Got out with Mark and Eddie today for a full day tarpon fishing trip. Winds were still kicking pretty good but not too crazy. We’ve definitely had a windy August overall which had made the fishing a little tougher but at least still OK. Normally we look forward to typical calm weather in the summer, and the tarpon are much easier to spot and generally seem to be more plentiful on those slick days… but you gotta work with what you have. Anyways we caught some bait early and looked in a few areas for tarpon. Didn’t see a whole lot, so we went where I’d been having some luck the last few trips. It’d been a few days since I’d been out though. We didn’t see much there either, but set up and eventually saw a fish roll. That was it though no bites but a few little sharks. We made several moves without too much luck. Then eventually we saw a good sign of tarpon some good splashes in the same area. We got in there and soon had a good tarpon bite but unfortunately didn’t stay on the hook. Right after that the other rod went off and zipped us which I believe was a tarpon too but not sure. My fingers were crossed there was hopefully another fish there and luckily there was. Mark caught his first tarpon after that a nice 35 lber! We checked another area after that and then decided to trout fish for a little while which was OK we caught a good handful. We then went back to the tarpon. Didn’t see much in the first stop, and checked a few more channels. Finally we thought we saw a good sign of fish on the bottom machine. I set us up and soon Eddie hooked a nice 50 lber! We got the fish boat side for some pictures and released him for another day. After that we had 30 minutes or so left, the boys were pretty good each having caught a tarpon and there wasn’t really much time to realistically do much else. So we took a nice ride in to keep the beating waves down and cool off a little. But a great day and always nice to catch a couple tarpon, especially when it isn’t all that easy! Look forward to fishing with these guys again soon. 2 for 4
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
