Banner day for Pete and Bonnie who were visiting from San Diego. Pete sent me a message a few days ago asking about tarpon fishing, I told him I hadn’t been fishing much in the last week as it’s off season but the few times I’d been earlier this month, it’s been really good. September has really been on fire and I really wish I had more customers right now, but you do need a little break sometimes. Anyways we gave it a whirl. Conditions looked pretty good it was slick calm yesterday but today we had a light northeasterly breeze, nice as it cooled things off a little bit. Bait was not too bad which was great too as it had been a little tougher finding the right bait the last month. We looked around and found a handful of tarpon early on on the last of the falling tide, but the water looked really ugly with lots of mud and just didn’t feel right. So we fished another area close by while we waited for the tide to change. I was hoping when the tide came in, some more tarpon and life would come with it. We didn’t catch much where we were but that gave enough time for the tide to swing around, and we went and checked and found a good group of tarpon. Right away Bonnie landed a nice one first bait out. Then we proceeded to catch a bunch more! We hooked a couple double headers though I don’t think we ever landed two at once, but it got hard to keep track of to be honest. We did have one 60 lber we hooked that spit the bait, and as soon as it hit the water another 25 lber ate it again it was incredible! The tarpon chewed voraciously for a good two hours and both Pete and Bonnie each landed multiple fish, almost losing count of the bites. I had told them I didn’t mind keeping them out a couple extra hours if we didn’t have good fishing being off season and all, but that was not a problem! The last 30 minutes or so though the tarpon seemed to shut right off as quickly as they turned on, but we had caught plenty and had some soar arms. We headed on back making it a nice 3/4 day trip, doesn’t get better than that. As far as the tarpon ratio per trip goes, September has been the best fishing I’ve had all year! While I’ve only been out a half dozen days, we’ve hammered them every day. Looks like conditions will be similar throughout the next week or so. I’ve got Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday open this coming week, and then plenty of days in early October. Give me a shout if you want to get in on the tail end of tarpon season here in the Florida Keys it’s been epic! 9 for 13
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
