Got out with Andrew Forbes and his family today for a 3/4 day trip. They were leaving it up to me as far as what to do, wanting to either do a half day of ‘rod bending’ or tarpon fishing which I told them would take a little more time. The conditions got right yesterday afternoon so I said it looks good for that and they were game. We headed out early, beautiful day slick calm back there. We found some bait took a couple spots to get on it right but we did and loaded up. We then looked around where we found all the tarpon yesterday afternoon. They were waiting for us so that was good! Sharks got us a bunch in the first stop though tarpon were rolling pretty good nearby. We moved around and then soon got a nice 100 lb tarpon! After that things quieted down, but the tarpon were definitely around. We had one grab a bait and jump sideways throwing the bait out. Then we had another zip us real hard and drop the bait as well. Hook one that we got to the boat real quick and then took off, thinking it was a shark, and then he jumped and spit it but we did get him to the leader for a technical release. They were beating us up! After that we jumped one more fish I think and then caught another one finally to the boat for pictures! A few other sharks including a nurse shark and some big old catfish. By 11:00 the tide quit and it was time to go. But great action and three tarpon releases not too bad! Looks like it should be fairly nice though the weekend, then perhaps a bit of wind next week. At least for now it looks like it’ll be more southeasterly wind instead of southwest like we had a few days ago, that was terrible! Hopefully the tarpon won’t mind, I’ll miss the slick calm like we had today for sure. 3 for 6
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
