4/5/17 Islamorada full day tarpon fishing in April

Got out with Aaron and his dad again today.  Tarpon were still on the list and we ended up dedicating the day to that.  With the way the fishing has been sometimes that’s what you must do.  We tried early with the same routine as yesterday, today however the fish just didn’t want to bite… We had them rolling and busting around us but never had a sniff.  After a little over an hour we gave up and got some live mullet from the local bait guys.  We ran down to the bridges to give it a whirl.  We found a few fish in the back channel of one of the bridges, and had a cheap shot soon after getting the baits out.  Never had a solid bite though and then the tide quit there.  We looked around and fished a couple more areas waiting for the tide to start but didn’t see much.  Finally the tide got falling and we ended up finding some fish nearer to the bridge.  We set up and after a little time started to have some action on our live baits.  We had several more cheap shots and finally started getting some solid bites!  Unfortunately the tarpon were tough to keep on the hook, we missed quite a few.  The baits we had were size large so that didn’t make things any easier… Finally after we had just about given up hope and decided to stick with it, we hooked one and got him to stay on.  Keith landed a nice fish of about 80 lbs and was thrilled!  I think we must’ve had 8 or so solid bites and maybe 10 other cheap shots, when you get that much action you hope to at least get one to the boat which we did so we were happy.  After that we tried some an area close to the marina again for the last hour or so but didn’t have any luck, just caught a nurse shark.  Anyways it was nice to get to see such good tarpon action on our live baits, would of been nice to have caught a few more but that’s why they call it fishing.  As long as we are getting bites I’m happy and it’s always nice to catch one, make you appreciate them that much more when it’s tough!  1 for 8

Capt. Rick Stanczyk