02 Jul 2007, 9:32 am / Full of life
went out of anclote again at 6am on saturday morning in search of tarpon. we wanted to get on some redfish first so we caught a few rats and went looking for the silver kings. well they werent lying when they said tarpon were EVERYWHERE. we couldn't start a drift without having tarpon crash within 20yds from us. the best live bait we could get was some good sized ballyhoo and we couldnt keep them in the water long enough without a monster bluefish eating them. boat traffic had them spooked too. crazy saturday mornings... i freelined a lady fish with the tail cut off about 40yds from the boat. 5min later my clicker starts screaming! the fish jumps out of the water and we swear its a 3ft tarpon. it jumps a few more times and we see its a blacktip! i got him to the boat and he broke off. after that i was done fishing for trout. i baited up every fish we had in the live well and nailed the blacktips! whiting, ladyfish, bluefish, jack, porgy ... it didnt matter as long as it was bleeding... i never had to wait more than ~10min for a shark. i pulled in 3 blacktips up to 4ft and lost another 2 in about 45min. not bad for straight 80# mono and a 10/0 hook! (i wasnt planning on sharking and didnt bring my leaders) you could literally throw out a bait and just watch a shark come after it. after my last blacktip we headed back to the dock to pick up my brother and we put him on some fish. first 3 casts he landed 2 cobia and a 20"+ blue fish on a glow colored gulp. i put that bluefish out for shark and my brother got to battle a nice ~4.5' blacktip for a little bit before it broke off. that was the last shark of the day and it was just trout for the next 2hrs. all the locals always tell me how easy it is to catch shark around anclote... they werent lying! we already decided that our next trip out there is going to be strictly for the big fish... shark and tarpon!
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