Palmetto fisherman catches ‘double-digit’ tarpon in four-hour Tampa Bay fishing trip
Captain Griffin Deans is a grinder, running more than 300 charters a year on average since acquiring his captain’s license.
Many of those trips blend together with fish catches that don’t always stand out in the grand scheme of things. But occasionally some trips are so good he’ll remember them forever.
“Why will no one answer the phone? Just had the best four-hour trip of my life and need to talk about it,” Deans posted on Facebook following his trip on Tuesday.
The trip he wanted to talk about started early, picking his four anglers well before the 7:14 a.m. sunrise.
“I like to get out early to get things started. There’s been a lot of tarpon rolling before sunrise, so we went and did that before the sun was even up,” Deans, the Palmetto-based captain who fishes southern Tampa Bay, explained. “We hooked two that were huge, probably over one hundred pounds, fighting one for about 20 minutes. But when it got close to the boat it spit the hook.”
After fighting the large fish, Deans headed back to shallower water for a sunrise redfish bite, but on the way, he couldn’t help but overhear an angler mourn the uncaught tarpon.
“He said he thought we got robbed of a tarpon, and I kept that in the back of my head. We got on a nice rally of redfish and got about 20 after a nonstop bite that lasted about an hour. I wanted to leave them alone for a bit, so we went and caught a few snook and I kept thinking about the tarpon,” Deans said.
“We could have caught a bunch more snook, but I wanted to go try for tarpon again, so we went to where I was getting them late last year. We threw out some chum and they got all busted up and we instantly started hooking small tarpon!”
With not much time remaining on the trip, the tarpon bite was nonstop until the end. In about 30 minutes, they landed multiple, while hooking 10.
Smaller fish, around 20 pounds, made quite the show acrobatically jumping and running drag on the light inshore tackle. At the end of his trip, Deans couldn’t wait to share with his social media friends.
Following his post about friends who wouldn’t answer their phones, Deans followed up with pictures of the redfish and tarpon on social media with a small synopsis of his trip.
“Today was truly epic. Double-digit tarpon and double-digit redfish made for a four-hour trip I’ll never forget!”
