3/14/16 – Today we fished all day for tarpon. I had caught some bait the previous afternoon in the muds on the way home which were fairly productive I put away but 40 baits. We tried locally in the channels nearby where I had seen lots of fish the morning before. Today though I didn’t see much we gave it a good 30-40 minutes. I ran into the backcountry and we tried some channels back there with no luck, and eventually made our way back off the mainland beaches. There were tons of tarpon back here, free jumping and busting all over as far as you could see. They were not eating however we fished for 2 hours pretty hard and moved several times. New arrivals that just aren’t wanting to feed. Eventually we left and tried another channel on the way home and we jumped one tarpon after about 5 minutes. We then made our way back towards Islamorada and caught a dozen mullet on the way and tried the live baits in the local channels. No luck however for us. We did catch a variety of sharks throughout the day that kept us semi busy however. 0 for 1
3/15/16 – Today we had tarpon on our minds again. I brought some shrimp for a backup plan as my anglers wanted a little bit of dinner too. We left early at 6:30 and ran right back towards the mainland beaches to try and get on those fish early. We got there a little after daybreak and it was the same scene – tarpon jumping and splashing everywhere you looked. Same deal though they just would not bite, we caught a few sharks and after the tide quit after a couple hours, we went and caught some tripletail. This was fairly good we got a couple for dinner and released several more. We then made our way back towards Islamorada to try the local channels again, however no luck there with tarpon we caught a few more sharks and that was it. 0 for 0
It’s been tough fishing for tarpon this is the latest start to the season I’ve seen since 2010 when we had that extreme cold winter. Though hopefully all these fish we’ve been seeing will move into the channels and throughout the bays and settle in. Once that happens it should get more consistent and they should start feeding more. Until then all you can do is try!
