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Tampa Tarpon Fly Fishing 2011-2012
Most people outside of our area don’t know this but we have a great Tarpon fly fishery.
Here are a few local area fly guys showing off their skillz… Keys eat your heart out. 
Tarpon fishing on the fly with Capt. Nick Angelo and Capt. Bryon Chamberlin along Florida’s west central gulf coast.
Tampa Bay, fall glass minnow fishing, DOA bait buster
10.2.2010
Today I took the Canyon Bay out to fish with Jon of Fish Buzz Tv and his buddy Kyle. We we up bright and early and met at the ramp at 615am. Coffee, fly rod, spinner for back up and were were off to look for the birds on the beach.
Rumor has it that a pod of tarpon was coming through and they were feeding heavily on glass minnows. We ran all over the place and finally round some feeding birds. Skeptical as I usually am of the phrase “should have been here yesterday” I was preparing my self to see nothing.
Today however, was different, they fish were in fact there! Jon broke out the fly rod and Kyle was throwing the spinner. After fighting through some mackerel Kyle hooks a tarpon but it came off after 2 jumps. The glass minnow bait was all over the place and everyone was excited. Me of course took out the camera instead of fishing to capture the moment.
Even though the fish were all around us believe or not it was next to impossible to get them to eat our lure. With millions and millions of bait around we didn’t have much of a chance. We had people around us using live bait and was not hooking up besides catfish.
Kyle hooks another one a while alter and it too came unbutton. Jon’s fly was getting smacked around a couple times but he only came up with spanish mackerels. After the bite died down around 8:30am we headed back. The bite wasn’t great but I was just glad I captured some video and stills of today’s crazy tarpon action.
The ONLY lure we had eats on this day was the DOA bait busters. This has been an awesome Tarpon lure through out the years and it held up today.
Tarpon Fly fishing in Tampa
May 7th 2010
Today, I since it was yet another gorgeous day, I made plans to head offshore again while I still can. I say that because there are lots of bad news right now about the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico. Some say it is the beginning of the end, some say it will be fine. I’m no politician, I’m no scientist, I’m not the smartest cat around and I don’t know everything. I do not know what the future holds, all I know is that the fishing is good right now as long as the weather holds. So get out there when you can, the end might be near.(sarcastically)
I digressed. My offshore plans got canceled late last night so I was a bit bummed out. It was too late to call anyone so I figured I would just catch up on things on this awesomely(is that a word?) gorgeous day. Well I gave my buddy Colby a ring and he said I was welcome to join him to look for some Tarpon this morning and I was all over it. All we were to take this day was a fly rod and some cameras. No bait, no spin tackle. Hero or zero.
The fish wasn’t plenty by any means but the ones that were there, did eat the fly very very well. We had 4 eats and landed one. I shot video for the most of the day but did manage to shoot off some decent still shots as well. I call it and excellent day.
Speaking of Tarpon stills. This was my very first time I got to shoot stills of big Tarpon on fly. I gotta say it is waaaaaaaaaay easier than trying to get a good shot of deep water Tarpon. Deep water tarpon most of the time when they jump, due to the trajectory of the line and you couldn’t see the fish for the most part, I didn’t know where to focus. With shallow water tarpon you can see the fish. You pretty much can predict when he’s going to jump almost 100% of the time. Well you learn something new every day.
These 3 shots came out ok. I wouldn’t say there were awesome, but ok. What could better you say? Well it could have been a tad sharper, the fish could be completely out of the water etc. The best part about these shots are that they are completely full frame. I did not crop nor even rotate the images even. I’m pretty proud of myself for that.. very satisfying. 
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