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Report for Destin, Florida - Nearshore
Capt. Larry Pentel
July 11, 2000
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report
OFFSHORE
The weather has settled into the usual summer pattern of slick calm every morning and an afternoon seabreeze making for excellent conditions. The Red Snappers are still here and the King Mackeral have shown up in force ( and in size)to give everybody something to catch.
I ran a 4 hour yesterday morning with three locals who are all chefs at Frangista restaraunt. They wanted a "variety" catch for personal comsumption. We started out fishing for snappers and and caught some fine ones. We then went to war with a school of small dolphin and released all but the 6 biggest. Another stop and we had some triggers and vermillion snappers in the box. Last stop to try to finish our snapper limit, two more snappers in the boat and the fly pole goes off. A nice king and we throw it the box. I rerig the fly rod and spin the boat to pull back up to the rock and wham! The flypole is screaming again. We never did get to finish out our snapper limit. The kings were starving and grabbing a bait within a minute of hitting the water. The last fish ( limit of 6 with three anglers) went to the angler who had never been before. This fellow had all he could handle as the biggest fish of the day had both of us running back and forth on my boat. It's hard to teach someone how to fish while they are battling a 32# king but we prevailed. I gaffed the big fish and shut the box quick as my angler collapsed on the bow deck. He was one big smile as his comrades shoved a cigar in his mouth and slapped his back. I think a boat salesman could have had a field day with those guys about then. We ran on in with all kinds of recipes being discussed for the various species, Maybe I'll get an invite to dinner.
INSHORE
I spent the past week at our fish camp at Indian Pass running tarpon trips. I had heard the tarpon had shown up good but was amazed at what we found. I had the owners of Sextons Seafood in Birmingham as anglers for several days in a row. Roger and Paula Schroeder, their son Jason and his friend Julie were all experienced anglers but weren't expecting anything like we caught. In three days we hooked 13 Tarpon from 75# to I don't want to guess how big. Jason at 21 years old has fished every free moment for the past 11 years. He hooked a fish we fought for 3 hours and 22 minutes that was still green when the line broke. The fish went back to feeding about an hour into the fight and went back to jumping after 2 and a half hours. How Big? I'm not sure, 225# to 300# just pick a number in that range. We boated (and released) three fish in the 75# to 100# range and jumped the rest off in fights that lasted from 2 minutes to 2 hours. There wasn't much time to relax when we weren't hooked up to tarpon . The sharks were feeding on the same schools of bait and were eager to bite a hook. Most of the sharks were black tips and spinners in the 5# to 40# class and some of them rivaled the tarpon with acrobatic displays of their own. We even hooked a bull shark in the 175# range that jumped 15 feet from the boat on his way offshore. That one tail whipped us after about 20 minutes. Good thing to as we hooked a tarpon right after. And if all that isn't enough to get you excited there are tripletail floating around in the middle of all this activity. We never targeted them but saw quite a few. Sunday morning i just fished a half day as I had to come back to run a trip off Grayton Monday morning and my clients had to leave town early also. The tarpon didn't turn on that morning so I called over that night to see how they did in the evening( the afternoon bite is usually better). The spinner sharks we caught in the moring paled in comparison to the feeding frenzy i heard the tarpon put on at sunset. Double hook ups and burnt off fish nobody boated one but it sure sounded exiting. To top it off one boat just stayed inside and fished for tripletail, they found 34 and caught their limit! All these fish and the most boats within sight at anyone time was 7.
Somebody call and book a tarpon trip-I can't wait to go back!!!
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