Got out with Aaron, Ben, and Jake for a full day of tarpon fishing in the florida keys. We fished locally as we had a cold front come in last night. The temperatures didn’t drop like crazy, but somewhat and a hard north wind to start the day. Crazy storm last night on the leading edge we actually had a tornado touch down in plantation key. We caught some bait early on and found some active fish. We had good activity and got a tarpon right off the bat. Got a technical release as we reeled him quickly to the wind-on leader but then he jumped and threw the hook. Unfortunately we had the rod high and pulled back on him and you must bow to the king when he jumps, not pull back! After that we had a couple more good bites that we didn’t connect on, and one more that grabbed the mullet and spit it. Plenty of ‘cheap shots’ too where fish came up and swatted the baits, flashed them, boiled on them, and all that fun stuff that goes along with our live mullet fishing. It was entertaining to say the least! After a couple hours of that the action slowed down and we ran back to some other areas. Found a good group of tarpon but they just weren’t feeding we gave it about 45 minutes. We moved around and found some more, and these guys were hungry! We caught two tarpon very quickly, about 50 lbers. One a 200 lb bull shark tried to eat it was very exciting and the tarpon got away thankfully! We missed one more bite there too. We moved around again because the fish seemed to have moved on at that point, and caught up with our sister boat who was into some fish. We caught three more tarpon here. It was just banner fishing and the last couple hours of the day mid afternoon. Unfortunately I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures it was difficult with three guys on the boat and we were working hard to try and get them some fish after the missed opportunities we had early on. So what a day landing 5 tarpon officially and missing quite a few more. Looks like it’s gonna drop into the 60s tonight so that might switch things up a little, I don’t think it’ll totally kill the tarpon bite but they might move around or get picky. We’ll find out tomorrow! 5 for 10
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
