06-29-2009, 09:00 AM
Callie and I went on a cruise with a couple of friends and I booked my first guided fishing trip on our stop in St. Thomas. It was just her and I and I chose to fish for tarpon. The spinning rod I used was the same size as my rod at home and it only had 15 pound line. We used live bait, it looked basically like a threadfin and we freelined it so I was in my element, although in a much prettier setting. He had located a school of bait earlier that we were going to fish and the bait there was a bit smaller than what we were using for bait but he said a bigger one would stand out in it so it was just perfect. My first cast my bait flew off, but it was a bad knot in the line so I didn't look like a total newb but he got me retied and my second cast was about 3 feet from the edge of the school and literally within five seconds the line went tight--everything was in slow motion in a way, because I couldn't believe it had happened so fast-- the slack was gone and I felt the weight on the rod and I set the hook! About 10 seconds into the fight the fish jumped and it was a beautful tarpon, jumping just like it was on TV. It was so surreal being there and within 15 seconds of putting bait in the water I had this beauty jumping on the end of my line! No one told me, however, of how good tarpon fight and I fought the fish for a little over an hour before we got it in the boat. We took plenty of pictures, and I was ready to catch something else. We went to a very small bay type area at the mouth of a creek with mangroves surrounding it and put out the same bait as before and the captain had a bite but lost it, then I was reeling mine back in and noticed he had swam to the top like a threadfin does when something is chasing it and I noticed a massive long dark torpedo shape come up behind it and it slashed at my bait, but missed it! It stayed at the surface though and I was freaking out and I got the captain to come over and we both immediately start casting right in front of it trying to catch this barracuda, it hit our bait another 3 times but we never hooked up on it. It was about 5.5 feet long and the captain said it looked to be about 60 pounds, I don't know what a really big barracuda would be but judging by his excitement and he fishes for them everyday I could tell it was a very good one, he said not catching it would "give him nightmares" that night. We fished a little more and I hooked up a smaller barracuda, about 3 feet, but lost it after about 30 seconds (we did have steel leaders but he threw the hook at me and it hit me right in the middle of one of the lenses of my sunglasses) and that was it. I only caught one on a 3 hour trip but it was worth the money and I am very excited to get down there and do it again!