Amazing Tarpon and Kingfish action Tampa Bay 9/24

[onthemarkcharters]

Awesome, amazing, Holly crap Batman only begins to describe Saturdays action. The day started quickly on St. Petersburg beach. My angler Max tossed a white bait of the stern while I pull out the chum bag. Before I deployed it Max’s reel began to sing.

Spanish mackerel 2-3 pounds were gorging all bait in sight. Its that magical time of the year when bait pours into the region as local water cool. We needed 40 and 50 pound leader with 2/0 long shank hooks to reduce cutoffs. We had one mackerel that acted funny turns out Mr. Shark bit the Mack in half!

Last year on 9/25 I had my first fall action for Bonita aka Little Tunny. We made a run to the Egmont key area where I told Max look for birds and exploding water as Bonita fishing in Tampa Bay is all visual. As luck would have it we found our first school trashing the surface within minutes. Max’s drag was screaming with his first Bonita. Clark Silver spoons retrieved rapidly resulted in huge explosions! The action continued red hot until we found something more interesting.

I spotted a very red area in the water moving slowly, turns out it was a big ball of fry baits packed tightly together. To my amazement Tarpon and Kingfish were in a feeding frenzy! A Tarpon inhaled a large white bait and it was game on. Max had his hands full as the beast took over a 100 yards of line. Sadly the hook pulled. Our next cast Max hooked another very big fish. Over 30 minutes later we saw a beautiful Kingfish. Every time the fish saw the boat it ran again. This was max’s first King and at 44” a real trophy. Max handled the beast on the same light tackle we used for Mackerel and Bonita. I was tired watching Max run from front to back and around the boat multiple times. Captain Michael Anderson of the Reel Animals was next to us and we witnessed his very young angler battle a Tarpon for 2 hours. On the other side was Captain Billy Nobles who’s angler was also fighting a Tarpon. Worn out we called it a day.

Captain Steven Markovich