Juvenile Tarpon Fishing

This afternoon seemed like a good time to do some juvenile tarpon fishing in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The air temperature was in the low 90s and there was enough of a breeze to make fishing in the heat enjoyable.

I decided on riding down Bio Lab road and was genuinely surprised to find nobody fishing along the banks or in the lagoon.

The water looked clearer about 100 yards from the shoreline but in general the water closer to shore was devoid of sea grasses.

I stopped to pitch a paddletail bait on two occasions with no luck and wound up fishing the mangrove roots in the southernmost portion of the lagoon near Pelican Island.

A lone fisherman had launched his canoe and was fishing the area so I started pitching a Creme paddletail bait around several shallow areas where fish were busting glass minnows along the bank.

I hooked and shook off a large garfish that chewed up my bait so much I had to replace it.

After tying on a new lure, I moved to a shallow pond that had a lot of activity.

Immediately I started hooking up with  juvenile tarpon.  The fish were in the two to four foot category and were hitting my bait right on the bank.

I was using light 8 pound test fluorocarbon line and since I wasn't planning to keep any fish, I played them to the bank where I shook them off if they didn't already toss my bait.  

Most of the fish tossed my soft plastic lure back to me after the second or third jump but I managed to take a selfie of this one before returning it.

I spent almost two hours hooking and fighting juvenile tarpon in the area before a large manatee invaded the area and killed the bite.

 

Click on the pic to see the video

I decided to walk the unimproved road that runs along the lagoon and spent a lot  of time fan casting the areas I could access.  

I got one hit that I missed and spooked two nice size redfish that were right tight on the bank.  

After I had enough exercise, I turned around and headed to the air conditioning of my truck.

On the way out towards Playalinda beach road, I decided to hit a few parking lots to see if anybody was surf fishing.

The tide was out and at every lot I stopped at, sun worshippers were on the sand getting baked but I didn't see one surf angler.

Hope to get out again tomorrow to wet a line when I finish up around the hours.

Tight Lines.