Tarpon Fishing Report - Tortola, British Virgin Islands
After a periodic showers though out the day I wasn’t sure how good the fishing conditions would be at night. I drove down to the east end of Tortola as it was getting dark and I set up my gear under the flickering lights of the bridge. The wind was blowing north through the channel causing ripples on the surface of the water distorting the view bellow. The current moved slowly to the north as well. I could hear and see a lot of action bellow. A good sized school of bait fish covered almost half of the channel on the west shore. In the distance I could see a few large tarpon surfacing repeatedly and the occasional glimpse of silver flashing through the air followed by a huge splash. Directly below the bridge numerous tarpon emerged from the shadows as the foraged for food.
It didn’t take long to catch some bait, even with my severely damaged sabiki rig. Most of the hooks are now broken or missing completely. I like to keep two rods on hand at all times, one designated to catch bait, and one pre-rigged with four or five feet of strong monofilament or fluorocarbon as a leader. It is important to have a good two hundred yards of line on your reel in case you hook into a big one.
Once I had my bait in the water it wasn’t long before the action started. The tarpon were feeding aggressively and within the first thirty minutes I had lost two good sized fish. I have been using large circle hooks which are supposed to work very well, but when those tarpon jump they twist and turn in every direction throwing the hook more often then not. Time passed and I lost another tarpon, then another. I could see dozens of tarpon on both sides of the bridge and all of a sudden it became impossible to catch bait. I tried for thirty minutes with no luck and decided to switch to an artificial lure.
I fished off the south side of the bridge and let my lure move freely in the current. On some nights the current is too strong to fish this method well, and other nights it is too weak. Within ten minutes I had another tarpon on, and after two crazy jumps it to spit the hook. Unfortunately the tarpon had ripped the tail off of my lure so I switched back to live bait. It took a while, but I managed to catch a perfect sized bait. For some reason the tarpon wont go after bait that is over four inches. The best size seems to be just over two inches.
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