Thank you Gas Thief.
Today started off great, until I noticed that someone decided to help themselves to my gas can and the 5 gallons of gas in it. What was really aggravating is that there is no place in Hernando Beach to get gas. So I had to get another gas can, unhook the boat, drive in to Spring Hill, get the gas, drive back home, hook up the boat and fill the gas tank. This took about an hour. While I would like to say "I hope the gas thief catches fire and burns", I know they will use the gas for mowing lawns, pressure washing someones home or some power rangers driving their jet ski through my fishing area spooking all the fish. Reality just is not fair. Enough ranting about my gas thief.
Once we got on the water it made everything better. Catching shrimp did not go so well. We did catch enough to start breeding. We ended up spending an extra hour catching shrimp, which now put us two behind.
The whitebait report I got was that they are in the cuts. I guess I thought if they are in the Hernando Beach cuts then they should be at Bayport... Wrong, I did come across some small whitebait at the tripod but that was it. So I hunted bait for about an hour with no luck. Off to the islands and loaded up on some really nice mud minnows. That took about 3 minutes... Should have skipped everything and started my day here.
None the less we where off to catch some redfish. Of course we now only had about an hour to fish, thanks to the gas thief. We hit two spots and caught nothing... No cat fish, no lady fish, no jacks, in fact we did not kill a single bait. So I guess if you where a big mud minnow you could freely frolic around in Centipede Bay with worry some pesky redfish is going to eat you.
Now for the highlight of the day. This is Tarpon country and on the way back in about 1/2 mile from the Bayport tripod I spotted a big tarpon roll. So I stopped and put on the trolling motor and eased up towards them. Next thing I know is that there are about 8 100# tarpon swimming under my boat. The only thing I had that was rigged was a chatter bait, unfortunately the tarpon did not seem interested. I had one follow it only to turn away a when it approached the boat. Even though I did not hook up with a tarpon, it was still nice to see them. For a few minutes I thought I was in the keys stalking tarpon.