Got out with Peter and his son Ben today for Day 1 of their two day fishing charter with me. We headed out early and searched for bait. Winds were kicking slightly out of the south, not my favorite direction, but not howling at least. Bait was there but much harder to catch today we got one good shot on them and then they got very finicky running from us hard. We got another shot on a handful after jumping around and then went to fishing. Found some tarpon right nearby in the same channel near the bait, but no response out of them just some shark bites. We headed back to where I’d been fishing the last few days to try. Tide was starting out good and it was choppy so hard to see the tarpon showing. We did come across a few and set up. Not much action eventually got a shark and some catfish, did see a handful of tarpon start to roll and thought we’d get one but didn’t happen. They just didn’t seem very happy maybe from the south wind or bright moon still, who knows. Anyways after an hour or so and jumping around a couple times we left. My buddy who was nearby did manage to get one after fishing hard for an hour. We ran and checked some other channels where I hadn’t fished lately, hoping some new fish may have shown up there. We got lucky and did come across a small handful that we set up on and soon Ben had a 50 lb tarpon landed! That was it there though, we moved further down and then cam across a handful more and set up. We got a bite out of a nice big fish probably a 100 lber who jumped and spit the hook, unfortunately the rod was in the rod holder at the time which sometimes is fine but overall it does cut your hook-up ratio down to about 50% from 80%, so I always suggest for people to hold them. One less thing you have to worry about in keeping the rod down on the bite if it’s in your hand, cause when it’s in the holder its pointed up! Anyways we shook it off and caught some big sharks there, nice blacktips and several nice lemons! We found a few more tarpon after moving from there, but tide was almost dead and we didn’t get a response. We were limited on bait and was gonna try to catch more real quick but nothing nearby that looked catchable. Anyways we killed a little time and that allowed the tide to start moving. We set back up with our few remaining baits and managed to get one more tarpon bite, allowing Peter to land a nice 30 lber! Great way to finish up and glad we found some more fish. Think we’ll go right there tomorrow hopefully they stick around, I think they will. A couple more days and then I’ll be off on vacation but mid August I have plenty of days open so give me a shout, tarpon fishing can still be good! 2 for 3
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
