I am fishing with Sam Rose and his son Mike today. I picked them up at the Fischer Island dock at 8 a.m. to go Tarpon fishing. There is a pretty good size swell rolling in on South Beach and Mike was uncomfortable. We moved to the south side of the jetties and it didn’t take long and we were hooked up to something really pulling drag. Mike hung on but the fish kept running towards the Government Cut, we got on top and followed it but somehow we got to much slack in the line and it was over. The next drift produced a nice Spanish Mackerel but it was time to try something else.
I rigged up a RapalaCD 11 Magnum and trolled some deeper drop offs for Groupers, Snappers or anything that pulls. On our first pass the rod doubles over and there’s a giant Fish crashing on the surface! Mike gets on the rod and starts cranking then this giant Tarpon come out of the water really pissed because the treble hooks really stuck him. This fish is going crazy about 100 yards behind the boat. The Tarpon make a short run and skyrockets in the air landing on the line breaking us off. Mike is a Bass fisherman so to say he was excited is an under statement. He asked how big was that Tarpon? All I could say was giant at least 150 plus. He didn’t stop talking about it the rest of the morning and the Trout we were catching after that meant nothing. He asked if we could try trolling the plug again and we did. This time it was a much different bite most probably a Grouper but we will never know, because it the one that got away. Sam said I’m hungry take me home!