Fishing yesterday with Aaron and Adam Tondu

Yesterday I fished with Aaron Snell and Adam Tondu, a friend from Chicago in town to catch his first tarpon.
We started early, and in short order Aaron had us on a school of rolling fish. Adam was up first and it didn’t take long for Aaron to have him in position for a number of shots. Adam got a bite shortly, though the fish didn’t remain connected. It only took another 30 minutes for a shot to get the grab; Adam hooked and fought a 90 pound tarpon, his first. Aaron took this photo of the battle:

I was up next, and hooked a fish (that, for some indeterminate reason, I thought was a jack) that jumped off. We finished up at this spot and left for some laid up animals that Aaron thought would be snaking around. We found a great many fish, littered along a nearby edge, and while I fed one and Adam had at least 3 close-to-grabs we couldn’t get one to connect with our program. There were, however, lots of targets and we stayed for a few hours to ply our trade with these guys:

After this we left for the ocean, where we found a toy: an abandoned boat that I hopped on and looked for strings to pass:

After leaving the boat (which by then probably had a serious abandonment complex), we had a few shots at ocean strings before calling it a day. Aaron and Adam hatched a night tarpon plan, which I found out later resulted in a few bites and an hour-long battle with a monster.
Tomorrow I’m headed out for an evening fish with RT Trosset, 6# in hand and hoping for a fight.

more to come,

ncl