Being warm this January there have still been tarpon around. Tried the tarpon again today. We had some bait still leftover from yesterday. Ran to the backcountry channels and had a little bit of falling tide left, but not much. Didn’t do too much early, once the tide changed and started rolling in things looked better. We had a hard southeast wind blowing against the tide, making fishing a little trickier. Lots of shark bites, but we did put two tarpon in the air, unfortunately the hooks did not stay in them. Oh well may try again tomorrow as with the warm weather and southeasterly breezes, it’s overall good action to get into! 0 for 2.
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1/2/15 January tarpon fishing in Islamorada
Tarpon in January in Islamorada? You betcha! It’s still been unseasonably warm and the water temperatures are in the high 70s so there have been a few tarpon around. We’ve been seeing them in just about every area we normally fish in the spring, not always tons but you have a good shot at getting a bite. Mostly in the backcountry areas, and along with them are plenty of sharks to keep you busy. We tried yesterday though we did not get any tarpon bites, but did catch cobia, hammer head shark, and plenty of blacktips. Today we had 2 tarpon bites, and landed one fish a lunker of 150 lbs. Young Nick put the wood to him and caught him in 15 minutes! He put on a great show. I talked to another fellow guide he had some tarpon action as well. I will likely keep trying a little bit as long as it stays warm, there has been some big giant black mullets around that have been fairly easy to catch which work well for bait. If your down here and thinking of a january florida keys fishing charter, give me a call! I’ve got some dates open as we don’t get really cranking with business until february again. 1 for 2.
2014 Year Summary and 2015 Tarpon Season Outlook
Thanks to all my anglers who enjoyed tarpon fishing with me this season! I know I’ll be seeing many of you next year in 2015 again. If your thinking of booking a tarpon trip in 2015 and haven’t done so, you should try to plan it soon! At this point (Dec. 31, 2014) more than half of April and May is already booked – these are the best months of the year for big tarpon. Summer time (June/July/August – click to see fishing reports from 2014 season, sorted by month) is still a great time to go as you can see from my blog this past year, and I still have plenty of availability. So far this winter things have been very warm, which may lead to an early start of the 2015 tarpon migration. Often as early as February things get rocking and rolling, and March was a big month for me last year with the tarpon too. I’m sure overall it will be another action packed year catching tarpon in Islamorada! Well I wanted to give a quick yearly summary for my readers. I did a pretty good job tracking and catching all fish caught this season which is how I like to sell myself – with the results! Now I did have the website crash at one point and I’m fairly certain I was able to recover all the data, but the numbers should be fairly close to accurate. Anyways the numbers for 2014 are:
264 Tarpon Landed (Fish that we touched the leader, or got the leader to the rod tip)
out of 150 Tarpon Fishing Trips (This includes trips where we fished all day for tarpon, as well as trips where we may of only tried for an hour – I did have to guess a little bit as I did not log every trip where we may of only tried for a little bit, but I did add some extra trips to try and account for that). Which overall is 1.76 tarpon Landed Per Trip on average. Of course there were plenty of other fish we had chase baits and put on a show, grab baits and spit the hook, or just lost due to other circumstances.
I’d also like to add that these numbers all reflect day time fishing. This can often require a bit more work to get the fish to cooperate, but I personally enjoy the day time fishing much more as you get to see the bite, the acrobatic action of the fish, etc… I fish so many full days now and have enough business I don’t really like to do the middle of the night thing any longer.
Anyways I hope to have you out on the boat in the 2015 season! Drop me a line if your interested in tarpon fishing in the Florida Keys!
