Captain’s Corner: Jay Mastry

The Tampa Bay Times

Tarpon season’s in full swing and if looking to get in on the action, now’s the time.  Tomorrows (the 26^th) full moon and the next several days dumping late afternoon outgoing tide promises to bring out the best of them.  They’ll gather at the Skyway Bridge and several of our areas narrower passes to gorge themselves on the crabs, shrimp and other baitfish being swept from the bays.  It’s a popular belief that many tarpon leave the bays on “Mays’ Moon”, but they don’t all go.  You may have to bounce around a bit to stay on them but there will be tarpon in the backwaters through August.  Fishing the gulf beaches is another option.  Some will have success sight casting to schools of slow moving fish migrating down the beach.  Sometimes time is better spent anchoring along a stretch of beach where you’ve seen them before and letting them come to you.  I like offering them some dead bait fished on the bottom and a couple live baits suspended beneath corks to determine what they prefer on a given day.  As finicky as tarpon can be, it seems they become a little more moody during the daylight morning hours of the full moon phase.  Some say it’s because they’ve eaten all night and don’t have much interest the next morning.  We refer to it as “full moon crazies” and write it off as tarpon acting like tarpon.

Captain Jay Mastry