4/10/17 Everglades Tarpon Fishing out of Islamorada Florida

Got out with Roy and Tye today for a full day tarpon fishing charter.  Tarpon was what they wanted and we headed out in search of them.  We found a big ball of bait which was nice and loaded up the livewells.  We tried locally around one of the bridges first thing, but didn’t see much and with the full moon, the tide was just ripping and there was a lot of grass and didn’t look good.  So we bailed and ran into the backcountry.  I tried one of the channels back there, but didn’t see much and all we had was a little bonnet head eat a bait after about 40 minutes.  We then tried to catch some trout while waiting on the tide change, and caught a few, though even that seemed tough!  I asked the guys if they wanted to try for other things to do some action, but they wanted to hold fast and keep after the tarpon.  It proved to be the right choice, we ran another 30 minutes into the backcountry taking a gamble.  Didn’t see much for tarpon showing, though the sharks started to bite and kept us busy.  Eventually Roy hooked a nice tarpon we landed, and then had some more sharks and ended up catching two more tarpon as well!  It was a great finish after a slow start.  Roy had all the tarpon bites, while Tye was on the sharks… he did get a big lemon shark which he loved.  Anyways sometimes you have to put all your eggs into one basket and just go for broke when trying to catch tarpon in islamorada.  Today it paid off! Tomorrow I have a half day with the same guys I fished a few days ago, I think we’re gonna try for tarpon but may end up running into the backcountry where we’ll have a shot at getting some sharks too since the tarpon bite was reportedly very slow around town today.  3 for 3

Capt. Rick Stanczyk