4/30/17 Last day of April Tarpon Fishing in the Florida Keys

More insanely high winds today it was blowing 25-30 out of the southeast!  My guys over from England wanted to give it a shot, so we left out early at 6 AM.  I had caught bait yesterday and had it stashed away.  We tried locally in some channels first thing, where there had been a little bit of a bite yesterday and we had gotten a tarpon.  However today was a different story, we caught a couple sharks, big jacks, and a sting ray, in 2 spots and about 2 1/2 hours of fishing.  Of the 10 or so other boats in the area, I only saw one hook a tarpon (right next to us of course!)  We did have a tarpon bust in between our baits, but never gave us a nibble.  After that we tried to head down to Long Key bridge where there had been a good bite earlier in the week when it was calmer.  However it was just too rough to fish comfortably.  We got in a little trouble getting the anchor line tangle on my transducer as I was moving trying to avoid the boat bumping into the bridge from the big swells.  Luckily we got everything straightened out but did bump into the bridge and get a nice little crack in my gel coat, but some days thats the price of admission!  Anyways after that the guys wanted to get some stuff for dinner so we bailed on the tarpon and caught some nice mangrove snappers in the channels.  Well I had a nice little roll of catching fish while it lasted but all good things must come to an end.  Looks like tomorrow the winds are suppose to come down a little bit, and Tuesday looks like it’ll be very nice… let’s hope so!  0 for 0

Capt. Rick Stanczyk