Got out with Trent and Shannon today for a full day. Trent had the silver king tarpon on his bucket list. We decided to give it a whirl. Conditions looked OK, winds came down a little from the last couple of days, but still blowing decently but was suppose to lay down some in the afternoon. We caught bait to start the day which was nice and easy. Headed out into the backcountry to try some tarpon areas first. Didn’t see a whole lot visually, and it was fairly muddy and churned up from the winds we’ve had. But eventually saw a little activity, and felt we were in a good zone. We set up, and soon had a big shark on that we pulled the hook on. But next Trent hooked a nice 60 lb tarpon which we landed. Put on quite a show and we got the fish on the leader boat side, but shook off before I could get any good boat side pics. We decided to try for some other stuff after that, and had good luck with some redfish and snook. But some smaller tarpon were about as well, and we jumped a couple of them and Trent landed one too! After that once the tide started to change and come in, we ran into the gulf to look for tripletail which we found a few. But we saw a tarpon jumping and found a little school of them out there. Put the baits out and sure enough, hooked and landed our third tarpon of the day! This one was a big full grown one about 125 lbs. Awesome day with not so awesome conditions – very happy! The tarpon definitely seemed happier today as far as how they were responding, I imagine if it calms down it’s really going to go off! 3 for 5
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
