Got out with Steve and Colin who were visiting from across the pond with their buddies who also fished with Capt. John Johansen. We stuck together and mixed it up a bit. Caught some pilchards early on and had some leftover mullet from the other day. We found a good snook bite early on and also jumped a small tarpon while doing that. We tried a few other spots and caught a handful more snook, saw some more tarpon but no response out of them on our light tackle. After that we went and looked for tarpon offshore. Didn’t see a whole lot but I found some with my electronics, or what I thought was tarpon anyways. We set up and saw a few roll after about 10 minutes so I knew they were around. We jumped a fish and then had a shark bite us off. We made a move after that and had another one that ate a bait and swam back to us, unfortunately he got caught around the motor as we weren’t able to get around the boat quick enough! Bad luck! Capt. John had hooked and landed a tarpon at this point so we got some pictures of them. We then made one more move and were rewarded Colin got a nice 50 lb tarpon! After that it was Steve’s turn and he got a small 12 lb tarpon, actually I was impressed it was one of the smallest tarpon I’ve seen caught on my larger tackle setups. After that we got a lemon shark and then the tide quit, shutting everything down for the most part. It was then time to go so we did. Great day for the boys, I had a feeling with it getting slick calm like it was that the fish would be chewing. I have a half day tomorrow and then I’m available through the end of the week, and it looks like the conditions should remain pretty good through Friday. Give me a shout if you want to catch some fish, tarpon should still be a possibility for a few more weeks as long as it remains fairly warm! 2 for 5
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
