Fished a full day today and had Alan visiting from Louisiana to try and catch his first tarpon. He’d tried a few times but hadn’t had any luck yet. I’ve been off the last couple days, we had a lot of weather over those two days with some major storms blowing through Friday, and some again on Saturday and even early this morning too. So I wasn’t sure what was going to be up with the fishing. We caught bait early, it was pretty tough to get. We checked multiple areas and just didn’t see a whole lot. Finally we found a few in one spot, and after a few blank throws, we finally caught about 18 or so which was goo enough. We ran back to where I was fishing last week with high hopes of a lot of tarpon being there. Though today it was slim pickings. We didn’t see a whole lot, maybe just a handful. We set up and caught a few sharks, then we did hook up a nice 100 lb tarpon that Alan landed! It ended up being the only one we got, but at least it was a big one probably largest I’ve had in the last month. After that though things went quiet, we moved a couple times where we had seen fish, but seemed to be not much when we set up just some more sharks. Eventually some more weather came through but dissipated. We worked our way through the backcountry channels, fishing 3 more spots and looking in a couple others, but I don’t think we ever for sure saw another tarpon today. I really think the weather over the last couple days must’ve pushed them around, as the last day I fished we had seen tons of fish. I think it will get better as the weather stabilizes. Looks like we have slick calm conditions possibly tomorrow, which should be good for them. We’ll see what happens! 1 for 1
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
