The weather was a bit worse last week than it has been in awhile. It's getting to be about that time of the year. The time of year when the wind is blowing and the showers are coming down here and there, but as you can imagine, it didn't stop us from fishing or even slow us down for that matter. There was one day that I called my clients before I left the dock just to make sure they were still game. Of course, they said "heck yeah, there are only a few days where we can take off in the middle of the week and can go fishing". We ended up having a great day of fishing that day. We also had some good luck in a fishing tournament a couple of weeks ago. Keep reading to see how good our luck really was.
This week we'll talk about some great Tarpon fishing first. We've had a lot of fun with this fishing and caught Tarpon almost everyday that we fished for them. All of the fish that we've caught lately have been 10-30 lbs. We've also hooked a few that were 40 lbs plus, but we didn't quite get them to the boat. The 40 lbs plus fish are just that much harder to land on light tackle. It's like catching a 200 lb Tarpon on heaver tackle… there is just that much more fish to get to the boat. Hooking up with a 30 lb Tarpon on 10 lb tackle that we were using brings a fight on! This is one of the fish that helped us in the tournament. It's about a 30 lb Tarpon.
The Trout fishing was outstanding last week. We had a number of days that we had our limit of Trout. Lately, fishing for Trout has been different every week. It seems like one week the Trout are bigger than the next week, and we are fishing for these fish around the same areas. I think some days the bigger fish don't want to eat as good as the smaller ones. When you start catching smaller fish start using bigger bait and you will find some larger fish. Also, if you just spend more time in the area the fish start getting bigger at other times. This is another fish that put us in the top in the tournament - a 21 inch Trout.
Boy, the Red fish bite is on!!! We had a day or two when the wind was blowing really hard and the fish where moving around, but even those days, we managed to catch a good number of fish. There have been a number of schools of fish showing up the past few weeks. Not only did they show up, it seems as if they want to chew your prop off. The bite has been good, and I mean, really good. The Red fish were worth big points in the tournament, which was a good thing because we managed to get on some great Schools of fish. A 33 and 34 inch Red fish were the pair of fish that we checked into the tournament. These were some bull Reds.
Finally let's talk about the fish that put us over the top… the great Snook. This fishing has stuck right in there with the Red fish. We haven't quiet had the size with most of the fish like with the Red fish, but give it a few more weeks and I think will start see a lot bigger fish being caught. As far as the action goes, you can bet that the Snook bite is still on and it is hot and heavy. The highest point fish in the tournament was the Snook, and of course, the toughest to catch. Although we had to put a fair amount of time into fishing for this fish we managed to catch a 33 and 38 inch Snook. These two fish along with the rest of them managed to push us over the top to first place. My team and I put a lot of time and work into the tournament, but we had a great time doing it! Please visit www.castawaychartersinc.com for pictures.