April 2019

Fished around town again with Nathan and Jeff.  The bite was decent we had a few shots in the morning in the first hour, missing one bite and the hooking one that we jumped off.  A couple other cheap shots that missed the live baits too.  After that things went quiet for us.  Seemed a lot quieter too over all, a handful of boats caught fish but most did not.  We stuck it out waiting for the tide to turn and hoping it’d turn on but it didn’t seem to happen.  Weather kept us from going much further, had to hide under the bridge for 30 minutes while a squall went through.  After that we ran and tried another area where we had luck yesterday.  Today it worked out again, and Nathan got a nice 90 lb fish.  We got her to the boat several times but she snapped the line before we could roll her over on a last little splurge.  But we got another one later about a 60 lber to finish the day, and jumped off one more tarpon.  So a lull in between, sometimes its tough to sit through especially with so many other boats around but right now the tarpon fishing is just better locally so you have to stick with it.  Unfortunately when there are 20 boats in an area you can’t always just move where you want if you see fish or whatever, and its often just luck of the draw which boats are in the fish that are biting.  But we always give it a good effort and do what we can!  That’s why I prefer the backcountry fishing but right now there are just a lot more tarpon locally.  2 for 5

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

Had Nathan and Jeff today for a full day. Weather looked iffy but ended up not being too bad at all. Bit of a stiff more southerly breeze but not too bad. We were after tarpon and decided to stay local today with the possible weather. The tarpon bite was decent we had to work at it but we had action all throughout the day. Caught 1 fish early on and jumped another off, and missed a few other bites in the first couple hours. We moved around and hooked up again but unfortunately the fish came unbuttoned. Lots of medium sized fish seemingly 40 to 60 lbers. We did catch a nice cubera snapper which was cool. At the end of the day we had a couple more shots, missing one bite and then catching about a 90 lb tarpon to finish. Weather got nasty this evening and looks like a west wind tomorrow. Tarpon fishing will likely still be best around town so I think we will be sticking to that tomorrow again.  2 for 6

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

Fun day with Dan and the boys down from Minnesota. Dan often dishes with me earlier in the spring but decided to shoot for April this year. Of course the weather patterns are different and we had nice calm weather earlier in February and March and are now getting the hard southeasterlies and some late fronts, but you can never predict it. Anyways we has good fishing, getting two tarpon to the boat and a third one to the leader before he popped off. Also a few big blacktip sharks. After that we caught our limit of Mangrove snappers for dinner. We then had a couple more hours to play with so we tried bonefish fishing. Caught a bunch of bonnetheads in one area that looked very lively, surprised no bones. Tried a couple other spots but not a sniff there. Anyways still an overall great day despite some windy conditions. I’ll be at it again tomorrow in search of silver!  3 for 3

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