Fishing Forecast for September, 2016

I have been a full time fishing guide for over fifteen years. I have successfully guided many clients to trophy Snook, Tarpon over 100 pounds and put them on large schools of Redfish.

I’m not sure how many years ago to be exact it was when I first fished Ryan Woythaler, I would remember countless days chasing Tarpon on Charlotte Harbor. We are going to go back 4-5 years ago to when I realized the task I had on my hands was way bigger than I could have imagined.

I fished Ryan and his dad Lenny many times in the spring, we always done very well catching Snook, Reds and Trout. We started discussing him coming down to catch a big Tarpon. I informed Ryan that should not be a problem that I would contact him in the summer when they showed up in the harbor.

That summer I called him to inform him the Tarpon have showed up and feeding very well. It would be a few days before we would be able to get out. Making travel arrangements from Iowa takes a day or so.

Little did I know I was about to start a journey that would bring many days of frustration to the point of almost tears. Along with many days of you just had to laugh to keep from crying. I’m going to skip forward to last year because I’m not trying to write a book. Well anyway I told Ryan to come down in August, in fact I pretty much promised him he could not miss. The fish will be feeding on large schools of ladyfish, all we had to do was locate them.

The days leading up to his arrival I spent hours on the water watching the Tarpon to see where we needed to be at what tides and times of day, I thought I had it down guaranteed! Well if you spent anytime chasing Tarpon, you know nothing is guaranteed. So I made plans with Ryan to meet me at the boat ramp at 7am. The plan was to go toss some jigs for ladyfish for bait, then hit a couple of the deep holes early. Well I knew as soon as we started to catch bait today was going to be different. After what seemed like 2hrs we finally had bait. We headed out to where the fish was early in the morning, put out a couple baits. It was just minutes before we had the first fish in the air. Drag screaming a 125-150 pound Tarpon jumping six feet in the air, then suddenly slack. Ryan informed me he was off. I was quick to let him know it’s not a problem that it was early. That day we jumped over six fish, and had another six or so blow our baits up. We returned to the ramp that afternoon with not a single fish to the boat. Ryan telling me the whole time that he’s cursed. I’ve always been the type that believes you make your own luck, I was beginning to believe he was cursed.

So here we are its day two, Ryan is starting to convince me he is cursed. Catching bait this morning was even harder than the day before. It seemed like overnight things just changed. We managed to get some bait, so I told Ryan let’s run across the harbor to try for bait at a different area. It was glass calm out, you could see a fish roll for a couple hundred yards. We were about halfway when we started to see Tarpon, so we decided to put a bait out. Like the day before just minutes afterwards we was hooked up. The fish threw the hook on the first jump. Hook went one direction an disoriented ladyfish went the other. We put out our last bait, again fish in the air with the same results. At this point where just laughing in disbelief. Later that day we got on a school of Tarpon feeding on ladyfish I honestly lost count of how many hook ups we had. We estimated over a two day period we jumped over 12 fish, and had over 25 blow up on our baits.

So now I am fully convinced of the curse. This year Ryan was getting married on Siesta Key, and he wanted to go Tarpon fishing. We decided to change things up a little thing. The juvenile tarpon fishing has been excellent over the last couple weeks. So we decided to put the training wheels on and start over. That morning started out with going from seeing pods of small fish to seeing just a couple. The positive part was every fish we presented a bait to bit. The first two threw the hook, we just laughed. At this point that’s all you can do. The third bite would be the charm. Could it be possible? I have never been so excited to put my hands on a 10 pound Tarpon in my life. The journey is kind of complete. Next year we are going to take the training wheels back off and go for bigger.

If you would like to experience some of Charlotte Harbors best fishing Give me a call or send me an email.

You can also follow me on Twitter @ backbayxtremes for daily and weekly updates.

Captain Dave Stephens * (941) 916-5769 * Back Bay Xtremes * PO Box 510746, Punta Gorda FL 33951

Flats Fishing Charters for Charlotte Harbour, Punta Gorda, Florida