5/26/16 May Backcountry Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada

Got out again today with Steve and Mark.  Fishing was a little tougher today, the wind was blowing though had laid down a little from what it was yesterday afternoon.  Though today it was hard north wind in the backcountry once we got there, not exactly what you want in May!  The wind had pushed a lot of the water out of the bay and we couldn’t quite get up to where I wanted to catch bait this morning.  We picked a few drifting in the channel but had a hard time of it.  After a little while we checked a couple other areas though didn’t see much else for catchable bait.  Luckily we had some leftovers from the previous day anyways so we got to fishing.  Didn’t have much early on though once the tide got moving we saw a few tarpon roll.  They didn’t wanna play though we did catch a couple big sharks.  After that we ran to another channel and looked for more bait on the way though no luck with that.  We fished a bit and there were tarpon here too, though again no love from them but we caught a few small sharks and big sting rays.  After that we were about out of bait and tried to catch some ladyfish in some channel runoffs, though even they didn’t want to cooperate.  We did see a few mullet as the tide fell out on the edge of the flats in the second area we looked for ladyfish.  I threw the net a half dozen more times to scrounge up a half dozen mullet – enough to fish with for a bit longer!  We found some more tarpon and Mark did get a bite out of them, unfortunately he just didn’t stay on the hook.  We did land a few more sharks and Steve got a ‘mud marlin’ sawfish which was cool.  Tough day overall though we worked hard at it things just didn’t pan out, I was glad the guys had such a good day previously with the tarpon.  Tomorrow i’m out again I  went out this afternoon looking for bait in the bay figuring with the high winds they’d be easy to catch in the muds, only there were no good looking muds!  I was able to scrounge up a few mullets from the bait guys and hopefully can catch some more in the morning, hopefully they are more cooperative tomorrow!  0 for 1

Capt. Rick Stanczyk