January has been fairly warm here this winter. I haven’t tried a lot but there had been tarpon around a lot of days. We finally had our first real cold front a little over a week ago. Though since then it warmed back up however we are getting cold weather again tonight and the next several nights. Today we found some tarpon after fishing for snook/reds all day. They were very active busting on lots of smaller bait fish and shrimp. We worked them for a while, with no bites and catching a few snook in the mean time. Though when the tide switched and started to trickle in, we got a couple bites. I jumped one off on a shrimp that was just laying near the bottom on slack tide. Then my angler Steve was casting near the mangroves and just slowly retrieving and he got slammed. He landed a nice 30 lb tarpon we got to the boat but then he jumped and threw the hook. Anyways great way to end our day and Steve got a SLAM – snook, redfish, and tarpon. We may have an early start to our normal tarpon season if things stay warm. Perhaps as early as first week of February or maybe even end of January. Drop me a line if you are interested or going to be around. 1 for 2
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12/22/15 December backcountry tarpon fishing
Was out yesterday we came across a school of baby tarpon actively feeding on the hard incoming tide. The weather has been very warm still, have yet to have any significant cool weather. So there has been a few tarpon about. I haven’t been focusing much on them but we did give it a try on this day. We hooked two fish though unfortunately one jumped off right away, the other we fought for a minute but he got us broke off in some mangroves. Anyways it was fun to see and good action on the light tackle rods with smaller 20 lb fish. If the weather patterns stay like this we will likely have an early tarpon season. Last year we had a window in January with some good fishing for larger ‘winter time’ fish, maybe that will be the case again this year. 0 for 2
12/11/15 December Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada
Well we had a gorgeous flat calm warm day today. We have yet to have much cold weather at all. I haven’t been fishing tarpon much just because we are usually doing other things. Today we went in the backcountry for snook and redfish and fishing was pretty good. We did happen upon some small tarpon rolling in one of the creek mouths. As soon as the tide started in (it was slack) we eased in on them and free floated some shrimp and they went bonkers! We put one fish in the air followed by a big snook that we pulled the hook on. Then a tarpon grabbed our shrimp and screamed off down the creek though he came off as well. Then finally I floated one back there and caught a nice 20 lb tarpon. No pictures as he jumped out of my hand as we were getting the camera and I didn’t want to slam him into the boat and hurt/kill him just for a picture. Anyways sometimes you stumble into them at the right time! 1 for 3
