October 2018

Fun day with Chase and Stephanie visiting from Tennessee! Chase wanted to catch a tarpon and I told him I’d still been having some luck though it’d gotten a little tougher with the bigger ones this last week with the wind and all. So we decided to focus on some small guys. Bait was a little harder than yesterday, took an hour or so but we managed to catch enough and then headed out into the backcountry. We didn’t get much in our first stop though after 10 minutes or so though, Stephanie hooked a nice 10 lb tarpon free lining a pilchard! She reeled him to the boat after a good fight, but unfortunately he jumped and threw the hook next to the boat before we could get him up for some pictures. After that we drifted in and Chase hooked a nice snook we missed. We tried another area where we found a lot of small tarpon yesterday but did not see much there today, just a handful. So we kept moving and then found an area with a good amount of tarpon. They were fairly happy too, we drifted some baits in and had a few bust on them, then Stephanie hooked another one that jumped off right away! After that Chase got one, and this guy we did get to the boat a nice little 7 or 8 lber. After that we caught a few jacks and the tarpon seemed to slow down a little. We moved and tried a few other areas, which all had some tarpon in them but no response. We did get a big snook though for Stephanie, and Chase got a redfish and a spanish mackerel for a boat backcountry SLAM! We then decided to see if some bigger tarpon were showing offshore, and we did find a good pack. We moved in on them and had to readjust a couple times. Definitely were in the zone but unfortunately they did not want to bite for us. We hooked several big sharks, and caught a nurse, a couple big black tips, and a few others that bit us off. That was about all she wrote, not a ton of fish but some quality ones and Chase got what he was after so it was all good! Couple days off and then booked on the weekend, may go fun fishing one day if time permits to check out some other areas.  2 for 3

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

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