5/2/14 + 5/3/14 May Tarpon Fishing Islamorada

Very busy last couple days.  Yesterday had a morning half day and an evening trip.  Bait was tough in the AM we only caught a handful and the ‘bait guys’ we buy from normally did not get any.  But we managed to catch 1 nice tarpon on live bait and had another zip us that we missed.  The fish were acting a little funny.  They continued to do so on my evening trip.  I caught some bait mid day.  We had several ‘cheap shots’ early on live baits, and connected with one right away fishing an ocean side channel.  Later in the night we came back and drifted some of the local channels near home and had a couple fish rolling on the surface we drifted over that took some shots at the mullet but surprisingly never got it.  So 1 tarpon in the AM, and 1 on the evening trip.  Today we had a 3 boat trip and stuck around town all day tarpon fishing.  It was very slow we were the only boat to catch a fish and jumped one other one off.  The others reported a few cheap shots, but again the fish were not happy.  We saw fish every place we fished, but just could not get them really going – but we were happy to catch 1.  Tonight we had one cheap shot early, again bait was tough for me to get as I did not have time to catch any.  We got rained on a bit and came back up the road here near home.  Caught a nice 80 lb tarpon on dead bait, only real bite we had.  These guys fished in the morning though and did not catch one, so again they were happy to get one.  So again another nice fish on the day trip, and another nice one in the evening.  Tonight we have a cool front kicking in, the wind swung around to the west and will be northwest next couple of days.  May make the tarpon fishing tough, but the temperature should not drop.  Once it swings back east maybe the fish will get happy again!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk