The birds were EVERYWHERE which meant the tarpon were busting all over too!!! We raced back to the truck, grabbed the yaks, and literally ran back toward the beach with both yaks. Rigged up quickly and started casting. About the 4th or 5th cast with a DOA Baitbuster, Tim gets hooked up!
Tim was using a medium action Redbone with a Stradic 2500 along with an 80# leader. The fight only lasted 12 minutes as Tim LOCKED down the drag on that thing. Like always with bigger fish and kayaks, most of the fight was at the boat.
Normally Tim brings gloves even when we are NOT fishing for tarpon, but today he didn't have them, as you can see ^^^
Here's the money shot!
It was an awesome fight to witness and I give Tim all the credit in the world for whipping that poon so quickly.
I was up next. Paddled back to the bait pods and within 7 casts I was on!
This one was a bit larger than Tim's..20 minutes into the fight and I had an aching arm. It brought us straight offshore and did not want to stop.
I tried one last time to get it off the bottom and did..Tim was in the background yelling "Now don't let him back down!". I palmed the little stradic while my big poon went straight down and busted the braided line. I was satisfied with what had happened..Managed to get the leader a handful of times..We didn't really have big enough tackle to mess with the big boys. I threw some soft plastics as we lost the ONLY Baitbuster we had and jumped 2 more, both of which were lost to 30# leader. Tim jumped one at the very end also on a Rattletrap, so they were obviously not picky. We left around 4:30 knowing that we were unprepared.
Hopefully this cool front doesn't push them south as I would love to land a silver king off the beaches this year!
