I pity the fool!

[Chris at Tech]

Over the years, I've come to friggin' LOVE inshore/nearshore saltwater fishing, and I've been fortunate enough to fish with some great people and have some great days.  And I've been lucky enough to add quite a few species to my list: redfish, sea trout, flounder, sheepshead, black drum, cobia, snook, jack crevalle, bluefish, striped bass, red snapper, mangrove snapper, amber jack, triggerfish, spanish mackeral, king mackeral, black grouper, pompano, bonita, and others.  But there's one that really, really, REALLY stands out.  The silver king, tarpon.  Or as my guide friend in HHI, SC Captain Brian Vaughn calls them, "Mr. T".

 

I finally planned far enough in advance to book a trip targeting migrating tarpon on the coast of the Florida Panhandle with Captain Justin Leake, of Panama City Inshore guide service, and Discovery Channel's "Chasin' the Sun" fame.  It only required me to drive down to Panama City Beach from far north Georgia on Sunday afternoon, fish all day Monday, and then drive back to Atlanta on Tuesday.  My wife says I'm an idiot.  I say I'm "passionate". I'll let all you decide  

 

I've fished for tarpon before in both Key West and HHI, SC, and strangely enough I've caught more in SC (130 and 90 lbers) than Key West (only a single 30lber).  Those are 2 very different fisheries for multiple reasons, and the FL Panhandle was also quite different.  The game plan was to cruise up down the beach, anywhere from 100-200 yards from shore, locate pods of migrating tarpon in ridiculously crystal clear water and drift live bait back to them.  Once we left the pass, it took about 10 minutes to locate a school, position the boat, drift the bait back 100 yards and get one to eat.  Yeah, that's a good way to start the morning.

 

 

We hooked the fish a few hundred yards offshore, but big fish tend to do whatever the hell they want, and after a fight somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hrs this one wanted to sunbathe on the white sands of PCB.  As I was fighting this monster, Justin started laughing out loud.  One of his friends directed him to a Facebook post where some local Karen was complaining how close we were to shore, and wondering if what we were doing was legal.  Over the next 15 min, 80+ replies came in basically telling Karen to shut her pie hole since Captain Justin is well known to the locals as doing everything well above board.  I would have loved to have had evidence of that souvenir, but it seems Karen deleted her post out of embarrassment.  

 

 

And in the time Karen was getting beat up on social media, Justin decided that he was tired of watching this fish kick our butts and decided to jump in with his snorkel and grab its face.  Yes, he seriously did that.

 

 

I'm kicking myself for the pic because it doesn't show this fish's true size.  It was 150 lbs if it was an ounce.  I gave this fish hell, and it gave it right back for nearly 2 hours.  Tight drag, bowing to the king, about 300 laps around the boat, "down and dirty".  What an animal!  But we sure gave the crowd on the beach a good show!

 

 

After that magical start to the day, we really had to work for the next bite.  There was no shortage of schools to target but they were not interested in eating.  At that point, I wasn't complaining too much because I needed to recover a bit!   About 8 or 9 schools later, we finally got another one to bite.  This one put on quite a show -- going a full 6 feet out of the air at one point -- but I was pretty thankful it wasn't as big as the earlier fish.  As he waited for his opportunity to grab the fish, Justin got to play a bit as a school of no less than 500 Jack Crevalle came by.  I would have loved to toss a popper into that school as well, but I had bigger fish to fry (or fight!).  After a much more reasonable 20 min fight, this 90lber came to hand.

 

 

And then Justin asked me to help him with some community outreach!

 

 

By the end of the day, I was wiped out.  Both Justin and I had our eyes on more hookups for the day, but any day where I can go 2 for 2 on big tarpon is a huge stinkin' success in my book.  Needless to say, I have my trip booked for 2024. And 2025, for that matter!  My wife and I will get to see Captain Justin again in September for our annual beach vacation, but by then the tarpon are long gone so we'll settle for snapper, grouper, kings, AJs and whatever else wants to play!

[TnRiver46]

Nice fish! But I’ll side with your wife haha

[Kirtley Howe]

I posted this somewhere on the forums before, but....yeah, they are a ton of fun. I used to take a 14' motorboat (basically a rowboat with a motor on it) out into the channel near the causeway between St. Pete and Tampa when the Tarpon were coming thru. I used "heavy" bass tackle. Most fish were in the 60-90 lb range. Lots of hook ups, very few landed. They would tow the boat around, and pretty much did whatever they wanted. The jumps and tailwalks were things of beauty. Good times.  Sounds like you had a ball......memories for a lifetime for sure.

[GreenPig]

Sounds like a great trip with good fish and more scheduled. I like it.

[Chris at Tech]

Lucky me, a few PBC tarpon stuck around til the annual Sept family trip.  And a few bull reds showed up too!

 

 

[gim]

Ya those tarpon are something else. The acrobatics they display are stunning when you hook one.

 

Whenever they would jump, our guide would yell “bow!” For us to drop the rod tip in the direction of the leaping fish. Of course not being used to something like that, all we could manage to was watch in disbelief instead and the tarpon would often become unhooked.

 

There is an episode of River Monsters when he fly fishes for giant inland tarpon from an inflatable kayak in Nicaragua. It’s a really good episode. I think it’s called Silver Torpedo.

[txchaser]

On 6/12/2023 at 4:28 PM, Chris at Tech said:

Over the next 15 min, 80+ replies came in basically telling Karen to shut her pie hole since Captain Justin is well known to the locals as doing everything well above board.

Came here for the fish, but this delivered.