Got out with Doug and Caroline today who fished with me yesterday as well. Yesterday we did snook and snappers and had a pretty good 3/4 day. Today we decided to mix it up as the winds laid down some and tried other stuff. We caught mackerels in the morning along with some mangrove snappers, then decided to give the big stuff a try. It was still on the chilly side from the minor front/rain we had a couple days ago, water was in the low 70s. But it was fairly calm and sun was coming out, and looked like a tarpon-like day otherwise. We looked in a couple areas and didn’t see much, so we just put baits out on some numbers I like to sit at sometimes. We caught a few sharks, and then Caroline hooked a gigantic tarpon! It jumped immediately and I could tell it was big… It screamed about 150 yards of line off as we spun the boat around and got the trolling motor up to give chase. Caroline did great and kept the rod pointed at the fish early on, which is imperative when fishing circle hooks like we do. We caught up with the fish and it did some violent head shaking and made a couple more jumps right near the boat which we got good pictures of. Finally after one last jump it more or less gave out, a fairly short fight for a fish this size, only about 20 minutes or so. Once we got the fish boat side I realized how big it was… It was easily 7 foot long, but what stuck out in my mine was just the girth of the fish. All the way to the tail it was very thick, and most of the pictures don’t do it justice. But one shot that Doug snapped really shows how thick she was. We tried to measure it but we were in deeper water and the fish wouldn’t lay still easily, and I didn’t want to mess with it too long and possibly kill it. Though I’m guessing close to 200 lbs, and I don’t throw that number around often like some people like to. Anyways it’s easily one of the top 3 in size that i’ve caught and we were thrilled with the catch. Just goes to show you, you never know if you don’t try! 1 for 1
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2/21/17 February Tarpon Report in the Everglades
Gave the tarpon a shot today it wasn’t a priority fish but sharks were, though I knew we’d had a shot at getting tarpon too. The winds were north in the morning, not my favorite for tarpon fishing, though turned east later in the day. We didn’t find any tarpon where they had been the last week or so, just a bunch of sharks and did get a few sawfish too. So I ended up looking out off of some mainland areas where I hadn’t been yet this year for tarpon. We found a pile of them, almost as far as you could see they were rolling and busting a little bit! We gave it an hour and caught plenty of sharks, and did have a couple tarpon bites thankfully, but they just didn’t want to stay on the hook! At least we had a couple shots though. After that we did some light tackle mackerel fishing to end the day. I’m off tomorrow and it looks like it’s going to be nasty anyways, rain and windy, so good to have it off. Thursday I’ll be back at it, we have a little bit of a west breeze though so that may not be very good for tarpon fishing but I may end up giving it a shot, we’ll see what they want to do! 0 for 2
2/20/17 Late February Tarpon in the Everglades National Park
Got out with Steve, Dick, and Floyd today. Tarpon was one of the fish mentioned on their itinerary. We had some bait leftover from yesterday so we went right to it. The tides were predicted to be very weak, and i knew after yesterday we’d be near the slack if we did other fishing first, so we went right to the tarpon area. We didn’t see much for fish in the first few stops. I looked around hard since I’d been seeing a lot of activity and such when I’d been catching them. We spent around 30 minutes checking 3 different areas, but not a whole lot showing. We fished for a bit in one, caught a few sharks and a 200 lb sawfish mud marlin. I talked to another boat who had been fishing up the channel where we had looked first thing, he hadn’t seen much either. So we checked one more spot where I had ran over a few fish the day before. We lucked out and as soon as I stopped the boat, I saw multiple fish on the bottom machine and a few rolling – we were in ’em! First bait out we had a bite in about 30 seconds, though we jumped him off. Put it right back out there and a minute later we were hooked up. A nice 100 lb fish! He jumped a couple times, but then was playing down and dirty the rest of the time. We followed him around and he dragged us for quite a ways. He didn’t give up and we fought him for an hour and a half! We finally got him to the boat on the leader, but as soon as we tried to get him in the hand for pictures, the line went slack and he fell right off the hook! Oh well the boys got some good video at least, I snapped a few pics while he rolled while we fought him. We were very happy to get the official release, minus the boatside pics. After that the tide was very dead, a few more fish were rolling, but no more action out of them. We finished the day catching some spanish mackerel and headed home. 1 for 2
