Moved into the seaway at 3.30am(sleep in!), plan was to see if some Tarpon were around, if not move back into the broadwater. I picked a likely location and set to it. First cast..nothing. Second cast.. a bump..interesting. Third cast..a hookup and a good fight with the fish jumping off next to the boat. Now that I knew they were around, I added a 30cm 50lb clip on leader and changed plastic to a squidgy slick rig 65mm. Next cast, hookup and Tarpon landed in the high 50's. Over the next half hour I landed 4 more Tarpon and jumped off at least twice that many. Now that I had a hungry school of Tarpon that was hitting plastics on every cast I wanted to see if I could tempt them into taking a different type of lure. Plan was to use a certain type of lure for 5 casts then if no hits or fish to change back to the plastic, catch a fish then change to a different type of lure and so on. I tried minnows(rapala XRD 10, & XR8, manns stretch 5), vibs (zipbaits vib80-25g & vib 58-13g), slugs (gillies baitfish 15 & 25g) & poppers( rapala skitter pop 90 & zipbaits ZBL popper). The only lure out of that lot that even got a hit was the gillies 15g baitfish and that was only one hit, no hookups. Everytime I changed back to the plastic, on the first cast I got a hookup and a jumpoff or a fish landed. Just goes to show how fussy they can be, if you don't have what they want you will struggle. I was also testing a new plastic today, a slider in the pearl colour, which the Tarpon really liked but they only lasted one or two fish.
Anyway dawn arrived and the Tarpon went off the bite, I moved to the north wall flats and threw around a vision 110 and picked up a tailor around 40cm, had a few more hits but no hookups. Drifting around the end of the wall I had multiple hits on the vision and a few short lived hookups. I switched to a pearl slider on a 3/8th oz jighead and from then on it was a hookup every cast on small Giant Trevally around 35-40cm, they were very aggressive smashing the plastic while it was still sinking and over the next hour or so managed 13 GT's and 2 Bigeyes all around the same size. Not monsters but fun nonetheless. As the sun rose they went off the bite so I went for a quick look in the broadwater and then went offshore looking for tuna. Found one school and chased them for a while but couldn't tempt them. One more look around the broadwater and back to the ramp at around 9am.
Water is very clear at the moment with around 7 metres of visability. Sliders worked well but they are quite fragile often lasting only 2 fish, I'll keep a packet or two though, the fish seem to like them.
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Craig, when you head for the seaway do you come from the north and then out beside wave break isl north wall in close to the beach.. if that was you, i was sitting just off the yellow marker near where the north wall and the north beach meet…only got a few bream and a mother of a stingray.