Now’s the time, if you get a chance, to get out and hook up with a tarpon. The pogy schools have been so thick early in the morning it seems you could almost walk across them. Sitting along A1A in Flagler Beach you can see tarpon busting in the schools. At times you’ll see them come completely out of the water. Also mixed in are king mackerel, jacks, bluefish and sharks. A word of advice for surf anglers, if you are wading in the surf and a school of pogys comes by get away from them, there’s usually sharks around them.
The best time to go out for tarpon is early in the morning, especially if you have a shallow draft boat such as a flats skiff. The sea is usually at ait’s calmest in the am until the breeze kicks up the sea as the day goes on. Find yourself a school of pogys and cast net a bunch. Most of the time one throw of the net will do. Keep the water in your live well constantly flowing or they’ll die. If you’re using spinning gear a reel in the 5000 series is good along with a matching 7 to 8 foot rod. Conventional reels should be in the 20 to 30 lb class with either mono or braided line to match the tackle. Fifty to eighty lb fluorocarbon leader attached to a 5/0 to 8/0 circle hook will do the trick. Place the hook sideways through the nose or the back of the pogy in front of the dorsal fin and your good to go.
When you approach the school try to position your boat to drift with the school. Shut your engine down. Cast the pogy into the school or around the edges. All that’s left to do is hang on and wait. Let the fish run with the bait before setting the hook. Remember to bow to the tarpon when he jumps. This will put slack in the line and prevent h it from spitting the hook. It also takes tension off the line to keep it from fraying the leader.
On the ICW side there are lots of flounder and legal size mangrove snapper being caught. The flounder are averaging 12 to 20 inches and the mangrove 12 to 16 inches. Both fish are excellent eating. Last Thursday Robert Ammon, Mike Bramlett and Heather Bramlett fished the ICW on board my boat. The trio had black drum to 18”, mangrove snapper to 15” and flounder to 14”. Robert lost the big fish of the day when it decided to dive under the boat. Once it did that the line cut and the fish was gone. I think it was a big snook because of the way it was fighting. We’ll get him next time Robert.
Roy’s Bait House reports that Anthony Pantuso caught and released a 125 lb tarpon at the pier. Joe Locote had 10 flounder from the pier and Mike McCray had 3 flounder in the ICW. Hap Meekins was offshore for a 29.14 king mackerel.

I hope everyone had a great and safe 4th of July and you got to enjoy the fireworks at the Flagler pier. The pier, having been closed for a couple of days due to the fireworks, is back to fishing as usual and is producing some good catches of flounder. Bluefish and whiting are both being caught from the pier and the surf. The blues are taking whole mullet and chunks of mullet. Whiting are taking shrimp, sand fleas and fish bites. As of now the beach and ocean is loaded with sargasum weed making the fishing a little difficult. The weed has been brought in by the easterly winds we’ve been having.
Now for some good news for live baiters. Live shrimp is once again starting to appear at bait shops on a regular basis. The first couple batches were on the small side but the size seems to be increasing with every batch that comes in. Lets hope this scenario continues.
On the ICW side it’s trout, snook, redfish, flounder, mangrove snapper, jacks and ladyfish. All can be caught live lining shrimp, mullet or mud minnows. In three trips last week a total of eight snook were brought to the boat with the largest weighing 4 ½ lbs. Also had some nice flounder healthy flounder. One had a half devoured pinfish in it’s throat but still ate the large shrimp we had out there. I also had a party out from New Mexico and one of the guys hooked into a tarpon that went about 15 lbs but it was lost at the side of the boat.
Dave Strickler , his daughter Christine and son Trey fished with me last week and they caught all of the above mentioned fish. Trey had a 4 lb snook and his sister had a 4 ½ lb snook. Both were the biggest fish they ever caught. The family also got to have a close encounter with a manatee. We were fishing a canal in Flagler Beach when the large mammal came right next to the boat. It was an experience of a lifetime for the family from western North Carolina. In all I must have seen 30 manatee in four days of fishing last week so please be aware that they are around when you are out boating.
Capt. Ralph Olivett has been scoring regularly on reds up around Matanzas inlet. Ralph has been using live mullet and scored eight slot size fish in one trip. Capt Chris Herrera is tossing topwater chuggers at aadaybreak for trout in the 6 to 7 lb range. Chris says to fish the grass banks.
Roy Mattson at Roy’s Bait Shop reports that Joe Lacone and his grandson fished the pier for 20 flounder. J Robertson – 7 flounder, 12 whiting and 3 blues. Dave Holloway – 9 blues on frozen mullet. Mike Adkins – lots of whiting from the surf. Roy also reported that someone had dumped 40 flounder that had been gigged at the route 100 boat ramp . What a waste of a resource. I told Roy that if he read the FWC’s report every week he would get sick at he number of people getting caught with illegal fish and that doesn’t include the one that aren’t caught.a