4/21/15 April tarpon fishing in the Keys

More tarpon action today.  I had Jason and James again from yesterday.  We had the last hour or so of falling tide first thing this morning.  We caught bait good at first light and went out to fish.  Did the same routine as yesterday since it worked well.  We were in fish right away we missed one smaller fish and soon after hooked another.  A 30 lber we got to the boat but then he pulled off though we had leader on him.  A little later we had a nice 80 lb fish eat a surface bait and took off.  We chased him for quite a ways and finally got him to the boat.  Didn’t cooperate for pictures but we already had some good ones from yesterday.  After that fight the tide had switched though seemed like things turned off.  We fished another 40 minutes or so and did not see much of anything, no fish rolling nor other boats hooked up.  So we decided to run down the road.  We set up at the next spot and soon had a fish up and flash a bait, unfortunately the bait had died and the fish thought twice about eating it.  A boat nearby jumped a tarpon and we fished a little while longer.  Right when I was about to call it quits and move we hooked a nice 90 lb fish.  We chased him down and got him to the boat.  After that we caught a big cuda and had some others cut us off we so moved to the bridge.  Lots of boats fishing there and we did see a few tarpon busting and rolling, though nobody hooked up.  We gave it an hour or so and didn’t see much happening so we decided to cut it to a 3/4 day.  Anyways 3 tarpon landed not bad though not quite as good of action as the previous day.  Maybe we’re a little spoiled!  There was plenty of bait around the last couple afternoons I went and stocked up afterwards.  Tomorrow sounds like it may rain a little hopefully we’ll be able to get some fishing in though!     3 for 4.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk