Well another wet and rainy one today. The morning was nice though. Little bit of a southerly breeze but nothing too crazy. I had Mark and his son Casey. We were after tarpon and had just enough bait leftover that I figured we’d make the long run where I was going last week and just go for it. Left early to catch the last of the falling tide. One thing about this area, the tide change is very slow, so if you catch the slack tide you are going to be sitting and twiddling your thumbs for an hour or more. We had a good 2 hours of tide thankfully with the early departure, that is one reason I’m big on being on time! We saw more fish than I saw the few previous times I went last week, but they weren’t responding. We had to move a few times, then finally got in the spot that felt right. Soon Casey hooked a nice 75 lb tarpon that we fought for a bit and got boatside for some pictures! Luckily we still had a little current, and dad hooked one but unfortunately he came off instantly. Then the tide slowly quit. We decided to look around for a bit while we waited for the current to change as we were limited on our bait supply. Didn’t see much, and eventually the tide turned so we tried again. Saw a handful of fish but nothing like before, but we gave it a good 30-40 minutes and didn’t get another bite. We went to plan B but when we left I could tell things were getting nasty towards home. The winds had kicked up a bit. We caught a few redfish but the fish seemed shut down, I could hear snook popping but we never got a bite out of one. Soon squalls got closer and it started blowing 35 mph and raining. We called it a day and boogied toward home. Made for an adventurous ride but thankfully the Contender boat could handle it, just got a little wet. But all in all we made our day with a nice tarpon and a few redfish. Back at it tomorrow… now the big question is where to get bait as it’s not easy to catch right now and it’s not quite consistently catchable in the summer time backcountry areas yet. We’ll see what happens! 1 for 2
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
