This small twenty five pound Tarpon was caught & released during the summer while fishing off Orlando's east side near Port Canaveral.
Orlando Tarpon Fishing
Orlando's Best Tarpon Fishing on the Atlantic Ocean
Tarpon are amoung the most sought after gamefish in saltwater and Orlando, Florida is thriving with a health population of these silver jumpers. What's unusual about these fish is that they have no food value but anglers just simply like to catch them for their enormous size and aerobatic fight. Tarpon are known to many anglers as the "Silver King" and when you hook one for the first time you get to know why they're named appropriately.
In the backwaters we often catch baby tarpon under twenty five pounds on both artificials and live baits. Tarpon have unusually hard mouths that have been compared to cinder blocks but remain toothless, but are non-the-less difficult to drive a hook into, so extra sharp hooks are a must. Smaller tarpon are often more difficult to hookup with than larger ones because of the lack of weight that helps drive the hooks into that jaw of concrete, it's often easier to hook them on small sharp tackle and flyrods. Mammoth sized tarpon that are often caught off the beaches and in the inlets can exceed 175 pounds and are generally easier to hookup but difficult to land as it's an endurance test for both angler and fish.
Fights often exceed two hours on the ocean because the tarpon sound deeper and put more stress on the tackle. Generally speaking a shallow caught tarpon in the lagoon will tire quicker, but the fights are still exciting and may exceed and hour if the fish is over eighty pounds or so. There are fish fighting tactics that can get the job done quicker and with better success. Number One Tactic is to always put the tip of the rod in the water when the fish starts to jump and continue keeping the tip submerged until the fish has completed it's jumping antics. This puts the line in the water and prevents shock waves from jerking the bait or throwing the hook. Many anglers call this method "Bowing to the Silver King", it's a good method and very valid. The second Tactic is to fight your fish against the angle he's swimming while keeping a downward pressure. This method messes up the tarpon's balance and disorients them for a quicker fight.
Anyway around it, Tarpon are a hard fighting and relatively consistant fishery in the Orlando area. If you want a tarpon fishing trip the best times are in the summer and fall in Central Florida's Orlando seashore.
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You can look up more about tarpon on our Tarpon web page.
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