Florida Report

[schoolie monster]

So anyone who read my post whining about missing the bluefish blitz down at the cape can know that I'm a pretty big jerk since I am missing it cause I got a chance to go to Florida over a long weekend, and you also have to know that I would work fishing into that trip one way or another.

We went down to FL to visit some of the wife's family, go to a reunion of the medical group that performed the surgery on Karen to save the twins, and to take my 5 year old to a park (she chose Sea World with a little coercion). All those things were great, but this is a fishing site.

Friday I went out with Cpt. Tod Hagan on the Indian River near the Sebastian Inlet. The focus was tarpon and redfish. We started early am and targeted baby tarpon... baby tarpon are 10-50lbs and are a blast on light tackle.

Now I knew we were doing this and from talking to Tod, knew there was a pretty good bite of baby tarpon right now... so, I was hoping to get a 50lber so I could post "got my 50" or something dorky like that, and then you know, people would hit the thread and ha ha very funny. I'm pretty easily amused with myself.

It didn't quite work out that way. It was a blast though as we drifted a couple mullet chunks, livelined a mullet and I threw artificials off the front. I hooked 6 fish, landed 2. Had a couple more come out of the water before we even saw the line move. Those things can freakin' jump. We've all seen the shows, but I was amazed to see it. And they come off too. I landed one in the mid teens, another around 20lbs... had one over 40lbs on for a couple minutes before he threw the hook on his 3rd jump. The others were off pretty quick. Landing a couple made the lost ones still fun even though I'd have liked to get one of the bigger fish.

Schools of jack crevalle were also cruising by and I took time out to nail a couple of those on jerkbaits (yes, ledgerunner 5 1/2" split tails/olive... plug for GS). I broke in my new 3pc. travel rod as well.

It was awesome to see tarpon rolling all around and then seeing the wakes of the jacks coming towards you... neat stuff. So those were my first tarpon (see picture below) and a warm up for some big boys on the outer beaches.

We headed out into the ocean and right away we found tarpon. We threw out 2 live mullet and within a couple minutes a fish around 70lbs blew up on one of the mullet 3 times, knocking the bait clear out of the water. It was an awesome sight with the tarpon flying farther than the bait. He never took it though and despite the good start, that was it. We saw a few more small groups, but not the concentrations Tod was looking for. No more hits.

We did alot of cruising and found bait and fish, but it was usually jacks and even a school of snapper blues. We saw a couple of tarpon under the blues but couldn't get them to eat. I even let one of my blues swim around a minute to see if the tarpon would take it. Nope.

Caught a few more jacks on jerkbaits around 6lbs. They make some nice runs and Tod got some good video footage for me in the clear water. They aren't quite as fast as an albie, but they are a great fighting fish.

We got some more bait that they call "greenies"... they look alot like a herring. We went back to the inlet to drift the channel for big reds, snook or tarpon. We had done this last April and Karen and I both hooked up with big reds that we lost to rocks. But we made 5 good drifts and didn't even get a jack, so we moved back into the IC waterway to look for redfish in the shallows.

I'm really psyched I got my first tarpon and the jacks are awesome, but I really wanted a redfish, preferably on the flats. Tod just got a new 22' pathfinder about a week ago, so the poling platform and the trolling motor haven't been installed yet... in addition, the wind had picked up and it was mostly cloudy, but my stubborness came through again and I wanted to try to find a redfish. One lousy redfish. After 3 years, I pretty much know Tod's good redfish spots and they are back country mangrove shorelines and really require a pole or trolling motor. But he knows plenty of spots and we waded a long stretch and saw alot of stingrays, catfish and some sheepshead, but it was tough to see and no reds. Then we drifted a couple flats and saw a big shark, some more rays, no reds. Finally, we drifted another area and we finally saw a red that was spooked. Then I saw a fish sitting over some sand and threw on it and I was on. It was a nice trout just under 6lbs. That's a good sized trout and it came on a GS 4 1/2" split tail. It was some consolation, but I got this red bug. We went back and drifted the same area a little closer to the shoreline and didn't see a fish. Finally, at the end, we ran into some small jacks around 2lbs along with some ladyfish harassing bait and we caught a couple of those and ended the day with a fish.

It was a great day though I admit I'm a bit disappointed about the reds, partially because I had a tough time with them last year as well, so now its been two straight years without one. When you only get one shot a year, you have a long time to stew over it. But the trout and the tarpon will help me tough it out... I also missed my usual fishing partner (my wife). She flipped out about the tarpon and really wants to catch one. She also ripped me for whining about no reds.

We saw manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, an alligator, a shark, some huge rays... rolling tarpon, huge schools of jacks in crystal clear water... and I got some good sun on my face.

PS... my daughter and I are in the shark exhibit at Sea World and what's in the tank... dozens and dozens of redfish taunting me. Usually they have jacks and tarpon in there... this year its reds. Not cool. My daughter thought it was funny.