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
11/24/15 November Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada
Well been out of town several times as of late so I haven’t been fishing a whole lot. Though I have been here and there. Fishing had been tough overall things were still incredibly warm with fits of high southeasterly winds. Not much had been very happy. We had our first taste of cool weather sunday night. When I say cool I don’t mean cold as it only got down to 70! Anyways fishing since has gotten a little better. Today we had good action with mackerels, snappers, jacks, sharks, and you guessed it even some tarpon at the end of the day. We hadn’t planned on it though I had plenty of pilchards left over at the end of the day. It was too rough to go where I wanted so we fished around a channel mouth where we often catch bait in the mornings. I had seen some snook there recently and had hoped we could catch a few. Anyways no snook but we did get some good tarpon action, jumping 5 fish and landing 1! Not a big guy they were all in the 5 to 20 lb range, but lots of fun and great way to end our day. No pictures unfortunately! Anyways I’m going out of town again for thanksgiving. As stated winter fishing is lots of action for the most part and not very good tarpon fishing so don’t expect to see too many updates. Though there is good fishing for other things and you can drop me a line to see whats up! 1 for 6.
