5/28/18 – Got out with Dave and his family down from Alaska. We fished for bonefish most of the day, stake-up fishing from a dead boat with shrimp. It was a banner day we landed 8 bonefish! We did try tarpon just for the last hour or so in one of the local channels. It was blowing 25 mph and nasty so I didn’t want to dedicate the day to it. But we didn’t get a bit though we did catch a shark and a bluefish. 0 for 0
5/28/18 – The first nice days we’ve had in a long time. It was still overcast with some slight drizzle, but it was just a light 10 mph out of the south that slicked out during some periods. We ran way into the backcountry looking for tarpon. But we found an absolute mess of mud and seaweed due to the tropical storm a couple days ago. I was hoping my further area would have been up the coast far enough that it didn’t get brutalized by the conditions but I was wrong. We did see a couple tarpon there but not enough worth trying to fish for in my opinion. We backtracked and tried some other backcountry channels, one looked OK not too crazy muddy, but never had a sniff of anything and we fished it hard. Did see one tarpon roll here. We tried another channel and same thing but didn’t see any sign of life at all. Another channel we drove through and looked hoping to see a roller or two, but nothing. The seaweed looked horrendous here so I figured it wasn’t even worth trying. At that point we decided to run back and try near Islamorada. Saw a couple fish in a couple spots, but literally just a couple and no bites out of them. I got a couple phone calls and texts of people asking where they were biting, So I knew it had to be tough. Anyways we looked around and fished several other areas without much luck. The sargasm weed was horrible in a few spots due to the storm making it almost unfishable, and the water was definitely chalky and mixed up due to the storm as well. Anyways hopefully after a few more days the water will clear up somewhat, and maybe after this full moon some more fish will show up. We definitely need another push of fish but we had such a good early season, sometimes this time of year gets tough when that happens! 0 for 0
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
