September 29, 2011
By Bruce Chard
Tarpon are one of the most exciting fish in the world to tackle with a fly rod. They readily take all kinds and colors of flies. This fish was caught in the super shallow waters of the Florida Keys.
The popular migration of giant tarpon that make their way through the Keys every year start showing up in the nearby shallow, gin clear flats starting around late December. These fish start to show up in large schools and come into the shallows in-between cold fronts.
These fish travel in large schools making their way into pre spawning staging areas all around the Keys. Once in these pre spawning staging areas, lying around motionless seems to be a popular means of resting. While resting or laid up, these fish can act very aggressively towards a well presented fly.
Cooler temperatures will drop water temps in the shallows quickly pushing these giant tarpon into the nearby deeper channels in search for more comfortable water temps until the water on the shallow nearby bays start to warm up.
Once the water has a consistent warmer temp the fish will start to migrate. This time usually starts around mid April on average. Moving from the back country pre spawning staging areas to the clean ocean waters help put the tarpon into spawning mode. This major fish movement offers one of the most popular fly fisheries in the world. A nice weather day can offer shots at hundreds and hundreds of giant tarpon cruising over beautiful white sand bars in super shallow water. This can last till late July!
We will cover all aspects of tarpon migrations in this blog so stay tuned! Here are some killer tarpon DVDS to check out!
