Gorgeous day today. Flat calm in the morning. Running in the bay we ran over a good school of mullet. With my trolling motor and cast net we loaded up on bait pretty quick. Ran back near islamorada bridges where there had been some fish. Last of the incoming tide we had 3 bites, caught 1 on live, 1 on dead, and jumped another one off. As soon as tide turned and wind picked up a bit though the fish stopped rolling and showing. They did not feed really the rest of the day on the falling water, very weak tide with not much current, only last 4 hours or so… Best bet I think the next couple days is fishing the morning incoming tide around town! Anyways caught 2 nice fish plus some sharks to finish up. Yesterday we tried some tarpon fishing in the backcountry and around town… no bites we did not really see much for fish in the back, though around town in the afternoon we did see a good big group. But they didn’t want to feed, though this morning that is the same place we fished and it was a different story!
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3/9/14 March Tarpon Fishing Report Islamorada
Had a half day morning tarpon trip this AM. Looked for bait but it was very tough, after the cold front a few days ago the mullet haven’t been thick in the usual morning spots. We had plenty from a couple days ago still though and a friend gave me a few livies he caught the afternoon before. We fished the local channels and action was slow, saw a handful of fish roll and stuck it out. After an hour or so we hooked up what seemed to be a tarpon. No jumps but it ran drag out like a big tarpon not a shark. We gave chase and unfortunately had my spinning gear fail, the drag completely locked up with no previous indication it was faulty and I had just serviced them a couple months ago. Bummer but that happens when you pull on as many big things as we do with the drags locked down! Anyways we regrouped and set back up (minus that rod of course), after another 45 minutes we hooked a big tarpon that went airborne immediately! We chased him and after a 30 minute battle had a nice 110 lb tarpon boatside! Biggest I’ve seen lately. A good end to the morning I was very glad to get a fish after the unfortunate mishap.
3/7/14 Spring tarpon fishing in the florida keys
Well the front came here today we had stiff breezes out of the west today but not much rain thankfully. We did some rod bending early and caught some stuff for dinner, then gave it a try for tarpon the last couple hours. I had some dead mullet from yesterday still so we set up and put baits on the bottom. We hooked what I thought was a shark within 20 minutes or so, it didn’t jump for a few minutes and ran out line steadily. Finally a nice 75 lb tarpon leaped airborne and we gave chase. Caught him after a 20 minute fight and several more nice jumps. After that we caught multiple large jacks up to 12 lbs and a couple big nurse sharks. Not too shabby for a nasty day with the west wind. Came in after 4 hours cutting it too a half day.
