Fished a full day today. I had told my clients that fishing has been a little tough for tarpon so we originally had plans to try some other stuff. I ran into the backcountry and tried chumming some live bait in a channel and while doing that, of course we started to see several tarpon roll in the channel. We caught plenty of small live pinfish though I knew mullet would probably be preferential for the tarpon. The guys were asking me about catching them so I said lets take a quick look and see if we can’t find some mullet. Luckily enough out off the bank we came across a ball of bait, no birds on them or anything but it was calm enough to see them rippling on the surface. I made a few throws and we caught got a good crack on caught a cooler full. We went back and caught the last trickle of falling tide, and within 5 minutes hooked a nice 50 lb fish that we fought for 20 minutes and Eric landed. After that we set back up, still saw a few fish rolling and the tide was ripping in now. Though no bites we moved around a few times, but the big herd of fish we saw an hour before seemed to have moved out with the tide. We still saw a handful roll here and there, but did not have any other bites. We finished the day trying to catch some snook, no luck with that but we did have one baby tarpon we pulled the hook on, then caught a half dozen nice snappers and a few trout for dinner to finish our day, plus some big ladyfish. I’m fishing these guys again Saturday, I kept plenty of bait on ice so we will be fully prepared first thing in the AM. Hopefully they are still there. If you are looking to go fishing, there are still shots at tarpon through September however bait is often the tough thing to find. However next Wednesday or so we will have good ‘incoming’ morning tides that make bait more consistently easy. 1 for 1
