Well I normally don’t do any fly fishing however I had my dad and his friend Capt. Vic Gaspeny out for the day and to mix things up we brought the fly rods. We had planned on looking for permit in the gulf, however we didn’t have great conditions with a stiff northwest breeze out there. So we opted to look for some small tarpon in the morning. I checked out an area I was fishing a lot last month but hadn’t been in a few weeks. It was a bit nasty there with the wind direction, but in a more protected area we found a good amount of smaller 10 to 30 lb tarpon. We set up and just started casting where we saw some rollers. We jumped one on a pinfish, then they brought out the fly rods. They each got a couple bites, and my dad hooked one that we got to the leader before jumping him off… about a 20 lb fish! Also we got one more to eat a shrimp. It was really good fishing to be honest! After a bit of that though we drudged our way to the gulf but that was a mistake as it was still fairly rough. We did see the permit a couple times, but they were not happy at all running hard and not interested in anything we tossed at them. Oh well you can’t win them all, but it was fun to do something different. I’ll be out of town for the weekend and it’s my birthday tomorrow, back to fishing on Monday. Looks like we’ll be back to more typical summer time conditions by then with light southerly winds. Hopefully the summer tarpon fishing will get into full swing! 1 for 6
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
