What a day for Jeremy and Roy! They were visiting from Colorado, Jeremy had fished with me before a few years ago. They also had a couple buddies fishing with Capt. Bill Bassett. I talked to the guys last night as I had just got back from vacation to see what our game plan would be. They were very interested in tarpon which I said had been OK lately though we looked to have good conditions with the wind laying down. Bait has been a little tough as of late though so I knew that would be the hard part. We headed out early and gave it a good hard effort and were able to come up with enough bait to fish with. Not easy by any means but we had what we needed. After that we checked some areas, not much in the first stop so we kept moving. I was in touch with some other captains who had found a few tarpon but not a lot of action out of them yet. I was almost going to run there but I decided to look in another area where I found some fish last week. Boy did we get in them good there were a lot of fish around! We fished the last couple hours of falling tide and we landed 4 tarpon mostly in the 20 to 40 lb range and jumped off several others. They were tough to keep on the hook being smaller size, but great fun to catch! We also caught a few sharks. After the tide quit we moved around as a big shark dragged us for a ways. When we landed him, we were thick in a school of tarpon! They were just everywhere. We had to set our gear off the bow as we were current into the wind, but the tarpon didn’t care! We had another 8 or so tarpon bites and landed 4 more fish. It was just incredible! We also got a nice 30 lb bull redfish, unfortunately though we pulled the hook on him as I was leadering him into the landing net! We also got a big 200 lb lemon shark, and a few more blacktips as well. Our sister boat with Capt. Bill caught a handful of tarpon as well, and they got two lunker redfish too in the 15 to 30 lb range. Absolutely epic day for these guys they can’t wait to come back. Fishing should be very good this week we look to have similar conditions through the weekend – nice light wind under 5 mph. Bait will be the tough thing however we are getting better tides for our bait in the early morning window, so that may change tomorrow. I am booked tomorrow but just had a cancellation Thursday due to the hurricane about to hit the Carolinas. I never like to promise good fishing because things can change so quickly, but if you want to see what the epic fall tarpon bite is all about this is your week to come and I have plenty of openings after tomorrow through the weekend. This isn’t something we see every day and rarely do I have open days this short notice but being off season there aren’t many people down here so now is your chance! Give me a shout. 8 for 16
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
