Every year in October if you play the tides you can find excellent tarpon fishing. The early morning outgoing tides on a full moon really get them feeding. This year was another great October and we put a lot of fish in the boat. I started early mornings in the passes using live ladyfish for bait. We managed three to five hookups per morning from 615-715am with the biggest fish close to 130lbs. As the tides changed it was off to the beaches to look for huge schools of bait that would be holding tarpon, sharks and mackeral. On wednesday we boated 8 tarpon to 90lbs and hooked over 20 total. We caught themon ladyfish,DOA Baitbusters, Calcutta swimbaits,and on fly. The only problem were all the pesky mackeral eating the line to line knots. We ran out of lures to throw at them. Thursday was strictly fly fishing with a buddy filming and a good friend following us on his boat. They managed to nice tarpon on fly to 90lbs and I broke off three on fly. Friday I picked up Donnie and Rich at 630am after netting plenty of horse pilchards and ladyfish and we were ready to go. The first tarpon came about 20mins into fishing on a ladyfish. Then they went wide open on the glass minnow schools and we managed to hook 7 more tarpon on Calcutta swimbaits, pilchards and baitbusters. A great week of Naples tarpon fishing.
