hours fishing with chilly water and northeast wind in february – not bad at all!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk