Well got back on the tarpon horse after taking a bit of time off from it. We had a couple different late cold fronts last week which slowed down the tarpon fishing. A little over a week ago for 2 nights it got down in the mid 60s and the water temps dropped to 67 or so around town here. That made fishing for tarpon very slow for a few days. It did pick back up for a couple days when the water temps got back in the mid 70s, but then another minor front dropped it down to low 70s again. The last couple of days people have been getting a few bites here and there but the the water temp was 72 this morning still on the chilly side. The water hasn’t had a chance to really warm up as its been blowing a good 10-15 knots every day just about. Anyways I was doing lots of patch reef fishing which was great action and good eating, a good bet for my half day trips that were not dead set on catching tarpon anyways. Today though we did a full day and I had a load of bait from yesterday ready to go. We had to look around a bit, caught a few sharks and had one cheap shot early from a tarpon on a live bait. Then finally we found some on the ocean side that were happy with the hard incoming tide with the wind behind it. We had 4 solid bites, missing a couple, losing a big fish on a lobster trap buoy, and then finally stuck 1 and caught him! Nice fish of 75 lbs. We also had another probably half dozen cheap shots that did not eat the baits but were busting and flashing them which was entertaining. That was all in about 1.5 hours. After that the tide slowed and the bite slowed with it and we did some other stuff. But a great day overall, I have a half day tarpon trip tomorrow so we will be giving it a shot again. No cold weather in the forecast so things should warm up a bit and get better.
