Family and Children trips are always a blast. The kids are always fun and excited to be on the water and these young anglers (ages 3 and 5) stole the show. Their mom and dad wanted to introduce them to fishing in a fun and safe way so they booked one of our Family and Children charters specifically designed for families with small children. We hit the water in the afternoon and made our way to an area that has been producing a bunch of smaller sized fish perfect for young anglers. The pair did a great job of reeling in some Redfish, and Sheepshead with lots of excitement and smiles from everyone. After catching some great fish with the kids we made our way to one of the areas more secluded beaches where the whole family went ashore and found fossilized shark teeth and shells before heading home.

My client had requested to catch Tarpon during his trip. He said that it was one of the bucket list fish he had always wanted to catch. We left the marina and made a small run to the south where we almost immediately saw pods of Juvenile Tarpon rolling along the shoreline. We set up and began sight fishing the pods but couldn't get the fish to bite. I decided to make a move a little further south and try some Tarpon I had found in another area to see if we could get them to bite. The Tarpon were rolling on the surface and with a few well placed casts we hooked up on his first Tarpon - a beautiful 45# fish. The fish became skittish though and we couldn't get anymore to bite in the area. After about 45 minutes I moved us back into the original area we had started in. The tide had changed and the Tarpon were laid up in a cut along the shoreline feeding on the flowing tide. Over the next hour or so we caught another 6 Tarpon. With only about 20 minutes left on the trip we decided to try for some other species and switched to some structure where we caught some Black Drum and Redfish to close out the day.

The water temperatures in the bay have made the fishing difficult at times lately but if you put in the time and effort there are plenty of great fish around. We started out our day trying to target some small Tarpon, but while they were in the area we just couldn't get them to bite. We then headed into the bay and fishing some shoreline along Siesta Key we got into a great bite of Redfish, some Snook, and Snappers to keep the rods bent all morning long.