Tarpon, Snook, and Grouper. It was a good weekend in C/R

[Jimsfishobsession]

We planned on doing some grouper fishing and before we ever left the marina I got a very big treble hook from a 30 foot diving Yo-Zuri plug in my forearm. No matter what we did, it wouldn't budge because the hook was snagged deep in the muscles of my forearm. So I went to the ER and they couldn't rip it out, even with it numbed up, so they had to cut a hole in the other side of my forearm to get to the hook. Anyway after that slow down we got a real late start so our plans had to change because we didn't have much fishing time left. We decided to stay in shallow and get our gags and call it a day. Late Sunday afternoon, my buddy Jim gave me a call and said he was ready to catch some fish. Jim and Janny just had their 1st baby boy and he has been at home babysitting for the past month so he was way overdue to fish. I told him since we only had 2 hours of daylight left we could try to catch a few snook. We hit the water at 6:30pm and on my 2nd cast I got a baby snook and two casts later Jim hooks another baby. Then we had two more jump off before Jim noticed some tarpon rolling in the distance. We grabbed our biggest rods and put on the biggest lures we had (Hydro Magnums by Yo-Zuri). We eased up and first cast I jumped a big one and got about four jumps out of him before he shook the hook. Our blood was pumping because we saw how big the fish in the school were. They all seemed to be between 130# to 180#s and some looked even bigger. Then Jimbo hooked two monsters in a row and the same thing happened again; they shook the hook after a few jumps. Then I had another big one that got the hooks in real good and we got about four jumps out of him before he started screaming my drag and dumping the 400yds of 65lb braid I had on my reel. I started the boat and chased him for about 45 minutes in four feet of water and finally landed him with a totally frayed up 60# triplefish leader that was drug across the bars. It was almost dark so we snapped a few pics and hauled butt to the ramp.

[reeljob]

Sounds like you made the best of a bad situation. Nice catch!