We met up with Capt Bob from Double Haul Charters and headed out in his Maverick HPX skiff. Debbi had never caught a tarpon before, so she was first on the rod.
It didn't take long to get bit and Debbi reeled in her first Jack Crevalle. Soon after that, Debbi was in for a 1 hour battle with a tarpon in the 80-90 lb class.
Later, I hooked into a tarpon as well, but after a hectic battle around the bridge pilings, the hook eventually pulled.
Our first day of fishing on this vacation, turned out to be our best.
We hooked up with Bill Wallace from Fish Key West Florida Charters on a 33 ft Sea Vee. This was a very nice, dry and comfortable center console with a head and twin 250 4 strokes. You can find their info here
The plan was to bottom fish and see what we could catch. Within minutes of dropping the first chum bag, we had fish all around the boat. It didn't take long for the Yellow tail snappers to show up and boy were they big!
As the snapper fishing heated up, we started dropping heavy rods down for mutton snappers and grouper. We got one big mutton to the boat, but lost a few larger fish...presumably grouper.
Then the sharks got thick and we lost 6-10 fish to them. So, we used a snapper head that a shark left us and dropped it down. Debbi has always wanted to catch a shark, so there was no question as to who got to reel it in :)
Friday morning was supposed to be cloudy and the river level was looking good. So, I took off of work in the morning and hit the river. The plan was to fish until about 11:00 am, but the fishing was cut short because I broke my trolling motor prop on a rock...ugh! I know, I know...you should always have a spare, but I didn't.
Anyway, the fishing was pretty darned good for the 2 hours or so that I fished. I ended up with something like 10 smallies. Caught several in the 3-4 lb range.
The pattern was post-spawn, moving water, super shallow, in all of the normal feeding positions.
Caught fish on spinnerbaits and swimbaits, as usual. No reason to throw tubes and senko's when they are this aggressive.
Saturday, Debbi and went out. We did well with spinnerbaits from 8 am until about 10 am...then it got REALLY windy! It was so windy that we had no time to take pic's or video's, or risk banging into rocks. We finally gave in to the wind and went home. Again...something like 10 fish, only got a couple of video. Debbi got the biggest fish at 4 lbs 1 oz.
Website: www.my-fishing-buddy.com
40 year old fishing addict.
Married to Debbi, my best friend and fishing buddy. We got married in Key West, last year. We have 3 children, Matt, Cindi and David.