June 2014

Fished a full day today.  We ran in the backcountry and did some light tackle stuff early on.  I had a load of mullet we caught first thing this morning.  We tried some of the channels back there, not much for tarpon going on but some shark action.  Around noon we made our way back near town here and found a hungry school of tarpon.  We had 4 or so bites and another half dozen cheap shots before finally hooking into a nice fish.  We fought him over an hour, my young angler did a great job hooking and fighting the fish through the bridge.  After we got back set up the tide had pretty much quit and it was all over, but definitely hit it at the right time and worked hard for a nice tarpon.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Tarpon fishing was good tonight.  We had some live mullet.  Went down to the big bridges channel 5 and channel 2.  Saw fish at both bridges.  Fished 5 for a while, no bites just a cheap shot though did see one boat hook a couple fish.  After a big nurse shark we moved over to channel 2.  Saw fish rolling and on the bottom, very calm with incoming tide and clear water.  We set up and soon after they were busting our baits.  We had a good 5 or 6 bites and caught 2 nice fish both of 65-75 lbs on the live mullets.  That was all between 6:15 PM and 7:45 PM.  The last couple days before that fishing has been a little slow, I had a half day we ran in the backcountry channels and caught lots of sharks but no tarpon bites, and the whole day I had before that same thing and we also did some stuff with the light tackle, but the summer time tarpon are not real thick in the everglades channels as of yet.  Though they should be coming.  Today we fished the gulf and caught big goliaths, bull sharks, cobias, and more.  Not sure what I’m doing tomorrow, but a full day maybe tarpon is on the menu!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Went out for a 4 hour evening trip tonight, 4 to 8.  We caught some fresh mullet for live bait and had a few from the day before.  Bait wasn’t easy but we scraped a dozen together.  Fishing wasn’t great we had the last of the incoming tide, ran down to ch 2 and it was very weak current.  Did not see many fish I spent 15 minutes or so just idling around looking, only a couple rolling and a few on the bottom.  We set up for 30 minutes or so, several boats down there, but did not see much action at all.  I talked to some other boats, nobody really doing much.  So we ran back up near home, tide would be falling good there by now.  We set up and within 20 minutes, hooked a nice 75 lb fish.  Fought for 30 minutes or so and landed.  Caught a couple sharks and that was about it for the evening.  Two boat trip for this june islamorada fishing charter.  The other guys also landed a tarpon next to us and jumped one other one off.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk