Got out with Jeff and his son Brock today. Winds kicked up from yesterday’s flat calm… a good 15 mph southwest breeze. Not our favorite wind direction! We headed out early and bait was still fairly easy at least. We picked a few redfish after that then looked for tarpon. They hadn’t bit well on the incoming tide the last few days, but we had a couple hours of it so it was worth looking. We did see a few fish and gave it a whirl. No reaction though, we moved a good 3 times, and got in front of fish I thought each time. But they didn’t seem to continue to come by as they do when they’ve been biting. Sharks weren’t too happy either but we did manage a big nurse shark and sting ray. We bailed and tried a few other snook/red spots. Got one small snook, and a few nice trout in one spot. Then we got the reds going a little bit more, probably caught a dozen or so though sharks got 3 or 4 of them unfortunately. The tide changed and we gave the tarpon a shot again. But didn’t see a whole lot now. Again we moved around and fished hard, got in front of a few fish but again just didn’t seem to be a lot of them coming by once we set up. Gave it a good extra 30 minutes and tried another channel where we had a few bites several days ago. But just not much activity, we did finally jump one fish but one of those bites where they didn’t even bend the rod over just jumped and the bait was out of his mouth before it even pulled… characteristic of when they aren’t happy! Oh well unfortunately that put an end to a good streak of catching, I think around the last 25 trips or so we’d gotten at least 1.
July hadn’t been anything like last year though at least it’s still been consistent, and we’ve had plenty of other opportunities for things like redfish, snook, tripletail, trout, and such. I’ve got the day off tomorrow, then fishing Friday, then I’ll be out of town for a week. Hoping August we might have some red hot fishing or at least where it gets easy and we don’t have to think about it so much! Won’t know until it gets here though. 0 for 1
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
