Took me a little trip to Florida this weekend. I have always wanted to catch a tarpon. I booked the trip and made it happen! It was similar to crappie fishn. haha! the only thing that was similar was the initial bite. It was a tiny peck, then 2 seconds later it is out of control fiercely angry, 150lbs of bad attitude fish that has your rod pinned against the gunnel and your now setting in the floor of the boat hopping for some relief! Quick! The drag is set so tight on this equipment that i could not pull it off by hand. These fish would make a 1/4 mile run at a time! that drag is screaming and you are too. At many times, your wondering if you really can hold onto the rod for this run! you can plan on 30 min of shin smashing against the gunnel and your forearms feel like they are going to explode! Keep in mind, this whole time, i believe this fish only playing with you. Then they want to play. they will jump 8' in the air and then do a 20 yard tail walk for you just shaking their head. Just because you get them to the boat, does not mean they are quitting. they always have about 3 more runs left in them. Our line has markers on them, it was the red line that you never wanted to see go out again. that was the 100' mark. These fish would go from zero to that red mark before quick could get ready.
Our Capt goal was to catch 2 or 3 fish. We ended up catching 10! He called this an epic trip. Of the ten, 4 of them got eaten by sharks before we could land them! Another one was eaten while he was next to the boat for a hook release. The smallest fish was about 100lbs. When we released him, he was about 10 feet from the boat, I would guess ten 8' sharks attacked him on the surface. There was nothing more than a couple scales and a blood stain within 10 seconds! The sharks were so fierce, they were running into the sides of the boat, bouncing off the motor, and splashing LOTS of water into the boat. It was something you see on National Geographic!
The last picture is a daylight shark feeding frenzy!

