Well the slow spell has continued we fished this morning and things hadn’t gotten any easier. Bait was tough in the early morning we saw a handful of baits but weren’t able to get lined up on them right. Luckily I was able to by some mullets and I had some dead ones from the other day plus a few crabs. We caught the last trickle of falling tide and then had a fairly quick turnaround. Plenty of fish again though they weren’t very happy we did not get much interest at all this morning aside from a few cudas and a shark. Tried crabs and mullet and even a few different tricks but tarpon just wouldn’t respond. Saw one fish caught and that was about it. We had started out in the bay where there had been good numbers of fish and there were, then around the bridges we saw some fish laying underneath, finally we moved out on the ocean side to some fly fishing areas. Saw probably 60 or so fish in the last 45 minutes training across the shallow areas. But no interest for us unfortunately. Last night was very similar we did not see as many fish as we did during the morning. The water did warm up last night back up close to 80 degrees so I thought that would of helped. We did find some fish eventually and had a couple fish up that boiled and flashed on our baits but wouldn’t eat. That was about it and again we saw one boat catch a couple fish, though we saw another 50 boats throughout the night and that was the only action we saw. Even making a drift with our crabs between 7 and 7:45 which is normally the ‘golden hour’ there wasn’t a boat to be seen hooked up to a fish. Anyways things can’t get much tougher I’m sure they’ll have to start feeding again at some point. I’ll likely be trying the backcountry the next few days as I have some 3/4 day trips and with as nice as the weather is some fish have likely moved in back there, plus the bycatch of sharks gives you more action! 0 for 0 and 0 for 0
5/4/15 + 5/6/15 May Tarpon Fishing Report
Well I had a couple days off, Sunday was a planned day off and yesterday we had imminent threats of rain and lightning in the morning so I called it off. I had caught a cold too and wasn’t looking forward to being drizzled on after fishing monday. Anyways I am better now. Unfortunately the tarpon fishing has definitely slowed down we had a little bit of a late front hit us and the water has chilled down to 74 degrees or so. Monday we had ran in the backcountry to fish and normally I wouldn’t of gone back there but my customers wanted to. We only had 2 shark bites fishing the big rods and then we did catch a load of trout, ladyfish, snapper, and jacks to bend the rod. No tarpon bites back there but didn’t expect it to be much good. This morning around town here I was surprised how cold the water had got, usually with an incoming tide and being closer to the Atlantic it would of stayed a little warmer. But anyways we had a north breeze and plenty of fish around but they were not really happy. We had fished 5 different spots and saw fish in each spot but only had one bite. A small fish on dead bait and he threw the hook soon after we hooked him. I didn’t see anyone out there catch a fish and there was a lot of boats as there is a tournament going on. Things should improve the wind has slicked out now and I imagine it will warm up considerably given a day and that should make the fish much more happy. I’ve got a night trip tonight hopefully that will be better. 0 for 0 and 0 for 1
5/2/15 May Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada
Well the last couple days we’ve had some difficult tarpon fishing conditions. We had a late cold front hit us and had pretty hard northwest winds followed by north this morning and now finally has swung around east again. But very blustery for the most part. This morning we got on the bait good first thing in the morning and were able to load up. We had some good action early down by the bridges. Quite a few cheap shots and 3 solid bites. Unfortunately we had one fish that just pulled off the hook, another that chaffed through the leader after 5 minutes, and the 3rd we got the leader on though he proceeded to run through the power line legs and cut us off. All the best action was on the harder incoming tide as soon as it let up by 10:00 or so things slowed down. We did come across a nice ball of bait and caught some more then fished near home to catch the falling tide. Found some tarpon but they weren’t interested in feeding so we called it a day. Anyways we got 1 on a technical release anyways. Yesterday we patch fished in the morning and that was good for porgy and hogfish. We tried tarpon later in the day and had one cheap shot by the bridges further south but unfortunately once the tide got rolling the weed got extremely thick and made it almost unfishable. We tried dead baiting and caught a few sharks and a ‘mud marlin.’ Well tomorrow I have the day off so hopefully things will have a chance to rebound, the wind has swung back out of the east and hopefully it will stay there! 0 for 0 and 1 for 3.
