Awesome day with Mike and Marc. We had a rough start, banged my prop while trying to catch bait and lost my steering! Luckily we were close to home and got a tow and used the trolling motor to get back. We jumped in my dad’s skiff and just got a later start. The boys wanted dinner so we caught our limit of snapper first. Then we tried some spots for reds. Unfortunately the tide was getting a little low, we got where we wanted but the fish weren’t there. So we decided to look for some tarpon. Nothing in the first stop so we kept looking. We found a pack after some searching. Winds got very calm and were northeast to start with, and the tarpon seemed in a happy mood. Nothing like yesterday with the big swells and nasty south wind we had. After a few moves, Mike hooked a big 100 lber! We landed that one, and then we hooked another that we had on for a minute and got near the boat real quick, but he jumped and threw the hook. After that we had one more zip that I’m pretty sure was the silver king, but dropped the bait before we could tell. We caught a few sharks after that, including s big lemon. We moved around again and then Mike caught another tarpon. We ended up jumping off one more after that. A good rally and nice to see a few biting! The boys wanted to see some of the Everglades creeks and such, so we jumped in there to finish our day. Not a whole lot going on in there, but we did manage a couple snook before calling it a day. Anyways great fishing glad we got our day in. And my boat was fixed by the time we got back, the steering line had been sheared. Glad that didn’t happen way far from home. Back at it tomorrow. Looks like it’ll be a little windy but staying east tomorrow which should be good. Then a little south wind on Wednesday which may make things a little tougher but hopefully doesn’t blow too hard. After that a nice calm stretch through the weekend… Should be good for the tarpon! 2 for 6
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
