Awesome Night

I’ve been fishing a lot after moving to Ft. Myers recently. Action has been slow though. I helped a guy beach a 7’ lemon and saw a couple tarpon landed, but I’ve been in a dry spell. Until Monday night that is. My buddy Matt and I decided to fish but first stopped by the Ft. Myers beach pier to try to pick up some bait. By the time we got there the macks had stopped ripping up the greenies like they had been, but a friend had loaded up already so we had bait secured and headed to the bridge. Much of the night was slow, until the tide turned. As has been the pattern recently, the tarpon lit up around the lights about a half hour into the incoming tide. Since none of the shark rods had been touched, I decided to try and hook up to a tarpon. I tried throwing a Hogy but it was impossible to work properly from up on the bridge. Someone noticed that the lock on the latch of the gate to the fender ladder had been cut. After some prodding and watching those fish in the lights for a little while longer, I decided it was worth going down. Let me tell you those ladders are a lot higher up than they look. After I got down onto the fender Matt lowered me down my 750 spinfisher with a rigged Hogy. I started throwing it around the outside edge of the light, but the fish wanted nothing to do with it. I could see they were keyed in on tiny fry baits right in the light, and I though the weighted Hogy hook was about the right size and shininess to imitate them. I threw out the bare hook and sure enough about a 60lb tarpon inhaled it on the drop. The fish put on quite a show, making impressive runs and giving quite the aerial display. I yelled for Matt to bring in one of the nearby lines to avoid a crossover, but as he was reeling sure enough the tarpon swam over it. Thinking he had a fish on Matt started pulling and cut through my braid. After I lost the fish he
came down the ladder and brought my Battle 3000 with 10lb braid and 20lb flouro leader with a white bucktail. After throwing around a little more I almost hooked another tarpon but they were largely ignoring what we were offering. Matt climbed up and went to grab a rod to reel up the rigs from down on the fender. While he was gone I was messing around with the little rod and jig, dropping it straight between the pilings on the fender. I was pretty surprised when a big snook rushed out and inhaled it. After an epic battle on such light line and leader literally right in the pilings, I had a nice snook whipped and holding in the current with no way to reach him. We decided to snag him to pull him up and Matt lowered down a double hook rig for me and I soon had him on the planks. I was pretty excited and yelled for Matt to go grab my camera and measuring stick. While he was looking through my bag a shark slammed the 9/0. The clicker got my attention and I looked up to the bridge to see Matt with a doubled over rod yelling “fish on, it’s taking line!”. I was excited we finally had a shark on, but I was thinking about how screwed I was with this awesome fish and no way to take a picture and no way to measure to see if I could keep it. I said screw it; I’ve measured enough fish in my life to know this was a slot snook. I now had the precarious task of making my way back up the tall, narrow ladder with slimy hands one-handed with a lip-hold on the snook. I made it back on the bridge after what seemed like eternity and double-checked the snook; perfectly slot at 31”. I set the fish down and went to help Matt. The shark had stopped making long runs and was bulldogging it out away from the bridge. When it finally surfaced we saw that it was a decent bull. We worked it for a while and after handing the rod around the traffic gates we had it close to the beach. I thought of what an awesome shot it would be to get the snook and the shark in the same pic so I ran back to grab it. I went down to the beach and took the rod and leadered the fish. After dragging it up a little ways we each got a quick picture with it. The hook was perfectly in the corner of the mouth so unhooking was quick and easy. We had the bull back in the water in less than a minute. We left that night with some awesome pictures, big snook fillets, and finally a nice shark.