100+lb Tarpon from the Kayak: Port St. Joe Part II

"No no no NO! Oh my GOD!"

I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. I wanted to scream. What my poor eyes had just witnessed was beyond comprehension for a few moments. I was fishing in the Gulf off of Cape San Blas near Port St. Joe Florida in my kayak and was busy catching live bait with a Sabiki rig. I had caught a perfect sized Bluerunner and set about hooking it on my bigger rod to catch King Mackerel. My dad and I had seen King jumping all morning, so I had high hopes that this day would be the day I finally landed one in the yak. Thanks to the wind, I was slowly drifting farther and farther offshore and I put my King rod in the rod holder with the live Bluerunner so it could be dragged behind my drift. My bait catching rod was laying in my lap with only 2 feet of the Sabiki rig dangling in the water next to the kayak. Suddenly, something grabbed the Sabiki rig while I was messing with the King rod and with a quick jerk, sent my Shimano rod and reel into the Gulf and disappearing into the milky green water forever. I had no time to react.

Speechless. I couldn't even think of a good enough curse word to fit the situation. I just sat there in silence as I looked into the deep green water where my rod and reel was being dragged around somewhere below by a spanish or baitfish. I turned the yak around, and paddled back closer to shore after a shark stole my blue runner. I honestly just wanted to leave. Just go back to the motel, go to sleep, and try it again later that day. My dad, however, convinced me not to, and boy was I thankful for that.

We started floating frozen cigar minnows behind the kayak with balloons in hopes of catching a King. It wasn't long, however, that we both started pulling in sharks. Lots of sharks.

My dad soon gave up on floating balloons and started slow trolling the cigs. Almost immediately my dad was hooked up and I heard him say what I thought was "King!". Turns out I was hearing the tail end of a common four letter word that is often turned into an adjective because my dad had hooked another shark. Regardless, I took my balloon off the line because I too wanted to catch a King. I cast my cig out behind the boat, and began paddling closer to my dad. Within just a few seconds, my rod was doubled over and the line was screaming. I couldn't turn around fast enough but I noticed some HUGE jump behind the boat. All I caught was the end of the splash. I finally wrestled the rod from the rod holder behind me, set the hook, and noticed that I was being spooled quickly. I tightened the drag, and the fish's run stopped. What happened next was a shock. A big tarpon jumped right in front of me!

"I got a tarpon!!", I yelled at my dad as I began my (soon to be) two mile Tibetan sleigh ride. I could tell it was a big fish just by how quickly I was being dragged offshore. My dad started to follow me and at one point, he couldn't paddle fast enough to keep up with my ride. After a few minutes, I tried to back the drag down a little bit on the old Shimano 650 Baitrunner, but to my dismay, the drag began to fail. I had to grab the top of the reel in order to keep the fish from just swimming off. I played with the drag a little more and finally settled it out WAY higher than it should have been. The fish almost couldn't take any line out and I was nearly herniating myself every time it -should- have taken out line.

After a 20 minute, two mile fight, I got the fish close enough to the kayak that I could now see it. It fought under the boat for a few more minutes and even rammed the bottom of the kayak hard enough that it lifted the bow up. I soon lip gaffed it, dropped the lip gaff from the fish going crazy, regained control of the gaff, and pulled the fish's head into the boat.

After unhooking it, I set about trying to revive it. It took only a few minutes before the fish had enough strength to swim on its own and I let it go into the murky green water. It was an absolutely awesome experience and one that I kinda hope to never have again. I've caught big 150+lb tarpon from a power boat before as well as 30lb'rs from the kayak. But this fish beat me to pieces. The rod butt bruised both my abs and groin muscles and I thought I'd never make it back to shore with my sore arms. I actually think that instead of reeling the fish in, I just pulled myself to the fish the whole fight. But at the end of the day, the fish helped me shake off losing the rod and reel and definitely made my trip. A big thanks to my dad for not only paddling out with me to take the picture, but also raging at the sharks and inadvertently tipping me off for the right tarpon set up. Hopefully, if this ever happens again, I'll have that helmet camera and be able to catch the whole thing on film.

Speck Fishing and Mullet Snatching: Port St. Joe Part I

The next few posts will be my most recent trip to Port St. Joe and will be broken up into a few parts.

Woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning last Wednesday and made the 3.5 hour drive down to Port St. Joe with my dad. Despite being zombie-like from the lack of sleep the night before, I was really excited about making this trip. Prior to this, I hadn't been to St. Joe in over six years.

We arrived sometime around 8 am and decided that our first stop would be the St. Joseph's State Park. Even though it had been six years since the last time I had visited, few things had changed throughout the small town. A few new houses, new stores had opened, old stores had closed, and that was about it. The state park was just how I remembered it. We soon launched the kayaks and paddled out over the grass flats and fished the incoming tide.

It was a beautiful morning. The wind was up just a little bit, but it was manageable in the yaks. The best part was that the fish were biting. After just a few casts, I landed a nice fat Speckled Trout on topwater.

I hooked and missed a few more trout after this and then proceeded to catch this little guy.

I never knew they made Bluefish that small. Over the course of the trip, I only landed the one trout and little Bluefish. I missed a good ten strikes and lost a couple of fish that I had hooked. What I'm pretty sure was a Redfish came up and annihilated my topwater lure, but because of their downward facing mouth, he managed to -not- hook himself. Apparently I should have switched to subsurface because my dad landed about six trout and lost a few bluefish on soft plastics.

One thing I love about St. Joe is how much area there is to fish. The grass flats extend for at least a half mile off shore and continue down the seven miles of peninsula.

This is why I was livid slightly perturbed when I saw these people run their boat up in the shallows, chop the grass, make a ton of noise, and chunk and anchor our RIGHT next to me. And no, the picture doesn't quite do their "closeness" justice.

It was at least a small victory to see them get excited and yell "Fish on!!", only to pull back a pinfish with their live bait.

By this point, my dad and I were both really tired from the drive and all the paddling. The wind had come up quite a bit more so we decided to call it quits and head back to the truck. The next morning we decided to launch the kayaks at a cove in the southwest corner of the bay. We got there right at dawn and got to see a beautiful sunrise.

The water was quite a bit more shallow than over at the state park. It took close to 10 minutes of solid paddling before I reached 2 feet of water. To my surprise, nothing was biting. I had taken the fly rod with me so it only made sense that after a few casts, the wind picked up to a near-gale. I did, however, notice that there were mullet -everywhere- and I remembered that I brought one snatch hook with me. I paddled back to the truck, switched my gear up a bit, and paddled back to where I'd seen so many schools. The mullet were VERY thick first thing in the morning, but they had begun to spread out by the time I began snatching. I still, however, managed to land one big fat mullet that I failed to take a picture of. I hit another 15 with the snatch hook and hooked and lost 7 of those. If only mullet would take a lure/fly in saltwater. Believe it or not, they fight very hard. The mullet that I landed took out a bunch of line and even dragged me and my kayak a good 50 yards into the wind.

I gave up after a while since the wind was getting stronger and it was exhausting trying to hook a mullet from the kayak. It's quite a bit harder to hook one from the kayak because one can't get the same leverage as they can while wading.

We didn't really know what to do in the afternoon because of the wind. The Gulf was too rough to launch, and if we launched at the state park, we'd never make it back up the beach to the launch because of the wind. We finally decided to just fish the same area as we did earlier in the morning. It was different this time because the tide had now run out. What was once a long stretch of water 2 feet deep, was now nearly a half mile of six-inch deep grassy water. It took forever to paddle across it thanks to dragging the bottom and fighting the wind. The mullet were still thick, but were now in only a few inches of water and every time I cast the treble hook at them, it just stuck in the grass. I managed to find a hole that was a few feet deep and began casting some soft plastics into it. I caught fish, but unfortunately it was just one croaker after another. But hey, it gave me a chance to use those hook outs that I need to write a review on.

I gave up after a few hours and paddled/push-poled myself back to the launch. Upon arriving, I noticed something I'd nearly forgotten about Port St. Joe. Fiddler crabs!

One can't really be careful when walking around them. Whether you run through the group, or step gingerly near them, you'll still hear an unpleasant crunch as one finds the bottom of your shoe. It's a shame I never make it down to Port St. Joe when the sheepshead are really biting.

Summer Update and Other Stuffs

Well, summer is in full swing here in Florida and the fishing will only continue to get better. I haven't made it out to fish much in the past two weeks but that will change come tomorrow. My dad and I leave to Port St. Joe Florida to kayak fish for a few days. We aren't camping since we haven't had much time to get our things ready, but we'll still get plenty of time to fish and hopefully have a blast.

This trip will also give me a chance to try out a few things. I recently received the Baker Magnum "T" Hookouts from a gear review opportunity through the Outdoor Blogger Network.

Hopefully I'll have a chance to try it out during this trip. Also, Snapper season finally opens tomorrow and when I get back, I'll have another chance to put the hookouts to the test. Another thing that I'm itching to try out is a homemade Hawaiian sling/sling bow. Now, I'm a HUGE fan of Dave Canterbury from the Pathfinder School LLC and (the more popular TV show) Dual Survival. On his youtube channel, he's got instructions on how to make a sling bow. Essentially, the sling bow is a sling shot that can shoot an arrow.

The idea looks great and I really wanted to try it out. Unfortunately, I don't have my Crossman slingshots with me (I left them in my apartment at college) and those are the ones that are used in the video. Instead, I have an older slingshot that was bought from Academy Sports and Outdoors. The handle isn't solid plastic like the Crossmans so I can't fit the PVC piece as shown in the video. Instead, it's wrapped in a thin flexible plastic material to cover the metal frame. I schemed for a while before I decided on my own version of the sling bow. Since I'm relatively terrible at crafting things, I decided to keep the design as simple as possible. Therefore, my sling bow only has one additional part.

I bought a 6 inch eye-bolt at Lowes and stuck it in the handle. Yep, that's it. 4 years (going on 5) of college education and that's the best I can come up with. Surprisingly, it works...sorta. I have no intention of shooting an arrow with fletchings from my sling bow. Instead, I bought a bow-fishing arrow and plan to fire the sling bow underwater at fish.

It's HIGHLY doubtful that I'll actually shoot anything, but it's worth a try. I know that Port St. Joe has a bunch of big mullet that come pretty close so I'll be testing out my sling bow this week. Out of the water, it'll stick the bow-fishing arrow about 1/2-3/4 inches into a fence from approximately 10 feet away. Underwater...who knows? I'm hoping to start getting into free diving/spear fishing and I think this might be a good start. I'll be taking along my pole gun as well, and I hope that will at least work.

I'd also like to start video taping such outings with a waterproof camera. I'd really just like something I can use when I kayak fish, spear fish, wade fish, bow hunt, or whatever it is I'm doing at the time. As of right now, I'm thinking about purchasing a Contour HD Helmet Camera and with it, a waterproof case.

I've seen other people using the GoPro HD Hero, but I'd like something I can strap to the side of my visor or snorkel mask and not have a giant camera on an arm sticking off of it.

I also got word that I'll be receiving the 1470 and 1449 Guide Series Waterproof cases from Plano. I'm really excited about trying these out and writing a review on them. I plan to put them through the usual process that my gear endures including, but not limited to: Sun, sweat, saltwater submersion, heat, being dropped, stepped on, lost, found, being dropped, kicked, run over, stuck by lightning, being dropped, and possibly a good scratching.

And with that, I'm off to pack. Hopefully I'll have some good reports rolling in sometime next week!