Well I got out the last two days and we had pretty slick nice calm conditions. While December is usually not a great month for tarpon, when it slicks out and warms up a lot they can show up in a hurry! We saw a decent amount yesterday on the 3rd, and today a bunch more! Yesterday they did not bite for us really… we only gave it about 30 minutes in the morning and we saw a handful, then we did see a few more later in the day but again no love. We did jump a small tarpon while catching some redfish and snook on our jerkbait however! Though we had good action with multiple other species including redfish, snook, tripletail, sharks, and goliath grouper! Today though we got into a big pack of tarpon first thing in the morning… Just rolling and blooping everywhere, the type of thing that really gets your adrenaline going if you are a fishermen! Unfortunately we had no tide so we had to wait a little bit for the tide to change. Once it started moving, the fish kind of spread out a bit though. With the water temperature chilly, they were not really as responsive as I’d like. We moved several times, and caught some sharks. After close to two hours, we were about to call it quits when suddenly my angler Rickys rod went off screaming! A huge 150 lb tarpon came airborne and we were hooked up! A few good jumps and some hard runs, and we got the fish boatside within 15 minutes or so. However it was a battler and would not give up for us to get a good picture. We spent about 20 minutes or so trying to get her to lay sideways… every time though she’d kick off and I thought we were going to lose her. Finally though she laid up and we got a few decent pictures. Unfortunately though one good kick of her tail and she busted off as Ricky had the leader wrapped around his hands for the picture taking. It’s always hard to get good photos of big fish because of this, you leave yourself vulnerable while setting up for the shot and it only takes a kick of the tail for them to free themselves. Anyways we got a decent shot or two. That was all she wrote, we caught some redfish, trout, and a goliath grouper to end the day! 0 for 1 1 for 1
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
