3/13/16 Half Day Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada

Today I fished a half day in the morning for tarpon.  I had some leftover bait from the last few days thankfully.  We tried the local channels and had the last couple hours of falling tide.  First spot we didn’t see much but we did catch a sting ray.  So I went on the other side near the ocean, and we started seeing tarpon rolling everywhere.  I adjusted the boat and got where I wanted to be and we put our gear out.  It took a little bit of enticing but after 30 minutes or so we finally had a hard zip on one bait.  I’m sure it was a tarpon as right afterwards we checked the bait, put it back out, and then hooked one about 10 seconds later.  A nice fish he put on a good show for us and we landed about a 75 lber.  After that the tide quit and the fish quit showing, we gave it a little while longer but no dice.  I did see a ball of mullet go by though they were gone quickly and it was overcast and muddy water so I couldn’t find them, but that would of been a nice score of bait!  We ran back into the bayside and fished another channel and I saw some tarpon rolling in there which was great.  We didn’t get any more bites though we did hook a large sawfish at the end of the trip which pulled us around for 10 minutes, though we broke him off he was too big to land on our tackle.  Anyways glad to have landed one  it looks like the weather will be fairly nice for a while so it should be ‘tarpon time!’  1 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk