Boca Grade, Charlotte Harbor Tarpon Fishing Report. April 17 2013.

Winter is over in South Florida, early in the month we experinced temp’s in the 40’s consitantly for nearly 5 days straight. Tarpon fishing was very difficult the first week of April. I really didn’t see any tarpon at all until about April 10th. Now that we have had some temp’s near the 90’s for the last 10 days or so the water has warmed up in the mid to high 70’s and tarpon fishing in Charlotte Harbor is right on par.

I have been tarpon fishing just about every day for the last 7 days. The tarpon have flushed out of their winter staging areas into Charlotte Harbor and they are hungry. The best tide has been this past week has been the incoming tide. I have been using live thread fins as well as jumbo sized “white” bait (pilchards) fished under a cork. If you are looking to do some tarpon fishing and are looking to book a fishing guide in teh Charlotte Harbor area now is the time. The boat pressure is very light on these fish right now. Most of this past week I have seen the same 4 or 5 guides fishing for tarpon and we are all catching fish. In 3 more weeks we will not have the these fish basically all to ourselves as the tarpon fleet from Tampa will be here in full force to chase the tarpon around Boca Grande Pass. The average sized fish I have seen jumped ot caught so far are all well over 150 pounds, I had a client from BC Canada out on Tuesday and he lost his battle with a fish well over the 180 pound mark after about 30 minutes.

The key right now to finding tarpon is look for the birds. The tarpon are staying near the schools of bait. If you are wondering, yes, there are tarpon in Boca Grande Pass. The pressure is light in the pass as well right now. These fish will eat a freelined threadfin drifted through the school, there are also some nice kingfish in the pass.