Key West Report
Spent 2.5 days in Key West and stayed at the Merlin Guest House which was one street over from the main drag Duvall Street. Got some great advice from the members here. We had the Conch Fritters at B.O.s Fish wagon and they were the BEST fritters we had in KW. Had lunch at El Siboney and it was awesome. Brunch at Blue Heaven and was great as advertised. Happy Hour at Alonzo’s where they had a 4pm tarpon feeding (which was my first close up view of 100 pound tarpon). Five people, 3 pitchers of beer, tons of half price appetizers, total bill after two hours - $58.00 – Happy Hour is definitely the time to eat.
Mallory Square was interesting to say the least. Some great and funny street acts. Once we parked the car we spent the entire time getting around on rented bikes – parking and driving is a PIA in town – bikes are the way to go if you can do it.
Fishing – I spent about 4 hours fishing. Two hours of daytime casting on some flats on Boca Chica Key – nothing but a single Barracuda follow. Then on Sunday night my son and I headed out after watching a sunset with the family. We fished a local bridge after dark from 10pm to midnight. It was really dark with no bridge lights. Casting bucktails it took us an hour to get some action. We kept getting short strikes using bucktails and porkrind. Had no idea what was hitting them. I took the pork off and had an almost immediate hookup that jumped 3 or 4 times then threw the jig. 3 or 4 casts later I hooked up with a jumping freight train that completely spooled me! I went back to the car for my extra spool and patiently tied on another leader with shaking hands. A few casts later another freight train – into the backing it went. As I contemplated purposely breaking him off it turned and came back towards me. After 30 minutes I landed and released my first tarpon. Not sure how large it was but I couldn’t lift it out of the water so my best estimated guess was around 70 pounds. After releasing it I sat down and shook while my son Nick managed to hookup and jump another 6 times before it threw the jig. My one bit of advice to anyone – do not use backing on a reel to save money on braid – you may need all the line available to land one of these monsters. Bring heavy tackle – a rod with a lot of backbone! You’ll need all the help you can get. Now I know why boats always chase these fish – you don’t have that luxury from the beach.
Here is a 7 minute video of the one we landed. Rated R for expletives.
KW Tarpon2 - YouTube
Thanks again to all for the very kind advice and suggestions – you helped my family make the best of our short time in KW.
Regards,
DZ
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