5/8/17 May Half Day Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Had a half day today and again tomorrow too.  Fishing was very tough, bait wasn’t too easy though we managed to catch about a dozen mullet this morning.  Most of the live bait guys didn’t have any either, a couple weren’t working today due to various reasons, and the third just hadn’t had much luck finding them.  Anyways we looked in a few spots and didn’t see much for tarpon.  It was fairly calm and light winds so figured we’d see them if they were around.  Finally we found some around one of the bridges.  The weed was very bad after the front a few days ago, and where the fish were it was almost unfishable as we had to clear weed off of our baits every minute or two!  We moved around 3 or 4 times, eventually the weeds subsided in other parts of the bridge.  However the tarpon seemed to be moving around as we quit seeing them soon after we’d get set up.  We checked another area and then moved to the far side of the bridge on the way back and did have a ‘cheap shot’ – a nice tarpon came up and exploded on the bait but missed it.  Alas we realized there was weed again on the bait so maybe this made him change his mind…  Anyways plenty of fish around us for the last hour and we had the tide until we quit fishing, but no more activity.  The tarpon definitely weren’t very happy, could be acting weird due to the incoming full moon in a couple days.  I spent a couple hours rounding up some more bait this afternoon in tough, slick calm conditions.   Hopefully it will pay off for tomorrow though I’m not sure if we’ll be tarpon fishing or not.  I may run into the backcountry even though we’ll only have a couple hours to fish, may be a better shot at catching one regardless.  I definitely wish we had a full day scheduled for tomorrow but we’ll do the best we can!  0 for 0

Capt. Rick Stanczyk