August 8th is actually my son's birthday. He is in the Air Force in Tech school in MD, so I wasn't able to spend time with him, but I had a charter scheduled, and boy was there some great fish caught and memories! (Cool side note, my client's name was Mike, which is also my son's name!) It was just a few days after Hurricane Debby went through north of our area, but it had the ocean churning up pretty good, so the water was dirty, which I was expecting. Lately we had been catching a lot of catfish with the dirty summer water, which is to be expected. The tide was outgoing, with low tide around 10:40, so we would have a nice moving current the whole trip. Water temperature was around 81 degrees. First of all, you can't beat sunrise on the beach. We were fishing at Varn Park in Flagler County, Florida. I went live on TikTok right away and within the first few minutes started reeling in big sailcats (gafftopsail catfish) caught on our Fishin' Girl pompano rig in green color with Fishgum only on the hooks. Before my client arrived I had pulled in several sailcats, hardhead catfish, and croakers (that I used for bait on a heaver set-up: more about that in a minute...). And when he arrived, I gave him some education about what tackle, rods, and bait we were using, gave some casting lessons, and more. By the end of the charter he had a big step up in his beach fishing knowledge! Between lessons we caught more big sailcats and some really nice whiting. Bait that was working best was fresh dead shrimp and Fishgum on either green or yellow pompano or float rigs. About mid-way through the charter, the rod that had the croaker head on it bent waaaayyy over and the drag was screaming! I couldn't get the GoPro on quick enough to catch all the action. A tarpon had grabbed it and was running with the line. I had never hooked up on a tarpon before so I didn't know what to do (I have been told I needed to "bow to the king" because of their hard mouths). Just before the GoPro started recording, the tarpon jumped out of the water and was horizontal over the ocean. All the video caught (see footage!) was the fish landing back in the water and you can tell from the distance it was from the shore and the amount of the splash that it was a BIG fish! I'm guessing 6-8 foot long! After that, we kept catching, but all those fish seems small compared to the rush of that tarpon hookup! All in all it was a great day of fishing and a lot of fun, as well as a successful charter. If you would like to learn how to catch fish from the beach or want to have a fun family activity, why not book a beach-fishing charter with me? We always catch fish and have a lot of fun while we're at it! Thanks for reading this report!