Got out with Willem today for a tarpon fishing trip. He is a dutch angler visiting from overseas and really wanted to catch a tarpon! We headed out early and luckily I had some bait stashed away from a few days ago. Winds were kicking a little but not too crazy. We’ve had a lot of wind this August overall and it’s made for a little tougher fishing than what we had in July. We did not see many tarpon in the first area we stopped and so we moved to another. We looked around and saw a few big busts that looked promising and then set up. Sharks started to bite some but no tarpon action for us. We continued to move around and then we saw some tarpon rolling! Tide was coming in hard and we got set up. We got a bite almost immediately and we landed a nice 40 lber! After that we continued to see a few, we moved again and then hooked another 60 lber but unfortunately the line snapper I think it may of been hung in the bottom funny or something. After that we jumped around more, still saw some tarpon but they got much more finicky. We caught some more sharks but could not entice another tarpon. We tried to catch some more bait as we were running low but they were being very tricky, we did see a couple more tarpon and used our last baits trying to get another one but that was it. We decided to cut our day to a 3/4 day as I thought it may be tough to try and catch more bait and then have a realistic shot at another tarpon. So we were glad to get one anyhow and a first for Willem! I’ll be back at it tomorrow looks like the winds are finally going to lay down some through Friday anyhow. I have Thursday or Friday available conditons look somewhat favorable. There are definitely still some tarpon around though it’s not been a red hot bite, most days we’ve gotten a few shots and been glad to land one or two. That could change though if we get some nice calm conditions for a good while. 1 for 2
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
