3/26/15 Saturday half day tarpon fishing report

Got out after some tarpon again this morning on a half day trip.  I had some live mullets we stashed away yesterday afternoon as well as some cut bait.  We fished locally close by for the first 30 minutes, I didn’t see much for tarpon activity for rolling fish etc… that we saw yesterday, so we then ran further down the road towards ch 2 and ch5 bridges.  We find a good group of fish on the bayside of ch 5, however they were not much interested in feeding.  We tried a few different tactics and moved around several times, though no dice.  As the tide quit we ran back towards ch 2 and found a good group of fish rolling, busting, and splashing around in the bay.  I set up and we started fishing hard, eventually we had one good strike on a live mullet.  However unfortunately we  failed to hook the fish and just got back a bare hook.  After that we continued seeing fish for a little bit, though eventually it subsided and I moved out on the ocean side to check things out there.  We didn’t see much out there and time ran out unfortunately.  We did end up catching a few sharks and a sting ray, though came up short at least we had a shot at a tarpon.  I did hear a few guys that stayed in the area where I started did eventually see some fish there later on and one person did report catching one, though I saw no hookups out of quite a few boats in the areas I was.  The fish are back but obviously just not quite happy yet I think once the water gets a little warmer they will respond better – maybe that will be in the next few days.  Tomorrow is my first day off in over 3 weeks so I’ll be sleeping in and not fishing!  0 for 1

Capt. Rick Stanczyk