Islamorada Road Trip
Posted: May 19th, 2008, 9:18 pm
It’s funny that for a minute, I thought I could go without a boat when I sold my Carolina Skiff last year. That did not last long as I got back in the game with a Panga skiff (great boat). It has done well in the Big Bend already but I thought I would put it to the test by taking it down to my favorite Keys fishing spot, Islamorada.
The first day started great at the campground when I was awakened by mullet schools thrashing around 10' from my head. I got up, grabbed the cast net and loaded up on nice tarpon bait size mullet, woke up my wife and hit the water for tarpon. What happened next is something I have never seen on the water or on TV. We anchored near a channel that was known as a tarpon highway and put out 2 live mullet on floats. Then a 100-150 lb tarpon thrashed around, jumped out of the water, chased the mullet, knocked it in the air, and engulfed it several times but every time the mullet found a way to get away. This unbelievable display lasted for 15 minutes until the Tarpon finally gave up while the mullet swam around (laughing at me I think). At some point, my wife even started cheering for the mullet. It was funny, amazing, and frustrating at the same time. This is how the week went as far as tarpon go. We had tarpon all around the boat all week long but couldn't hook one. We tried live mullet (freelined, on a float, and on the bottom), gulp crab, diving plugs, swimbaits, topwater lures, jigs, flies, DOA jumbo shrimp and nothing would work. We had caught them down there before but none on this trip.
Nonetheless, we had a great trip catching snook of different sizes which is our main target in Islamorada (contrary to most people). The highlight of the trip was catching a personal best 36", 18lb snook. What an incredible fight on light tackle!
Here is the smallest snook:
We caught many barracuda which were absolutely amazing on topwater and on fly.
We caught many sharks up to 8 feet.
We caught one Goliath grouper in our snook spot.
Overall, it was a great trip in spite of all the drama from the Keys tarpon that avoided my hooks all week long.
The first day started great at the campground when I was awakened by mullet schools thrashing around 10' from my head. I got up, grabbed the cast net and loaded up on nice tarpon bait size mullet, woke up my wife and hit the water for tarpon. What happened next is something I have never seen on the water or on TV. We anchored near a channel that was known as a tarpon highway and put out 2 live mullet on floats. Then a 100-150 lb tarpon thrashed around, jumped out of the water, chased the mullet, knocked it in the air, and engulfed it several times but every time the mullet found a way to get away. This unbelievable display lasted for 15 minutes until the Tarpon finally gave up while the mullet swam around (laughing at me I think). At some point, my wife even started cheering for the mullet. It was funny, amazing, and frustrating at the same time. This is how the week went as far as tarpon go. We had tarpon all around the boat all week long but couldn't hook one. We tried live mullet (freelined, on a float, and on the bottom), gulp crab, diving plugs, swimbaits, topwater lures, jigs, flies, DOA jumbo shrimp and nothing would work. We had caught them down there before but none on this trip.
Nonetheless, we had a great trip catching snook of different sizes which is our main target in Islamorada (contrary to most people). The highlight of the trip was catching a personal best 36", 18lb snook. What an incredible fight on light tackle!
Here is the smallest snook:
We caught many barracuda which were absolutely amazing on topwater and on fly.
We caught many sharks up to 8 feet.
We caught one Goliath grouper in our snook spot.
Overall, it was a great trip in spite of all the drama from the Keys tarpon that avoided my hooks all week long.
Congrats on the monster Snook.
