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South Shore Angler: Egmont Key Is A Local Hot Spot For Tarpon

Photo by DAVID GRIFFITH

David Griffith, left, and former East Bay Breeze columnist Dan Scopes caught this cobia in Tampa Bay.

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By FRED EVERSON

Tribune correspondent

Published: June 18, 2008

The wind has finally died down, followed by midsummer temperatures. That makes for tough midday fishing, but if you get out early in the morning or late afternoon, the bite can be pretty good.

I'm getting several reports of hot catch-and-release action for snook on the south shores of Tampa Bay. The fish are stacking up in the potholes south of Sand Key on the outgoing tides of late afternoon, and they have been eating.

June also is prime time for tarpon on Tampa Bay, and Capt. Chet Jennings told me that the tarpon fishing has been good. Boca Grande may get all the glory, but tarpon fishing here can be stellar - and a lot less crowded.

Jennings invited me on a trip to Egmont Key last week to fish for silver kings with his friend Dave Lestman of Apollo Beach. We left the dock at about 3 p.m. and headed straight for Egmont Key, which is on the Gulf side of the Skyway - a distance of about 20 miles. On a calm day, you could make this trip in a small skiff from any of the waters off South Shore, and there were plenty of small boats there when we arrived.

To fish Egmont Key for tarpon you need a strong falling tide and a run of pass crabs. They look a lot like blue crabs, but they are brown, smaller and their claws are elongated and thinner than those of the blue crab. They tend to move when the current flows strongest during the spring tides of the new moon and full moon.

We arrived at slack tide and had to wait about an hour and a half before the tide finally got rolling and we started to see some crabs. Once you see a single crab swimming on the surface, you often see a bunch. Somebody must run the boat while someone else stands on the bow to dip the crabs.

The little crabs - they are about the size of a silver dollar, hence the name "dollar crabs" - are not agile and are easy to net. In short order we had two dozen crabs in a pail of water.

The technique is to break the claws off the crabs (for your own protection) and hook them in the corner of the carapace on stout 5/0 circle hooks rigged to 80-pound leaders. Then you position the boat so that it drifts parallel to the shoreline, and freeline the crabs with one or two splitshot above the bait to keep it below the surface.

It may not be as crowded and close as Boca Grande, but there were probably 60 boats at Egmont Key that evening. We hooked a single tarpon, but probably saw another two dozen fish jumped on other boats during the bite, which lasted about two hours.

Fred Everson is a Ruskin fishing guide. All South Shore fishermen and guides may submit information and photographs to be included in this column by calling (813) 830-8890 or sending an e-mail to ihuntsnook@aol.com.

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