Well got back out on the water today after being gone for the 4th/holiday weekend. I spoke to a buddy who said he had a day of very good fishing but then was dealing with a lot of weather and lightning storms, which pushed a big body of fish out and since then he was struggling a bit but still finding a few fish. Today we caught bait early on and it was fair, little easier to get bait on the morning incoming tides right now which we have for a few more days. We checked some areas where we found tarpon before I left. First stop we didn’t see much but did see a few on our electronics, but no bite and the sharks started to get bad as the tide was slowing down. We decided to run further to an area where I was doing well last week too. This spot has been consistent for me the last two weeks, hasn’t always been a ton of fish and sometimes you really hardly see anything, but it’s been good for a bite or two, or sometimes more than that. Anyways we came in and did see a few fish on the electronics again. Set up and we caught the start of the falling tide. A few sharks, but then we had a tarpon bite we missed. Dang! Put them back out and had a few more sharks, then we got a nice 35 lb tarpon to stick that we got to the hand. After that we were considering moving, but eventually saw one more tarpon roll and decided to give it some more time. More sharks including a hammerhead which was cool, then we hooked a nice 65 lb tarpon! This one gave us a good battle and we fought him for 45 minutes or so. Got him on the leader to the boat several times, but couldn’t quite get him all the way rolled over for a pic before going through the leader. But a good catch none the less. After that we decided to move on, but the weather was moving in with some thunderstorms building. We decided to just head on in before the weather got too bad, as the wind was picking up and it just looked like it was going to be struggle from there on out. Anyways I have the same crew tomorrow, David from Scotland. Will give it a try again we may make a long run up the coast who knows. 2 for 3
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
