5/1/17 May Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada

Broke in the first day of May the right way!  Conditions didn’t look great to start with the wind was still howling and we had some passing squalls throughout the morning.  We did hook a tarpon early on in one of the local channels though unfortunately we jumped him off after a few big jumps.  The sharks were active though and kept us busy.  After a while we had to run in to avoid some rain storms and regroup.  We headed back out and found a little bit of bait on the way.  I was able to catch a few but unfortunately had tweaked my back the day before, and a few throws of the net didn’t do that much good.  But we got what we needed.  The late morning/afternoon ended up being much nicer, the sun came out and the winds weren’t nearly as bad as the day before.  We ran down to the bridges to try next and caught the start of the incoming tide.  Found a few fish off one of the banks, however they were not interested in feeding we gave it a hard try and moved several times.  We ended up fishing near one of the bridges and could see some fish on the bottom machine training back and forth.  We had to fight the sargasm weed, but eventually got a good bite on our live mullet and caught a nice 100 lb fish!  After that we caught a few more sharks and a nice mutton snapper, then we got one last tarpon to finish the day about a 50 lber.  Was glad to get a couple, I have a big group the next 4 days so will likely be mixing it up each day but I’m sure a little tarpon will be on the agenda.  2 for 3

Capt. Rick Stanczyk