Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Capt. Trent got out for a half day today with a father and young son for anglers.  We recently have a crazy tropical system pop up out of nowhere last Thursday.  Really intense the winds got up to 80 mph clocked at alligator lighthouse and we had torrential rain.  I woke up and it legit sounded like we were in a hurricane at midnight!  This of course did throw a monkey wrench in the fishing for a few days, as when the bay gets all stirred up like that it can make fishing a little tough.  But in the bigger picture and the long run it’s a good thing as we get a lot of fresh water to help with salinity and heat, and the wind stirs up and moves around a lot of the dead sediment in the bottom that can hold toxins and pollution.  Anyways that was 4 days ago but now things had a chance to settle back down.  Trent found some pilchards for live bait and fished some local bay islands.  The juvenile tarpon were happy he said there were quite a few stacked up there.  They hooked several and landed two, and what a great catch for his 6 year old angler!  They also got plenty of mangrove snappers for dinner and ended up extending there trip because they were having a good time!  Great to see the fishing coming back strong after that storm.  We have fairly good weather conditions for the forseeable future, a bit of wind in a few days but then back to the standard 10-15 of the fall.  Larger resident medium size tarpon are definitely still around I know Capt. Steve was out the day after the storm and said that was a little tough but of course the day after you never know what you will find.  But with water temps still hovering in the mid 70 degree range and a few more days for things to settle down, I’m sure they’ll be out and about this coming week.  Capt. Trent has plenty of days open from now through Christmas and is offering a discounted rate too.  If you want to book a trip please drop me a line or call the marina office 305-664-2461 and ask for Capt. Trent!

P.S. We normally do not boat tarpon though juveniles under 40 inches may be removed from the water for a quick picture before release.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Capt. Stephen ran a trip yesterday for a full day in the backcountry of islamorada in november.  It was a nice day with 10-15 mph winds out of the east/northeast… typical fall breeze with slightly cooler air getting more of that northerly quadrant as it does.  Water temperatures are still pretty warm near 78 degrees out in the backcountry which definitely isn’t too cold for tarpon!  Steve said mullet were plentiful they caught a few on the way into the backcountry along with there well full of pilchards that they used for snook.  Tarpon were in several areas as I reported the day before and I let Capt. Steve know that.  He said sure enough they stumbled in to them right off the bat and had action out of fish right way, even hooking a double header!  They landed one and got him on the leader though he broke off before they could get pictures handling him boatside.  After that they hit some snook spots and did pretty well, then found some more tarpon in another channel.  Sure enough these guys were happy to play and they jumped another tarpon and ended up landing another. This time the fish was nice and cooperative for a boat side release shot!  After that they found some redfish when the tides peaked around some shorelines.  Banner day getting a backcountry slam for each of his clients!  As I’ve mentioned we may continue to have some good late season tarpon action here as long as the weather stays fairly warm.  We’re getting some wind tomorrow with a weak front coming in, but temperatures aren’t suppose to fluctuate too much.  So I think we may still have some viable shots at tarpon for a bit longer.  Looking at the longer 7 day forecast after tomorrow it’s suppose to get nice again with some calm days over the weekend.  I think that could be very good for that tarpon bite if anyone is looking to go… friday, saturday, sunday, and monday look really good from here.   If you want to fish for tarpon let me know I’ll give you my honest opinion on it, and of course if I can’t take you and Capt. Steve does I’m working very very closely with him so we share all the details on what is biting where and when.  Hope to get you out soon!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Well it’s mid November and we’ve had our first touch of winter with a couple of cold fronts in the last few weeks.  Nothing major but it did drop into the high 60s for a few days at times and has since warmed up.  November typically is when I start to tell people tarpon get to be much more hit & miss, as the colder weather and water temperatures usually lead to less numbers and activity out of tarpon.  Though we have plenty of other productive fishing options.  However today the water temps were back up to about 80 degrees which is plenty warm for the silver king.  We weren’t really fishing for tarpon though we found them in 4 different areas of the backcountry which is pretty good numbers to see for this time of year.  We ended up catching a nice 40 lber on a pinfish which put up a great battle.  I think if we would’ve had our mullet and put time in we could’ve caught several tarpon today.  Anyways we have another weak front coming in a few days mid week though the temperatures aren’t suppose to really drop at all though it’ll be blowing hard for a couple days and might rain some.  But I think once the wind lets up tarpon could definitely be a possibility.  I will say there are still plenty of mullet around so bait is available.  If you are interested in tarpon fishing let me know I’m happy to give you my honest assessment if it’s worthwhile or not but for the time being I would say yes.  I’m also starting to book 2024 dates for myself personally as well as my team of captains.  If you want to get on the calender for prime dates let me know!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Well I had a bit of a break here for the first week of October.  Took my dad fishing once and we caught a few nice snook.  But today I had Mr. Bill who manages the marina for our family and his son Wayne, along with my dad too.  We snook fished most of the day but brought the tarpon gear in case the opportunity presented it self.  Didn’t see any massive schools of tarpon throughout the day or much to really get excited about.  But there was plenty of bait around, and random crashes on them in lots of the usual fishing haunts.  My personal take is things are just kind of ‘spread out’ right now – there are tarpon around but really kind of spread thin all over.  We ended up just kind of looking around slowly with our sonar along some shoreline and eventually marked one.  Set up and within 5 minutes had a big shark on and a few minutes later hooked a nice 75 lb tarpon we caught.  Capt. Stephen had the boat yesterday and they hooked several small tarpon while snook fishing, and ended up catching a couple later in the day too.  So definitely not a bad time to try and catch tarpon right now and I think once we get a little more cool weather up north which we’re suppose to in a few days, it may push some larger schools of fish our way and we may have a few weeks of really good tarpon fishing.

Right now next week is really busy we have trips booked every day with two boats.  Though myself or Capt. Stephen can likely squeeze an extra trip in now since we have two contender bays available.  So if you want to get out after the silver king, give me a shout.  I’ll shoot ya staright with regards to what I think our chances our but overall it seems decently good now and bait is fairly easy which is one of the biggest factors.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Well we’re near the end of September and the tarpon bite has still been fairly consistent!  I had Greg out earlier this week and we had banner fishing.  He booked a trip a little while ago after reading my September newsletter talking about how good tarpon fishing had been lately.  I think we hooked over 10 fish and it was just easy livin’.  Some days are like that.  We had a good incoming tide early on which as I’ve mentioned lately just seems to be the better fishing right now.  We didn’t really have to move too much the fish just kept coming by us, sometimes in packs of 6 or 8!  We caught a double header at one point which was fun especially with just one angler!  Had another big moose fish we hooked at the end that we fought for over an hour but unfortunately couldn’t roll her over.  But great day none the less!  Today on Thursday I had return customer Mike.  Weather was very questionable early at 5 AM, didn’t think we were going to get out.  But by 6:30 it started to dry up so we left soon after that.  Today the tarpon were not super thick like they were a few days ago.  We had slack tide first thing, so I was hoping once it picked up going in they would start to respond a little more.  We made a couple moves early on and after about 30 minutes put one in the air!  Then the tide started in and it never got into a red hot bite, nor did I see a ton of fish.  But the few good looks we got when we were scanning with sonar for tarpon, we were able to get those fish to bite and hooked 3 more. The first one was another 100 lber that we fought for a good 45 minutes that again we couldn’t quite get to roll over.  Then we got a couple of 40-50 lbers to the hand after that for good pictures.  Never got rained on really either so that was a plus too!

So fishing is still pretty good for tarpon.  Baits been around too I did catch bait for my Thursday trip the day before.  Some real nice mullet muds with lots of mullet so that is nice to have around.  I have plenty of days open next week and Capt. Stephen is returning too, so we can definitely still get you out in October if you are looking to catch the silver king here in the off season.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina