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South Florida Report - Flamingo, Biscayne Bay & Miami
Capt. Jim Hobales
August 19, 2007
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
Great action
081707
Greg and Phil are from far away, originally from South africa now living in Alberta Canada, have been on a fishing vacation. They just returned from Eluethra in the Bahamas and want Tarpon and Snook to finish up their trip. Greg was an excellent caster, which make life easy for me. It didn’t take long and Greg was hooked up to a nice Snook
that was running like a race car. Greg finally got the Snook next to the boat and it was a lot bigger than we thought, I grabbed the Snook and lifted it into the boat a beautiful specimen 34 inches 11 1/12 lbs. This was the start to a lot of catching for the next couple of hours; Greg and Phil caught a dozen Snook and a handful of Redfish with plenty of shots at Tarpon that did not want to eat. The lures of choice were as usual the Twitch n Rap and the Gulp Shrimp up in the mangrove roots which produced several Reds for Phil.
We ran out and found some big Tarpon in the Gulf but the wind picked up and switched killing the bite. It was Phil’s turn he hooked a big Snook off of Middle Cape again on the Twitch n Rap, the Snook pulled, ran then jumped and threw the lure. It was a fantastic day until Phil got back and realized he lost his keys somewhere.
081807
Today I am fishing with Jeff, Billy and Jeremy from Arkansas, the trio are here working at Turkey Point and all 3 are experienced anglers. This may have been one of the easiest days I could have had except for the amount of fish they caught, I actually got tired of reaching over and grabbing fish to release. I told them we had about an hour before the tide started to move so we worked our way around with very little action. The tide started going out the baits started moving and Jeff was hooked up to a fish that fooled us at first, maybe because of the light tackle. Jeff was doing a good job and the Snook just would not give up. Billy and Jeremy were giving him a hard time about it until we got the monster Snook next to the boat. I reached down and scooped her up with the net and she fill the net completely! I weighed the big Snook on my Boga grip she was 16 ½ lbs and 37 ½ inches long I said it’s not going to get any better than that. Jeff revived the hard fighter for 5 minutes or so; this ensures a Shark would not eat her. Jeff next cast he was hooked up again, he had the hot hand for a while. Jeff probably caught 6 or 7 before Billy and Jeremy got one! Then all hell broke loose every one was hooked up none stop; in about an hour and a half they released 25 Snook from 18 inches to that monster. Jeff snagged a mullet and we threw it in the well.
There were plenty of Tarpon rolling in the area so I waited until we got in to deeper water to use the mullet. As the guys were catching Trout over the grass flats, I hooked the mullet up on a Biscayne 12 lb rod when all of a sudden we saw a huge boil around the bait. The mullet just got ate I said and the Tarpon was in the air and the rod was doubled over. Billy is a Bass angler and never experienced anything like that before. The Tarpon threw the mullet but it was still on the hook and living so, we pitched it back out. This time a 50lb Tarpon found it and was not letting it go, this is what make guiding so much fun is when a guy enjoys a fish like Billy did. Billy got the release on this Tarpon and they all wanted one now! I netted some mullet but the weather was about to get bad and I decide to try an out run the rain squalls, this really turned out for the best. I ran to my little Tarpon spot and they were rolling everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of Tarpon big and small. The next fours we hooked 15-20 Tarpon, 20 Sharks, maybe a hundred Jack Crevalles up to 5lbs. They had shots at Triple Tails but it was the Tarpon Bite that was a blast. There were numerous times with 2 guys hooked to Jacks and 2 guys to Tarpon, one time I think 3 guys had Tarpon hook up at the same time. I thought the day maybe easy early on because these guys were good anglers and did everything for themselves, but some how I got worn out this was a great day of fishing. All 3 guys got their slams of Tarpon, Snook and Trout. The mullet did us no good the Sharks ate them. The Tarpon were caught on lures, the biggest Tarpon was 60 lbs.
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