Tarpon season is in high gear up and down the Atlantic coast. Chum fishermen are catching a mixture or tarpon and sharks either by following a shrimp boat and waiting for them to dump their by-catch, or by anchoring off the beaches and chumming with menhaden.
We ran into some tarpon quite by accident on a trip to Southwest Florida, and caught them in an unusual way. Has anyone ever trolled a mangrove creek for tarpon?
Comments
Hi Ron,
I had a similar experience in Boca Grande once. A friend of mine and I took my boat on a trip one Thanksgiving, intending to make it to Key West. It was a kind of fishing-sight-seeing adventure trip. He had no fishing skills at all, and my skill level was close to zero. I had some technical skills (how to rig up for various techniques, etc) but no clear idea of how to target specific species. Anyway, we ended up trolling in Boca Grande for who know’s what – maybe I thought we might catch a King, or a shark, or maybe I thought you could troll for tarpon – who knows. Regardless, my buddy was driving the boat and I was tending our spread – of trolling spoons and white, feathered jigs. I wasn’t paying that close attention, and when I looked back once, one of the lines had popped out of its outrigger release. I figured we’d picked up some weeds, so I told my buddy and started reeling it in to reset it. As soon as the jig rit the surface, about 30 feet behind the boat, this tarpon with a mouth the size of a basket ball hoop, blasted up behind the lure; just missing it. Unfortunately, that was the last we saw of him, but we were both wide-eyed and dumb-founded. It’s probably good we didn’t catch him, because we wouldn’t have known what to do with him if we had. But it made for a good story.
Kind regards,
JoeBobb