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Tarpon in Caney Creek

22K views 42 replies 30 participants last post by  rtoler 
#1 ·
Anyone hear of the thousands of juvenile tarpon in Caney Creek last week?

Creek was full of 14" tarpon, even way up by the bridge.

Pretty cool - been down there all my life and had never seen/heard of this before - I did catch a small tarpon in the creek when I was a kid, but it was a solitary incident.
 
#3 ·
Thats great news

for us tarpon obsessed fishermen. Some rumors of juvvies being caught in the old sand pits in the crystal beach area. some of the pits have channels to the icw. Of course the tarpon usually spend their early years in these kinds of environments.
 
#5 ·
A couple of years ago I was fishing at night on the south side of the bridge. I don't know what I hooked, but it strip a lot of line out of my reel real violent like and made two huge jumps before throwing my lure. When it hit the water it sounded like a big belly flop. I've always wondered​ if that as a small tarpon, but figured it was either a nice trout or a snook.
 
#10 ·
Pretty crazy to hear but not all that surprising. Juvenile tarpon can be found far from the bays in feeder creeks and rivers. They're an amazingly hardy fish and it's good to hear that numbers are being reported in the GBC.

some of these candy creek juvvies and see if we catch any some day. I got some tags from the Project Tarpon tournaments, if its ok to use them?
I wouldn't think it'd be a bad idea, but I have no idea how long a tag would stay in a juvenile fish since they're growing rapidly. If you put it in a juvenile fish, that tag could fall out long before that fish ever starts migrating.
 
#11 ·
Tarpon

We have a place on Caney about half a mile south of the first bridge. Memorial weekend we indeed were catching small tarpon, 4-5 up to 17" in length. All on live shrimp under corks letting the kids fish. Was really cool seeing them and surprising with the nonstop boat and jet ski traffic. Made a trip back this past weekend to do the same and nothing.

First ones we've caught in the 4 years of buying the place. Talked to some guys north of the bridge fishing a little creek and told me they have caught them for years.
 
#12 ·
We have a place on Caney about half a mile south of the first bridge. Memorial weekend we indeed were catching small tarpon, 4-5 up to 17" in length. All on live shrimp under corks letting the kids fish. Was really cool seeing them and surprising with the nonstop boat and jet ski traffic. Made a trip back this past weekend to do the same and nothing.

First ones we've caught in the 4 years of buying the place. Talked to some guys north of the bridge fishing a little creek and told me they have caught them for years.
Hope you got pictures. Those kids experienced something very special. They can tell their grandkids about catching Tarpon when they were little. Cool story.
 
#18 ·
Baby tarpon that size up to 15-20lbs are very common on the upper coast and they stay here year round. They are in the creeks and bayous where you would not expect to find them.
 
#21 ·
Like others have said there are juvie tarpon in most of the local estuaries. This one was feeding in a small school on shad and went for a rapala twitch bait about 4 years ago. I've had a few opportunities at them, but only managed to jump two. They can be a tough sell on arties. Next time I see one whenever that is I'm throwing a fly at them.
 

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#32 ·
a lot of these that look similar to a tarpon are not a tarpon but some form of shad that gets in the creek, look back on page 1 and compare pic of that 1 's dorsal fin and the 1 on pg 3 that the young man is holding one on page 3 does not have the long portion on its dorsal fin.
not trying to stir the pot but we were catching a lot of the big shad several yrs back and thought they were tarpon. But have seen some actual tarpon, snook and bull shark in the creek even had a eagle ray that was hanging around the pier for a while.
 
#37 ·
My dad pulled a baby tarpon out of Mud Lake next to Clear Lake 55yrs ago. It has always amazed me that we do not see a lot of tarpon in our estuary system but I am sure there is a logical answer. It probably has something to do with bay temps during the whole year.
 
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