Well yesterday afternoon I fished my soon to be mother in law, Ginger Baxter. We just went out for a couple hours in the afternoon to try to catch a tarpon. Tough conditions very calm, hot, and lots of jetskis zipping about as it is the weekend before mini lobster season. But we managed to get a nice 80 lb fish! A few good jumps and we got him boatside, though he cut us off around a bridge before we could really get him up for a good picture. We only fished those couple hours with the baits we had from a few days before then went in to get dinner and enjoy sunset! Today we fished all day back in the everglades. Tough fishing we saw a lot of tarpon this morning in a couple spots. But the suckers wouldn’t bite this morning. I had plenty of fresh mullet too. We caught a big bull shark and then ran further off the mainland to catch the start of the incoming tide. We got lucky and caught a tarpon right on the tide change about a 30 lber. Then a few more sharks, had to shuffle around with the big giant patches of weeds, and finally got set back up and some more shark activity and then finally another nice tarpon of 60 lbs or so to finish the day. I talked to another friend of mine fishing and he said fishing was very tough as well they had two tarpon bites all day and caught them both as well.
July 2014
7/26/14 End of July tarpon fishing in Islamorada
Today the fishing got much better. Caught a few mullet early in the morning. They’ve been a bit tougher on the early morning falling tides though I’ve been getting them. Yesterday we had plenty of bait and moved around a little bit, found a good school of fish. But they would not eat for us we caught some sharks. Today was different I ran further towards the gulf and tried some areas. Did not see much for rollers but we caught 2 nice fish of 30 and 60 lbs in the morning on the last of the falling tide. We then did some other stuff, and went and tried to catch pilchards in another channel. Low and behold we saw tarpon rolling while trying to chum bait up, so I threw some of our last baits out and we got a couple bites out of them and caught another fish of 60 lbs. Finished the day with some nice snappers for dinner and some trout for action. Good fishing 3 out of 4 tarpon.
7/24/14 Half day tarpon fishing islamorada in july
Well back from vacation had some nice time off the water. Yesterday I fished and things had gotten very tough since I was gone. We caught plenty of bait – mullet and nice pilchards. Though did not see any tarpon in the backcountry, caught several blacktip sharks. Then tried fishing with the pilchards and only had 2 snook bites out of about a dozen spots I fished. They really moved around! Today I had a half day and used some of the bait we caught yesterday that I kept on ice. Incoming tide and pretty weedy, not great conditions. We did not see any tarpon until the last 30 minutes. I saw a free jumper and we set up near him, saw another fish roll, and within 20 minutes we had one on! A nice fish almost 100 lbs. We also caught a couple saw fish which was cool and had a couple big barracudas grab baits and go airborn before cutting us off.
