It's Monday, Memorial Day the 26th of May 2002 at 10:30 in the morning. The forecast called for clear skies and an incoming full moon tide. Winds were out of the NE 10-15mph for most of the day.
Monday was actually a prefish day for a very special guest that was on his way for two days of Addictive Fishing. Two of my good fishing friends Cory and Joey invited me to go out on their boat and try for some Tarpon. They picked me up at my dock which was a change of pace for me. Then we went to the causway to get bait. After about 7 throws of the net the boat wasloaded up with big juicy white bait and threadfin. With a ton of bait in the well it seemed like everything was great, but unfortunately it was not. The bait well did not want to cooperate and the bait were going belly up. We knew the only way to keep the bait alive was to get the boat on plane and let the high speed pick ups fill the well with fresh water. We made our course back to the river and decided about halfway to the fishing hole that we needed to change the bait over and use "Chew ON This" instead. We could not take the chance of letting such wonderful bait die and ruining our shot at some excellent fishing.
Once we switched the bait over to the Back Country and filled two five gallon jugs with gas so we could put a little fuel in the boat, it was time to try the first tarpon spot. We saw fish all over the place but after about 45 minutes of no takers we decided to give the next spot a shot. There was a wide variety of fish in the area and I managed a 4 pound Canal Tuna and one 24 inch snook. Joey got one Canal Tuna a little over 5 pounds and missed a couple of others. Cory had two tarpon try to eat his bait. One of those tarpon would just sit around and peck at the fat white bait like he didn't know if he wanted to eat it or not. The other Tarpon Cory had a shot at completely flew out of the water and exploded the threadfin clear out of the water. To bad he missed it, if he had we would have had a fight on our hands. We fished that area for maybe 10 more minutes and decided to go to the last spot of the day.
Eventhough it was rather late in the day we were still hopeful of scoring some tarpon action. We started fishing down the mangrove shoreline and did not even see a fish roll for the first 20 minutes or so. Then we made it to the mouth of a little basin and where the mangroves met the seawall four Tarpon were layed up right on the edge of the shade. Cory tossed his bait about four feet in front of the fish and it looked like they were headed towards it. Then I did something stupid,I was trying to throw about 4 feet behind Cory's bait but instead I chunked it about 2 feet in front of Cory's bait right on top of the Tarpon's head and sure enough all four spooked. All I could do was apologize for being a dummy to Cory. We continued to move on towards the basin and the deeper we made it the more Tarpon we saw rolling. We actually spooked 3 or 4 just by trolling motoring right up on their backs. After fishing all the way around the basin it finally happened a nice Tarpon busted Joey's bait. Fish On!! Joey was so excited to finally have a large Tarpon on, he looked like he was about to start shaking he was so nervous. The Tarpon hit very close to the boat and within a minute or so the fish was right at the edge of the boat and Joey thought he was about to land the fish. That's when I told him it is like a boxing match without knockouts, you have to earn that victory. About 25 minutes later he finally got the fish to the boat after about 7 or 8 jumps and two or three nice runs. We got some nice pictures along with a couple of high fives and one huge smile on Joey's face.
To conclude, the day turned out great, the bait stayed alive and I even had enough left over to start the next day with the guy that was looking for a little Addictive Fishing. Joey got his first large Tarpon and that was my goal of the day.
Until next time may you have line singing, leader fraying, and drag screaming action!!!!
