Got out with Rob Paxevanos and his daughters Emily and Hailey today visting from Australia. We were shooting a bit for his TV show over their, Fishing Australia TV. Tarpon were originally the desired target but they had some good fishing last week over on the west coast, so he said they were up for anything. Since we already had some bait stashed away and there wasn’t really any other reason to leave early, we decided to just do normal departure time so we could catch pilchards and also have a shot at catching some other things like snook, redfish, etc… Sounded like we made the right move as my buddy who focused on larger tarpon all day said it was tough, all the fish that were around a week ago really seemed to have up and disappeared with the winds kicking up. We ended up actually finding lots of small tarpon in the canals while snook fishing and Hailey caught two of them on light 30 lb test! We got them to the boat and up for some great pictures which I am still waiting for. She also landed a snook and redfish for a backcountry SLAM. Dad also got a snook and redfish, and I got a snook as well. We hooked several others but they were just coming off every which way imaginable. But none the less we got some very good video for his show and saw some crocodiles and other cool things as well. Can’t wait to see how it comes out! I just got booked for tomorrow with tarpon on the agenda, so I’ll likely try for the smaller guys again as we did today since that seemed productive. We have some bait for larger tarpon if they happen to reappear as well. 2 for 2
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
