10/17/16 + 10/18/16 Everglades Tarpon Fishing October

Got out with Paul and Josh down from british columbia for a couple days.  Winds were cranking north/northeast both days, the first day was blowing 25 for a while, today it wasn’t quite as bad but picked up in the afternoon but still a solid 15-20 mph.  Anyways we ended up giving tarpon a good try both days.  The first day they each hooked one in the morning, the fish weren’t biting great but we moved several times and fooled a couple.  One fish we got to the boat very quick and he darted off again and pulled the hook, the other we jumped off straight away.  Anyways good enough for a technical release but still felt like we left empty handed.  We did catch a few sharks though.  We finished that day bending the little rods with various critters.  We crushed the big black mullets on the way home which was a nice find.  The next day we caught pilchards in the morning and also had the mullets from the afternoon before.  We tried some snook way in the backcountry, not much luck with them and no tarpon in that area surprisingly.  So we ran back down the beach and found some tarpon busting where they were the day before.  The guys wanted to try that again so we gave it a good effort.  Josh was rewards with a big blacktip shark, and a big 12 lb snook which was a nice surprise.  We moved around a bit and then soon after he hooked and landed a big 120lb tarpon!  He fought very hard and we got him to the leader multiple times but before we could get him to roll over he cut us off on the boat with one quick kick of the tail, but we got some good jump shots at least.  Then it was Pauls turn he got a nice 70 lber after the next move, which we got up for good boatside pictures finally.  After that we called it a day as the rain moved in and wind was kicking up.  Fun couple days for the boys they will be back soon!  1 for 2 and 2 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk