Englewood and Venice tarpon have arrived.

My week started off with a long time client and friend Pastor Jim Hennesy of Texas. His dad joined us for some long anticipated tarpon fishing.  Pastor Jim does not sleep well before his tarpon trips because he is still that excited about the giant silver king.  We had to hunt all the way down to almost Boca Grande to find him a hungry tarpon but we accomplished our quest.  Jim gets so excited he shakes and is totally lost in the experience.  It is so much fun to still share this intense excitement with friends even after all these years.  I still get juiced every time a silver king launches it’s self airborne even after over thirty years of working at it every summer (since 1981) here at Boca Grande.  Jim and I fish all kinds of fish but he and I share his passion for the giant silver kings.  We did get out again on Wednesday afternoon and he ended up 2 out of four for his tarpon adventures of 2010.  Life and guiding do have many blessing!

 Thursday started perfect; bait minnows were easy and we had to hunt some up but found a mess of snook. The action was not up to par but going in the right direction until the client said this was boring he wanted big fish!   So we adapted our game plan and managed to bag a big tarpon for his son Luke.  Things looked great for Saturday morning I had asked them to be ready at the dock by 5:45 because of the weekend traffic.  The weather was perfect, calm and clear.  Anticipation was high and a friend had left several schools in my back yard the evening before. Then they could not make it  on time; things got messed up meeting me and we finally started off at seven AM. I called Coach and he said they were releaseing their second fish.  We finally got out at sunrise and the fish went down for about three hours. We did manage to find fish but they just teased us until noon. Then Ed got one on but it just teased him.  A big lazy tarpon that probably did not even know it was hooked.  It managed a jump boatside and shook off.  As we got back on the school a beautiful interesting green tower rig idled up to help us.  I had to ask the skipper to shut his three-hundred fifty HP motor off so we could fish and thankfully he did. Ed cast out and promptly hooked a fish that went crazy.  I could not keep up with the powerful electric on high so I had to crank my one-fifty HP up to pursue before it took all three hundred plus yards of string.  This fish was on steroids and lived up to the silver king billing. Ed was finally impressed!  We enjoyed the tug of war between the angler and fish for about thirty minutes then managed a few good photos before the release.  Some body up stairs smiled on me and sure helped bail out this week. 

 Friday we had six boats set up for a group from the Sable Trust Company in Sarasota.  I got lucky and put Rick on a nice fish at six ten AM. He won first fish prize for it.  Captain Kevin smoked us and landed a fish for each of his three clients.  Everyone had fun then we came in to the Stump Pass Grille at noon for a super lunch and some fish stories.  It is great when things go like they are supposed to! 

 We have plenty of fish and hot action should hold for about a month. Then many out of town boats will return home and leave us plenty of happy tarpon and snook to play with until the weather runs em off.  We also have permit to pursue outside and trout/reds inside.  Life is great and we have beautiful water and beaches with NO OIL! Let’s Go Fishin’, now!

Captain Van Hubbard <www.captvan.com>