have seen some things this year on the water that I thought I would never see. I've seen things that you have to see yourself to believe. If someone told me what I'm going to tell you, I don't know if I would believe it.
Snook have been the most active fish in the bay lately. Man what a bite we've had going on! There are fish and more fish and they are biting. It seems as if more and more Snook are starting to show up in areas where they normally wouldn't be. On occasion, we've had to do a little looking around on the incoming tide to keep the bite up and going really good, but once the tide does decide to go out, you better get your mind right to catch some fish. If you think you know where there are a few Snook hanging out, fish there with the outgoing tide and I can almost bet you will get a lot of fish to bite. We've gotten into some areas lately where we've had such a good Snook bite going that we've not pulled the anchor for a couple of hours steady caught fish. The Snook of the week was caught by the young man in the picture to the right. It is a 29 inch Snook, and at 8 years old that is one great fish. Who am I kidding? It's a great fish at any age.
One of the toughest things about fishing in the afternoon this time of year is trying to dodge the rain. We started one afternoon trip off on the beach around the corner from the river where we launched to fish for Tarpon and we could see the rain coming down in the distance. We came out of the pass to find a school of about 20 Tarpon, but we couldn't get these fish to grab a bait. We didn't waist much time with these fish because they are usually hard to catch in this big of a school. We moved on down the beach a little and saw a few other boats running around, so we decided to turn around and head the other way to Egmont Key. Egmont Key is a place that usually has a lot of Tarpon around it. Right when we pulled up to Egmont, we found a school of about 50 fish out in a little deeper water. They usually feed better in deeper water. The fish were on when we through the second bait in the water. We were off onto a great fight with a great fish. When I first saw the fish jump a few times in the distance, I thought that it was only about 60 to 80 lbs. We fought the fish for about 20 minutes before we got a good look at it. Once we got the fish a little closer to the boat, we decided that it was a little bigger than 60-80 lbs. I personally think that it was between 125-135lbs. As the gentleman was fighting this fish, he told us the story about the last Tarpon he hooked and had to break off because the weather got so bad. As he was fighting this fish, I began telling them about how the Hammerhead Shark in Boca Grande tried to take a Tarpon from us when about the same time the Tarpon was getting really close to the boat and the guys were getting excited about getting a picture with it. The Tarpon was pulling the boat along while I was trying to find the gaff. I heard the guys say "Shark". I looked up and saw a Hammer head about 10-12 feet long chasing our Tarpon. I told the gentleman to free bail the rod so the Tarpon could get away and the Tarpon was off trying to get away form the Shark, but the fish was to tired and unable to outrun the Shark. We ran the boat up to the Shark and tried to pull the Tarpon away form the Shark. We even beat the Shark in the head with a push pole, but it didn't even slow it down. The Shark even ran into the boat, hitting the motor with full force. Needless to say, we were not able to free the Tarpon from the Shark. Take a look at the picture… it tells the rest of the story! Please visit www.castawaychartersinc.com.
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