After the previous morning catch of numerous filet sized grunts, I even had some thought of a fish fry lunch. Yes, grunts. Try them, bet you can't tell the difference between them and snapper. An old Florida Cracker, with a capital C, taught me that years ago. Actually, he fed me that to teach me a lesson.
After filling my bait bucket, please excuse my use of ugly language there, I set up in hopes of flying a large silver fish. You can see in the pic below that there was another guy out there in relatively close proximity.
Barnacle and I waited, he chewing on a squirrelfish, until, suddenly, my rod bent over and away we went. The sleigh ride was brief and then the fish decided it wanted to be right under the kayak the whole time. Yep, shark. Decent fight but when you're looking for tarpon, a 3.5 foot sand shark just doesn't quite get it.
After another bit of waiting my float again quickly disappeared and the line came tight. And just as quickly it was loose and I reeled in a fish that was now mush in a scaly bag. A tarpon had smashed it and somehow avoided the 8/0 hook that dearly wanted to impale itself in the tarpon's jaw.
Other than a few moments of excitement, It was just a lazy morning floating in the gulf. Darn nice way to greet the sunrise. Was off the water by 9:45 to beat the oncoming heat of the day.
OH, yeah, and DaveR caught a tarpon
